"Confessional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... post at Regensburg. On all the Sundays of Advent he preached at the cathedral, but as it could not contain the vast concourse of people who crowded to hear him, he was obliged to preach three times in the week also. From the pulpit he went to the confessional, and when he returned to his lodging he was besieged by those who came to seek his advice-princes, concerning the interests of religion in their dominions, prelates, in regard to the reform of their ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... Cathedral the next day, and saw on the porch groups of gray-haired negroes waiting for alms. There were candles on the altar, paintings of the stations of the cross on the pillars, and confessional closets near the door. And here the lovely creole knelt side by side with pure black descendants ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... severely, and was tempted to send him back. But Bossuet—a far greater casuist than she—decided that in these urgent cases one need hold much less to forms. They were contented with taking away the spurs from this amphibious personage; they pushed him into a confessional,—the curtain of which he was careful to draw before himself,—and they brought the Bavarian Princess, who, not knowing the circumstances, confessed the sins of her whole life to ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... angle of a great wall that surrounded the garden—an angle from which the fruit trees had long died away. They painted in water-colour; they embroidered; they copied verses into albums. Once a week they went to Mass; once a week to the confessional, accompanied by an old nurse. They were happy since they had ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... Vera goes to obtain more missionaries from Europe. In Mexico he meets orders from the general of the Jesuit order that Diego Garcia shall go with a reenforcement of laborers to the Philippines. In Manila, during that year, the Jesuits meet much success in their ministries—especially in the confessional, in public preaching, and in various benevolent works. They also accomplish much in private affairs, reconciling enemies, preventing lawsuits, and checking licentious conduct. The annals continue with the progress of the Antipolo mission during ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... rise from the level of the primitive basilica beneath. At the end is the ancient pontifical seat, adorned with mosaic and precious marbles. The papal altar is under a canopy in the Byzantine style. The pavement of this presbytery is worthy of particular attention. Descending to the confessional which is under the high altar the tomb of the martyred saints, Lawrence, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... ever questioned the long shuttered front of an old Italian house, that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, the villa on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... the confessional," she declared. "I was leaving the place with a disagreeable taste in my mouth. At the last moment, even as I was stepping into a taxicab, I turned back. I went instead to the desk and boldly asked for the number of your suite. I ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... breast as a penitent at the confessional, and flushed and excited, coming toward the bed, she continued: "So much the worse. A pretty girl must live or suffer—she has no choice!" Then returning to her former idea: "Much they deny themselves, your 'honest women.' They are worse, because nothing compels them. They ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... in a notary's office, it is hard for a young man to conserve his candour. He has seen the hideous origins of all fortunes, the disputes of heirs over corpses not yet cold, the human heart in conflict with the Code. . . . A lawyer's office is a confessional where the various passions come to empty out their bag of bad ideas and to consult about their cases of conscience ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... "merchant-voyageurs" as something spoken of in books, but not worth the while of a bon vivant. The common hands, who paddled canoes and underwent the drudgery of the trade (who were exclusively of the lower order of Canadian peasantry), squared their moral accounts once a year with a well-conducted confessional interview and a crown, and felt as happy as the "Christian Pilgrim" when he had been relieved of his burden. It would, probably, be wrong to say that the lordly Highlander, the impetuous son of Erin, or the proud and independent Englishman, who vied with each other in feats of sumptuous hospitality ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... empty; alone, the confessional of Saint Joseph was still occupied by a penitent, the edge of whose black dress was just seen as one passed. Angelique, who had been perfectly self-possessed until now, began to tremble as she entered this sacred, cold solitude, where even the little sound of her steps ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... it is to be the social mediator, the vehicle of understanding, the instrument of self-examination, the parade of morals and the exchange of manners, the factory of customs, the criticism of laws and institutions and of social dogmas and ideas. It is to be the home confessional, the initiator of knowledge, the seed of fruitful self-questioning. Let me be very clear here. I do not mean for a moment that the novelist is going to set up as a teacher, as a sort of priest with a pen, who will make men and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... may be, I feel that in the end I shall be justified—fully justified—in allowing the public to look for a little while into the sacred confessional of ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... were loaded and run out, men appointed to each, cartridges served out, matches lighted, and all the flags ready to be run up. I took my place at the starboard after gun, and we all waited for the signal from on shore. At ten o'clock the bride went up with her sister to the confessional, dressed in deep black. Nearly an hour intervened, when the great doors of the Mission church opened, the bells rang out a loud, discordant peal, the private signal for us was run up by the captain ashore, the bride, dressed in complete ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... study for the priesthood, and gave himself up to his new work, striving to drown his sorrow. A few years later, he was selected to make one of a number of young priests to go to Mexico. The last time he had heard confessions in the parish church, a woman, heavily veiled, entered the confessional, and, in a whisper, interrupted by sobs, asked for his blessing. At her first word he recognized Dolores's voice, and with a smothered cry, fell back, almost unconscious, in his seat. This was the first time he had seen her since her unhappy marriage, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... cross, so that only its transepts remained in shadow. Then came a sound of chanting, and at the western door entered the Prior, wearing all his robes, attended by the monks and acolytes, who swung censers. In the centre of the nave he halted and passed to the confessional, calling on Godwin to follow. So he went and knelt before the holy man, and there poured out all his heart. He confessed his sins. They were but few. He told him of the vision of his sickness, on which the Prior pondered long; of his deep love, his hopes, his fears, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... to be any possible comfort in this world for me, in not being what I ought to be, it is the thought that I am not the only one that knows it. At all events, this feeling that the worst is known, even if one takes, as I am doing now, a planet for a confessional, gives one a luxurious sense—a sense of combined safety and irresponsibility which would not be exchanged for a world. Every book should have I-places in it—breathing-holes—places where one's soul can come up to the surface and look out through the ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... this remarkable incident, spoken with breathless rapidity in a burst of confidence, seemed to cause the relief supposed to be obtained by a penitent in the confessional, and to lift a weight off Bob Keeley's mind. The smile deepened on the 'Passon's' face, and for a moment he had some difficulty to control an outbreak of laughter, but recollecting the possibly demoralising effect it might have on the more youthful members of the community, if he, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... modesty she is apt to turn her back to her interlocutor. "When the face of woman is covered," it has been said, "her heart is bared," and the Catholic Church has recognized this psychological truth by arranging that in the confessional the penitent's face shall not be visible. The gay and innocent freedom of southern women during Carnival is due not entirely to the permitted license of the season or the concealment of identity, but to the mask that hides ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... not confession-time, and on all other occasions Father Dan's pastoral visits came very much under the head of revelling. There was not a syllable of religious conversation; that was considered peculiar to the confessional. ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... world as this, to render them pleasurable to those who patronize them. Strip them bare until they stand in the simple innocence to which their defenders' arguments would reduce them and the world would not have them." A Roman Catholic priest testifies that "the confessional revealed the fact that nineteen out of every twenty women who fall can trace the beginning of their state to the ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... French Village would almost certainly confront him there this morning, if indeed he ever succeeded in reaching there. And he must be doubly on his guard lest the things which he might learn to-day should in his mind confuse themselves with what he had last night learned under the seal of the confessional. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Faber, one of the vicars of the parish, is sure that twice out of three times he will find no penitent before his confessional, and has only to hear, for the most part of the time, the uninteresting confession of some good women. But he is conscientious, and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, at seven o'clock precisely, he betakes himself regularly to the chapel of St. ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... Peter's where folks of every language in the world can confess and be absolved by a priest that understands 'em. Well, I shouldn't wonder, it is big enough, it seems like a world in itself. But I couldn't help thinkin' of our great High Priest whose confessional is broad and high as the needs and sorrows of a world and the "silent liftin' of an eye can bring us there to be," and who understands not only every language under the sun, but every secret and hidden thought and aspiration of the soul, good ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... is not to be used as a confessional to cancel sin. Such an error would impede true religion. Sin is forgiven 5:24 only as it is destroyed by Christ, - Truth and Life. If prayer nourishes the belief that sin is cancelled, and that man is made better merely by praying, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... approach by wading through rank grass as high as our knees) is one of the most interesting of its kind. During our admiration of all that was curious in this venerable edifice, we were struck by our old friends, the penitents,—busy in making confession. In more than one confessional there were two penitents; and towards one of these, thus doubly attended, I saw a very large, athletic, hard-visaged priest hastening, just having slipt on his surplice in the vestry. Indeed I had been cursorily introduced to him by the Count. It was Saturday evening, and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... had been really hurt. Now that she need not puzzle over the man's motives, she would perhaps cease to think of him. But she must be kind, just for a minute or two—to make up for putting him in the confessional, and to prove the gratitude ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Angels; then he at once treated me as a mad woman, unless he accused me of being possessed by the devil; to conclude, he refused me absolution, and I thought myself happy if he did not slam the little wicket of the confessional roughly in my face at ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of elsewhere in this volume, I must take the reader's acquaintance with the poems for granted. So, following those first mentioned, there would come "Home Thoughts from Abroad"; "Home Thoughts from the Sea"; "The Confessional"; "The Heretic's Tragedy"; "Earth's Immortalities"; "Meeting at Night: Parting at Morning"; "Saul"; "Karshish"; "A Death in the Desert"; "Rabbi Ben Ezra"; "A Grammarian's Funeral"; "Love Among the Ruins"; Song, "Nay ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... many spies in his service, paid to bring him reports of his enemies' speech and actions. Great ladies of the court did not disdain to betray their friends, and priests even advised penitents in the Confessional to act as the Cardinal wished them. When any treachery was discovered, it was punished swiftly. The Cardinal refused to spare men of the highest rank who plotted against the King or his ministers, for he had seen the dangers of revolt and decided to stamp it out relentlessly. Some strain ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... daily; education in common, especially by means of pictures, popular encyclopedias etc., all under the supreme guidance of a despotism to be composed of the wise, some secular and some spiritual, operating through the confessional. Socialists nearly always succeed better in the critical part of their works than in the positive. Compare R. Mohl, Geschichte und Literatur der ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... are conversant. As if nature intended them as warnings, they are imprinted on the most visible and public parts of the body. The skin, the hair, the nose, the voice, the lines on the face, often divulge to the trained observer, more indubitably than the confessional, a ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... People think the confessional is unknown in our Protestant churches. It is a great mistake. The principal change is, that there is no screen between the penitent and the father confessor. The minister knew his rights, and very soon asserted them. He gave aunt Silence to understand that he could talk more ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... deeply in the consciousness of her thoughts, but after a moment said, "I do not believe in the confessional." ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... past. It was his noble patriotism, of which he made a great display, that had rendered him so interesting in Aglaya's eyes. She was so fascinated that, even before marrying him, she joined a committee that had been organized abroad to work for the restoration of Poland; and further, she visited the confessional of a celebrated Jesuit priest, who made an absolute fanatic of her. The supposed fortune of the count had dwindled to a mere nothing, although he had given almost irrefutable evidence of its existence to Lizabetha Prokofievna and ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... between baptism as practised in the Christian Church, and as practised by John, and by Jesus in His early ministry. In the church, baptism has come to be regarded as a dedicatory rite by some, and by others an initial and confessional rite. But in the first use of it, by John and Jesus, it was a purifying rite. It was a confession too, but of sin, and the need of cleansing, not, as later, of faith in a person, or a creed, although it did imply acceptance of a man's leadership. To a Hebrew mind it was preaching ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... swallowing, of his own free-will, the heap of rubbish which every Catholic has to believe! in cold blood tying a collar round his neck, and politely putting the chain into the hands of a priest!... And then the Confessional! 'Tis marvellous!" and he began to break the coals with the poker. "It's very well," he continued, "if a man is born a Catholic; I don't suppose they really believe what they are obliged to profess; but how an Englishman, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... "influenced" Shakspere, the likelihood that "Philaster" was the original, "Cymbeline" the "copy." Shakspere at the age of forty-six, long after he had portrayed the real insanity of Lear, the simulated insanity of Hamlet, the confessional dream of Lady Macbeth; long after he had "filled the audience with surprise and delight" by the romantic realities of Hero and Portia, of Viola and Rosalind; years after he had anticipated the heroic "romance" ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... a man words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity?—who would ignobly strike the self-disarmed?—scornfully insult him who, kneeling at the Muses' confessional, whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who do so? who find it in their hearts thus to think, and speak, and write ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... exaggerated romance in her Roman. But the permanent effect of a solitary bias in the youth of genius, impelling the whole current of his after-life, is strikingly displayed in the remarkable character of Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, the author of the famous "Confessional," and the curious "Memoirs of Hollis," written ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... early that evening, as it was his turn to be in the confessional. One or two people came to confession, and then the church seemed to be empty. He knelt down to his prayers and soon became absorbed. To-night he was oppressed in a new way by the sins, the temptations, and the unutterable weakness of man; his failures; his ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... invented the epithet repeated it to Monsignor Saracinesca in confession, and he gently told her that it was wrong to speak disrespectfully of her superior, she rather pertly asked him whether any one who lived under a volcano could fail to 'respect' it; whereat he shook his head gravely inside the confessional, but his spiritual mouth twitched with amusement, in spite of himself. The four novices were inclined to distrust Angela at first, however, as she was not even a postulant, and it was not till she became one of themselves that she was initiated into ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... said," was Mrs. Pitt's reply. "Perhaps it may have been a kind of confessional, where ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... grew more haggard. Suddenly all the weakness of her sex swept over her—all the weakness also of the wrong-doer. The comfort of the confessional seemed the sole happiness possible for her. And so it was that she gave to Eddring the first direct confirmation of that which he had by piece-work reasoning convinced himself to be the truth. He first rapidly ran over the salient features ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... reasons for saying nothing; Peter Christian himself, who was hardly likely to tell; and the High Bailiff, who was a bachelor and a miser, and kept all business revelations as sacred as are the secrets of another kind of confessional. When Pete's evil day came and the world showed ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... got up, and, taking Jeanie by the arm, began to walk forward at a great pace; and soon, to her companion's no small joy, came into a marked path, with the meanders of which she seemed perfectly acquainted. Jeanie endeavoured to bring her back to the confessional, but the fancy was gone by. In fact, the mind of this deranged being resembled nothing so much as a quantity of dry leaves, which may for a few minutes remain still, but are instantly discomposed and put in motion by the first casual breath of air. She had now got ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... it—for a luxury, you know! Able to take my wife to Frascati on the last Thursday of October as a great holiday. My wife, too! A creature of beads and saints and little books with crosses on them—who would leer at a friar through the grating of a confessional, and who makes the house hideous with her howling if I choose to eat a bit of pork on a Friday! A good wife indeed! A jewel of a wife, and an apoplexy on all such jewels! A nice wife, who has a face like a head from a tombstone ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... weakness of our religion (God pardon the sin of hinting at any want in that same!) that we have no chance of laying the heart bare to mortal man. Many a time I could wish for the salving influence of the confessional, even without the absolution ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... confession, as she felt rather doubtful whether Clara would accompany her, but she promised that she would consider the matter; and the vicar on leaving felt satisfied with the way he had made. As yet, however, he had not got so far as to set up a confessional box in his church. He intended, in the first instance, to employ the vestry for that purpose. He had his doubts whether Mr Lennard might not withdraw the support he was now affording him; still, he ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... removing a mass of sand and exposing the building which had so long been covered up. The masonry is rude, but the walls are solid and complete. The interior was perfectly free from the modern accompaniments of Roman Catholic places of worship. There was no rood-loft, no confessional, no pictures of the Virgin and saints, nothing to indicate the unscriptural adoration of the wafer, or masses for the dead. The most diligent search was made for beads and pyxes, censers and crucifixes; not ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... from paintings. What an useful as well as ornamental art is the mosaic! There are a great variety of confessionals where penitents and pilgrims may confess, each in his own tongue, for there is a confessional for the use of almost every native tongue and language in the Catholic world. The cupola! What an astonishing sight when you look up at it from below! How can I better describe it than by relating the anecdote of Michel Angelo its ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... labouring in Madrid, wrote of a civil guard who, because of his bold witness for Christ and renunciation of the Romish confessional, was sent from place to place and most cruelly treated, and threatened with banishment to a penal settlement. Again he writes of a convert from Borne who, for trying to establish a small meeting, was summoned before ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... wealthy woman, who has lost neither children nor relatives, are caused by wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe. Your soul is in danger, madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter which awaits us. No, I am not in the confessional. But it is my duty, is it not, to open your eyes to your future life here on earth? You will pardon an old man, will you not, for importunity which has your own happiness ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... heard Richard's shrift, and nearly wept over it—it was the first the young priestly knight had received, and he could scarcely clear his voice to speak the words of absolution. Even as they left the confessional, he grasped Richard's hand and said, "Cast in thy lot with us! St. John will find thee father and home ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... worldliness is repugnant to me—fashionable friends, confidences, meddling in family affairs, dining out, letters from ladies who need consolation.... I don't mean anything wrong; pray don't misunderstand me. I merely mean to say that I hate their meddling in family affairs. Their confessional is a kind of marriage bureau; they have always got some plan on for marrying this person to that, and I must say I hate all that sort of thing.... If I were a priest I would disdain to... but perhaps I am wrong to speak like that. Yes, it is very wrong of me, and before... Kitty, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... of the bells was to waken to the most delightful sense of life and happiness; where nuns, actual nuns, walked the streets, and every figure in the Place de Meir, and every devotee at church, kneeling and draped in black, or entering the confessional (actually the confessional!), was a delightful subject for the new sketchbook. Had Clive drawn as much everywhere as at Antwerp, Messrs. Soap and Isaac might have made a little income by ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... passed between the parties, both of whom were of a temperament strung to the most exquisite tones of consciousness, with minds both wise and strong, and with characters under the control of austere principles of duty and piety. Michelet, in his work on the Confessional, gives a skilful and forcible picture of this rapt friendship; but his own pervading sensuousness, not to say sensuality, does the sentiment gross injustice by mixing in it so much of flesh and earth. The union of these ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... even those given me outside the pale of my church's confessional. Young Latisan is like his grandfather—tinder for a stray spark. If I know your fault—if I can tell him, when I see him, what you would have liked to ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... not. There was always the hope that, whether the young lady died or recovered, the conclusion of her illness would be the term of Christina's stay at Adlerstein, and with this trust Johanna must content herself. The priest took leave, after appointing with Christina to meet her in the confessional early in the morning before mass; and half the night was spent by the aunt and niece in preparing Christina's wardrobe ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... But this I believe: No confessional can absolve him—no priest benefit him—no God forgive him. He has damned himself, and he began the work in youth. He was getting ready all his life for this old age, and this old age was getting ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... the spirit of an entire period in the world's history are revealed in a brilliant searchlight. With very few exceptions, one of which will be given in our selections, a dramatic monologue is not a meditation nor a soliloquy; it is a series of remarks, usually confessional, addressed either orally or in an epistolary form to another person or to a group of listeners. These other figures, though they do not speak, are necessary to the understanding of the monologue; ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... the head with his sword-knot as to bring the blood. It does not appear that he was made to suffer for his boldness, but two of the lower ecclesiastics, John of Nepomuk and Puchnik, were put to the rack to make them confess facts learned by them in the confessional. They persistently refused to answer. Wenceslas, infuriated by their obstinacy, himself seized a torch and applied it to their limbs to make them speak. They were still silent. The affair ended in his ordering John of Nepomuk to be flung headlong, during the night, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... for the night. In Italy churches have ever been applied to such uses. After the reduction of Milan, Francesco Sforza rode into the Duomo, and when King Ladislaus of Naples conquered Rome, he rode into the basilica of St John Lateran. The guerilla chief bivouacked in a confessional, while his Red-shirts slept where they could on the cathedral floor. Four hundred of them had been killed or wounded ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... its checked but persistent vestiges may become centers of morbid complexes and in yet other cases it burrows and proliferates more or less unconsciously, and finds secret and circuitous ways of indulgence which only psychoanalysis or a moral or religious confessional could trace. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Reading these elucubrations of Alfonso's, one feels that the saint has pondered long and lovingly upon themes like an et quando peccata sint oscula or de tactu et adspectu corporis; he writes with all the authority of an expert whose richly-varied experiences in the confessional have been amplified and irradiated by divine inspiration. I hesitate what to call this literature, seeing that it was obviously written to the glory of God and His Virgin Mother. The congregation of the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of Rome, a lovely girl of distinguished parentage had suffered her blonde tresses to be shorn, her graceful limbs draped in forlorn russet, her merry meetings with girlish spirits like herself exchanged for the tears of the confessional, the lengthened prayers of the cloister, the frequent fastings and sometimes scourgings of monastic life. The cause of this contemporaneous disappearance was known only to the most intimate friends of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... The several confessional chairs in our church were usually occupied by the senior monks, although, when absent from sickness or other causes, the juniors occasionally supplied their place. One of the monks had been taken ill, and I knew that the mother of the young lady, who was ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... when he wished to speak to him he whistled, exactly as one would whistle for a dog. The confessor never failed to respond promptly to this royal call, and followed his penitent into the embrasure of a window, in which improvised confessional the king divulged what he had on his conscience, received absolution, and sent back the priest until he felt himself obliged to ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the ruins of their houses, and the scenes when the victims were unearthed were often piteous and terrible. The positions of the bodies showed that the victims had died while in a state of great terror, the faces being convulsed with fear. Three bodies were found in a confessional of one of the fallen churches. One body was that of an old woman who was sitting with her right arm raised as though to ward off the advancing danger. The second was that of a child about eight years old. It was found dead in a position, which would indicate that the child had fallen with ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... he cried, ecstatically, "they should as soon make a priest tell confessional secrets, as force me, honest Andrea Luziani, to betray a man who has given me good cigars! Let them run back to Gaeta and hunt in every hole and corner! Carmelo may rest comfortably in the Montemaggiore without the shadow of a gendarme to disturb him! Ah, signor!" for I had advanced ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... church warned her that the morality of such a marriage might be doubtful. She accordingly sounded her conscience in the confessional. The stern priest explained the opinions of the Church, which sees in marriage only the propagation of humanity, and rebukes second marriages and all passions but those with a social purpose. Sylvie's perplexities were great. These internal struggles gave extraordinary force to her ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... do not misunderstand this, he cautions—that the pretense here around the broken automobile grows shallow enough to plumb. There is nothing here. Two dozen men standing dead on a curbing, tricked into confessional by a ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Saint Frond.—In the last church we visited we had a scene. A woman was in the confessional; the priest, with a white handkerchief up to conceal his face, and prevent what he said being overheard, attracted the attention of the children, who demanded an explanation. Children ask so many questions. "Do you think she has been very wicked? Will he forgive ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... absolution privately to the sick man. This was a feature of the First Book that was not disturbed in the Second. But wherever else they found anything that seemed to look toward the continuance of the system familiarly known to us under the name of "the Confessional," they expunged it. Between the Exhortation and the Confession there is, in point of literary merit, a noticeable contrast, and it is scarcely to be believed that both formularies can have proceeded from ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... no confessional, No priest ordains it, yet they're forced to sit Amid deep ashes ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... At the confessional she told her wrongdoing and received absolution so far as it is in the power of God's mediators to absolve one, but to promise to live, uprightly forevermore did not satisfy her soul. She felt the need of further self-abnegation; ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... them really, for they had the souls and the conversation of girls. Christophe had his hour as her confessor. At once Colette would become serious and intense. She was like the young Frenchwoman, of whom Bodley speaks, who, at the confessional, "developed a calmly prepared essay, a model of clarity and order, in which everything that was to be said was properly arranged in distinct categories."—And after that she flung herself once more into the business of amusement. As the day went on she grew younger. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... "I am only two-and-twenty, and I must make up my mind to the drawbacks of my time of life. Besides, I am confessing my sins, and it would be impossible to kneel in a more charming confessional; you commit your sins in one drawing-room, and receive absolution ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... secular arm in support of pure Calvinism, is not represented at the universities. For all the Dutch divines know that the system cannot be revived without sacrificing the theological activity by which it has been extinguished. The old confessional writings have lost their authority; and the general synod of 1854 decided that, "as it is impossible to reconcile all opinions and wishes, even in the shortest confession, the Church tolerates divergence from the symbolical books." The only unity, says Groen, consists in this, that all the preachers ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... one did, David," acknowledged Miss Rhody. "Ef I hed been a Catholic I should a felt as ef the confessional hed been took from me. I ain't hed no one to talk secret like to excep' when Joe comes onct a year. He ain't been fer a couple of years, either, but he sent me anuther black dress the other day—silk, like the last one. To think of little Joe ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... than feelings and emotions which do not come to a normal expression. It is no chance that in countries of mixed Protestant and Catholic civilization, the number of suicides is larger in Protestant regions than in the Catholic ones where the confessional relieves the suppressed emotions of the masses. This is also the most destructive effect of social and legal injustice; emotions are strangulated and then begin to work mischief. The community should take care early that secret feelings are avoided, ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... then covered thick with roses, and is very beautiful and almost too fragrant. If some one had not suggested "bathing-house," as he looked at this floral door to matrimony, it would have been perfect. It also looks a little like a confessional. Perhaps a freer sweep is better for both bride and groom. There should not be a close atmosphere, or too many overfragrant flowers; for at a home wedding, however well the arrangements have been anticipated, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... celebrated—the vassals rose and retired. According to her custom, the Lady Imogene yet remained, and knelt before the tomb of her brother. A low whisper, occasionally sounding,-assured her that someone was at the confessional; and soon the palmer, who was now shrived, knelt at her side. 'Lothair!' muttered the lady, apparently at her prayers, 'beloved Lothair, thou ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... and hateful character of a party-government. With untiring jealousy he watched the secret opponents who still looked out for some movement from abroad, as a signal for fresh revolt: he kept diaries of their doings and conduct: it was said he availed himself of the confessional for this purpose: men whose names were from time to time solemnly cursed at S. Paul's on account of past treasons, so that they counted for open enemies, became useful to him as spies. If the decision lay between services received ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... the Government. Thus no man can be compelled to accuse himself, to answer any question that tends to render him infamous, or to produce his own private papers on any occasion. The communications of a client to his counsel and the admissions made at the confessional in the course of religious discipline are privileged communications. In the courts of that country from which we derive our great principles of individual liberty and the rules of evidence it is well settled—and the doctrine has been fully recognized ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... on. The early-rising customers were beginning to invade the galleries, the cashiers in their confessional-boxes were settling themselves in their seats, faultless shopwalkers were giving a final hitch to their lovely collars, and the rank-and-file were preparing to receive cavalry. The vast machine had started, ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... supremacy of the crowned Bluebeard, Henry VIII., for that of the Pope, in the English Church. It had little in common with the revolution of 1642. The field of its action was the closet of selfish intrigue,—the stalls of discontented prelates,—the chambers of the wanton and adulteress,—the confessional of a weak prince, whose mind, originally narrow, had been cramped closer still by the strait- jacket of religious bigotry and superstition. The age of nobility and heroism had well-nigh passed away. The pious fervor, the self-denial, and the strict morality ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... authentic English versification. Up to the Spring of 1914, I had never allowed a Spring to pass without reading Homer; and I feel that this familiarity had its influence both as to form and spirit; but I shall not take the space now to pursue this line of confessional. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... course they knew all that was so loudly urged about the abuses and mischiefs growing out of the professed severity of Rome. They knew that in spite of it foreign society was lax; that the discipline of the confessional was often exercised with a light rein. But if the good side of it was real, they easily accounted for the bad: the bad did not destroy, it was a tacit witness to the good. And they knew the Latin ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... indifferent in religious matters, rather than hypocritical, his conscience reproached him for going to absolve or condemn a fellow-creature when he inwardly felt how utterly unworthy he was himself of judging others at the tribunal of the confessional. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... fall into the strain of argument he was about to begin. A stray sheep, no matter how refractory, feels a touch of longing when it hears the shepherd's voice. M. Roussillon was a Catholic, but a straying one, who avoided the confessional and often forgot mass. Still, with all his reckless independence, and with all his outward show of large and breezy self-sufficiency, he was not altogether free from the hold that the church had laid upon him in childhood and youth. Moreover, he was fond of Father Beret and had done a great deal ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... occasion than their Protestant friends would have approved, Cowper to contemplate—so he assures us in one of his letters—the entering a French monastery, and Miss Bronte actually to kneel in the Confessional in a Brussels church. Further, let me remind you that there were moments in the lives of Charlotte Bronte and her sisters, when Cowper's poem, The Castaway, was their most soul-stirring reading. Then, again, Mary Unwin's only daughter ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... unlocked the door of a confessional with a click which sounded in the silence, and entered it; a woman followed, disappeared within the curtain of the same, emerging again in about five minutes, followed by the priest, who locked up his door with another loud click, like a tradesman full of business, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... For the cold, ascetical mind, a cell and a scourge, and a record kept of starving fancies as calling them ecstatic visions vouchsafed by some old Stylite to bless his favoured worshipper; for the painted demirep of fashionable life, there would be a pretty pocket-idol, and the snug confessional well tenanted by a not unsympathizing father; for the pure girl, blighted in her heart's first love, the papist would afford that seemingly merciful refuge, that calm and musical and gentle place, the irrevocable nunnery; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... had seemed less giving of testimony than a hysteric confessional. She had wrung her conscience dry, deriving from the act a sort of awful joy mitigated by the one regret: that she had not more to confess, that the mystery of her favouring must remain a mystery which, with ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... It was almost empty, but down the vista of the great columns hospitable lights gleamed, and here and there a man or a woman—more women than men—was kneeling in the great aisle, before a picture, at the side of a confessional, at the steps of the altar. How hushed and calm and sweet it was! She crept into a pew in a side aisle in the shelter of a pillar; and sat down. Presently, in the far apse, an organ began to play, its notes stealing softly out through the great spaces like a benediction. She fancied that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... any Protestant clergyman administer comfort to her? Could he? might he do so? He might listen, and quote texts; but he would demand the harsh rude English for everything; and the Countess's confessional thoughts were all innuendoish, aerial; too delicate to live in our shameless tongue. Confession by implication, and absolution; she could know this to be what she wished for, and yet not think it. She could see a haven of peace in that picture ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... He is handsome! [Confidentially.] If I tell you all this, it is only because you are a midwife, and a midwife in such affairs as this is like a priest in the confessional. But you, Madame Flache, you, who have been a dancer at the Opera, you must also have had, surely—little ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... no uncommon representation in the early period of art. "In the church of St. Peter the Younger, at Strasbourg, about the year 1515, there was a kind of large printed placard, with figures on each side of it, suspended near a confessional. On one side, was a naked Christ, removing the fire of purgatory with his cross, and sending all those, who came out of the fire, to the Pope—who was seated in his pontifical robes, having letters ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... principles, as far as the official practise of this new church-body will come into question. And yet, just this life, the ecclesiastical life and practise of the ministers and congregations, is the mirror in which the real confessional attitude may be seen. We [Iowa] owe much to the General Council, and will always remember this gratefully, but now our roads separate and we must part. American [?] Lutheranism [?], [tr. note: sic] which the General Synod has always stood for, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... of every mind in the whole household. My own dear mother taught me to read before I was seven years of age. As I was the only child, I was much petted and caressed, indeed, such was my mother's affection for me that I was seldom a moment out of her sight. There was a handsome mahogany confessional in our own chapel. When the priest wanted any member of the household to come to him to confession, he wrote the name on a slate that hung outside the chapel door, saying that he would hear confessions at such a time to-morrow. Thus, we would always have time for the full examination ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... San Trinita on the way back we collided with an Italian wagon and had to stop for repairs. A number of Italians gathered round, one of whom I discovered to be a priest, conscribed to serve with the Medical Corps. I bantered this man in a friendly way about secret drinking and the confessional and women and paradise, causing uproarious delight among the bystanders. And the priest took it all ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... had no scruples. He had a strong belief in necromancy, and had never heard that there was sin in its practice. He was still Romanist enough at heart to look upon the confessional as an easy and pleasant way of getting rid of the burden of an uneasy conscience. His mind was very open to conviction and impression in religious matters. He was no bigot, but he had a constitutionally inherited tendency towards the old faith that was ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... did perceive it, he set to work, with the inquisitorial sagacity which priests acquire by directing consciences and burrowing into the nothings of the confessional, to establish, as though it were a matter of religious controversy, the following proposition: "Admitting that Mademoiselle Gamard did not remember it was Madame de Listomere's evening, and that Marianne did think I was home, and did really forget to make my fire, it is impossible, ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... around the doors of his humble home. He was, as was so frequently the case in those times, the doctor and the scribe, as well as the spiritual adviser, of his entire flock; and he was so much trusted and esteemed that all men told him their affairs and asked advice, not in the confessional alone, but as one man speaking to another in whom he has ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... not difficult for one possessing the secrets of the confessional to learn the real character of any person in the neighborhood, and it was with a kind of bitter satisfaction which rather surprised himself that the father learned enough ill of the cavalier to justify his using every possible measure to prevent his forming any acquaintance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the cloud which now rests upon them were removed, and we have reason to think it is lifting, they would be as bright and sunny as their own skies. The women of the better classes wear the black mantilla when they venture into the streets, which they seldom do, except to attend mass or the confessional. This robe is extremely elegant, as it is worn, but it requires an adept to adjust it gracefully. It covers the whole person from head to foot; in parts drawn closely to the form, in others falling in free ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... them, let me implore you to disregard it; nothing can be binding, that is only to bind you to greater wickedness. I do not ask you to tell me any of their secrets or plans, though, God knows, what you tell me now would be as sacred as if I heard it in the confessional; but if you have such secrets, if you know their signs, whatever may be the consequence, at once ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... eulogy to confirm it. Father Fitzpatrick was there, tall, handsome, ruddy, the two wings of white showing at the temples making him look more than ever like a leading man. He had been of those who had sat in what he called Mrs. Brandeis's confessional, there in the quiet little store. The two had talked of things theological and things earthy. His wit, quick though it was, was no match for hers, but they both had a humor sense and a drama sense, and one day they ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... kiss me, and begged me to go up early in the morning to the yellow grotto, where you would wait for me. You told me further not to say a word about it to anybody; it should remain a secret between you and me, and I should not even mention it to the priest at the confessional. That was not honest of you, sir; nay, it was bad of you to try and persuade me to such mean things. It showed me that you cannot be a good man, and that your friendship for me is prompted ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... found my good intention and my aspirations in this important matter still more paralyzed by a dry, spiritless routine, when I was now to approach the confessional. I was indeed conscious of having many failings, but no great faults; and that very consciousness diminished them, since it directed me to the moral strength which lay within me, and which, with resolution and perseverance, was ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... should always mention himself last; unless his own superior dignity, or the confessional nature of the expression, warrant him in taking the precedence: as, "Thou or I must go."—"He then addressed his discourse to my father and me."—"Ellen and I will seek, apart, the refuge of some forest ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... little room, gave the key to one of the temple-servants, and said: "Perform his duty, watch the man, and if he escapes you will go after the geese to-morrow too. See, my friends, how many worshippers kneel there before our altars—go and fulfil your office. I will wait in the confessional to receive complaints, and to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Ste.-Genevieve at the same time was first turned into a hall of meeting for the electors, who distrusted each other so profoundly that when their first meeting was held, May 3, 1790, the documents relating to the elections were locked up in a confessional, lest they should be stolen, and then deliberately wrecked and looted by the 'friends of Liberty,' or, in other words, by a squad of ruffians from Chauny and the neighbourhood, who, after putting on the sacerdotal vestments, marched about the church carrying the dais, beat the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... was one morning shut up in his confessional, Constantia kneeling by him opened the state of her soul to him; and after having given him the history of a life full of innocence, she burst out into tears, and entered upon that part of her story in which he himself had so great a share. "My behaviour," ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... towards a separate department of study is shown by the ever-increasing space devoted to the discussion of general economic topics in general theological treatises, and more notably still in the manuals of casuistry for the use of the confessional, and handbooks of canon law for the use of ecclesiastical lawyers. It was shown even more distinctly by the appearance of a shoal of special treatises on such subjects as contracts, exchange, and ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... corner of the wall, Shadowy, silent, apart from all, With its awful portal open wide, And its latticed windows on either side, And its step well worn by the beaded knees Of one or two pious centuries, Stands the village confessional! Within it, as an honored guest, I will sit down ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... That's what I say. Egg-shells, forsooth!" The Baron was passing through the chapel, and he mechanically removed his helmet; but he did not catch sight of the glittering eye of Father Anselm himself, who had stepped quickly into the confessional, and there in the dark watched Sir Godfrey with a strange, mocking smile. When he had the chapel to himself again, the tall gray figure of the Abbot appeared in full view, and craftily moved across the place. If you had been close beside him, ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... font is very possibly anterior to the Conquest; it is a roughly hewn mass of Barnack stone. The low window in the S. wall of the chancel was opened out during some renovations, and is thought to have been connected with a confessional, as a coloured figure of the Virgin was discovered on the wall. The theory, however, may be dismissed as purely mythical. There is a brass to William Langley, a rector of the church (d. 1478); a low-relief ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... Luther nor any of the reformers were men of spiritual originality. Driven to construct a new creed, they simply worked over the old dogmas, divesting them of the keys of priestly power—the Mass, the confessional, absolution, Purgatory, and the like; and giving infallible authority to the Bible only. A war of creeds followed, mingled with a strife of ambitions and a struggle between the powers of the secular state and of the hierarchy. To men of piety and peace like ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... tired of the confessional. Fate saved me from playing the part Vane had assigned me in this vulgar comedy, dragged me from my entanglement, flung me on my feet again. She was a little brusque in the process; but I do not feel inclined to blame the kind lady for that. The mud was creeping upward ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Frederick William of Prussia equalled her in vice and in nothing else. Francis of Austria had the brain of a master of ceremonies; George III that of a model squire; Ferdinand of Naples was in his place in the kennel; Victor Amadeus of Sardinia, in the confessional. It is difficult to say to what place Charles IV of Spain and his consort can most fitly be assigned; for they could not live apart from Godoy; and with Godoy they would have been excluded from any residence ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... this solemn Pass But were an apt confessional for one Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, That Life is but a tale of morning grass Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, Rocks, rivers, and smooth ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... loss their brother had sustained through their wrong-doing, when they made it good. The only sin we are justified in confessing to our brother man is that we have committed against him. All else must be told in the ear of Jesus, that great High Priest, whose confessional is always open, and whose pure ear can receive our dark and sad stories without ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... cases, where actual names are affixed to the supposed quotations, it would be to little purpose to seek them in the works, of the authors referred to.—And now the reader may expect me, while in the confessional, to explain the motives why I have so long persisted in disclaiming the works of which I am now writing. To this it would be difficult to give any other reply, save that of Corporal Nym—It was the humour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... towards the sides, the former filled with a pierced slab now preserved in the presbytery. The triumphal arch is round, with early caps and impost mouldings; other early caps and columns are visible in the walls of the choir in hollows made to expose them. The theory is that there was a confessional behind the apse instead of below it, of which these fragments are the remains. Encrusted in the outer wall of the south aisle is an inscription which runs thus: "In the year 857, fifth indiction, under Ludovicus, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... with the Squire prospered. Leila had been a gay comrade, but not as yet so interested as to tempt him to discussion of the confusing politics of the day. "She has not as yet a seeking mind," said the rector, who in the confessional of the evening pipe saw more and more plainly that this was a divided house. The Squire could not talk politics with Ann, his wife. She held a changeless belief in regard to slavery, a conviction of its value to owner and owned too positive to be tempted into discussing ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... combatants retired unaccompanied to his own lodging—Alec with a black eye, which soon passed through yellow back to its own natural hue, and Beauchamp with a cut, the scar of which deepened the sneer on his upper lip, and was long his evil counsellor from the confessional of ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... reminiscently at the shifting clouds above the tree-tops, and with a tenderness about the lips that must have surprised and gratified the stubby, ill-used brier, inanimate confederate in many a lofty plot. He recalled all she had said to him in that sylvan confessional, and was content. His family? Pooh! He had a soul of his own. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the date of marriage, six well-educated clever girls out of ten keep a journal; not one well-educated man in ten thousand does. So, without serious and settled intention of becoming an author, how naturally a girl of ardent feeling and vivid fancy seeks in poetry or romance a confessional,—an outpouring of thought and sentiment, which are mysteries to herself till she has given them words, and which, frankly revealed on the page, she would not, perhaps could not, utter orally ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... scruples and traditions of men as fatally as another will by a life of debauchery. Some old and decayed ecclesiastical rubric; some absolutely indifferent form in public worship; some small casuistical question about a creed or a catechism; some too nice point of confessional interpretation; the mint and anise and cummin of such matters will fill and inflame and poison a man's mind and heart and conscience for months and for years, to the total destruction of all that for which churches and creeds exist; to the total suspense, if not the total ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... the indictment the blood that had watered Canaan for two hundred years was answer enough. As to the confessional, the accusation emanated from the Dominicans, who were jealous of the Templars confessing to priests of their own order. With respect to the mass, it appears that the habits of the Templars were similar to those of the Cistercian monks; who, till ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Opisthodomos or priests' room, behind the altar in the Temple of Jupiter. The whole temple was lit up, and the purpose of the improvements which had taken place could be seen. By the colonnade on the left hand was an ambo or pulpit, and under it a confessional; there were also a seven-branched candlestick, a baptismal font, a table with shewbread, and an incense-altar. These represented Julian's attempt to attach the new doctrine to the old, and to amalgamate heathenism, Christianity, and Judaism. Heliogabalus had indeed ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the church loses power. In my judgment, Ireland can never succeed until it ceases to be Catholic; and there can be no successful uprising while the confessional exists. At one time in New England the church had complete power. There was then no religious liberty. And so we might make a tour of the world, and find that superstition always has been, is, and forever will ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Evangelical doctrine, founded on the Apostles and Prophets, and set forth in our Symbolical Books, neither error, fault or anything wanting." If these words are not clear enough and strong enough to answer any charge of confessional disloyalty, it would be difficult to say how it ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... long dark locks, her eyes beaming with love and pleasure, a heavenly smile playing about her lips—ah, when she thus passed through the church, her feet scarcely touching the floor, then I, who awaited her in the confessional, felt myself nearly frantic with ecstasy, my brain turned, my eyes darkened, there was a buzzing in my ears, and I attempted to implore the aid and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... trotted to confessional, and related his case with all humility to the rector of the parish, who was a good old priest, capable of being up above, the slipper ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... when through greed and ambition they forsook the ancient wisdom, so do the priesthood of Rome, with their celibacy added to the abominations and opportunities of the confessional. ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck |
