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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Confession

  • Confess yourself to heaven;
  • Repent what’s past; avoid what is to come.
  • Shakespeare.

    Why does no man confess his vices? Because he is yet in them; it is for a waking man to tell his dream.

    Seneca.

    A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday.

    Pope.

    If thou wouldst be justified, acknowledge thy injustice; he that confesses his sin begins his journey toward salvation; he that is sorry for it mends his pace; he that forsakes it is at his journey’s end.

    Quarles.

  • Come, now again thy woes impart,
  • Tell all thy sorrows, all thy sin;
  • We cannot heal the throbbing heart,
  • Till we discern the wounds within.
  • Crabbe.

    Unless we realize our sins enough to call them by name, it is hardly worth while to say anything about them at all. When we pray for forgiveness, let us say, “my temper,” or “untruthfulness,” or “pride,” “my selfishness, my cowardice, indolence, jealousy, revenge, impurity.” To recognize our sins, we must look them in the face and call them by their right names, however hard. Honesty in confession calls for definiteness in confession.

    Maltbie Babcock.