INDULGENCE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Indulgence

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/ɪndˈəldʒəns/ Listen

noun

Indulgence n.

The act of indulging or humoring; the quality of being indulgent; forbearance of restrain or control. "If I were a judge, that word indulgence should never issue from my lips." "They err, that through indulgence to others, or fondness to any sin in themselves, substitute for repentance anything less."

An indulgent act; favor granted; gratification. "If all these gracious indulgences are without any effect on us, we must perish in our own folly."

(R. C. Ch.) Remission of the temporal punishment due to sins, after the guilt of sin has been remitted by sincere repentance; absolution from the censures and public penances of the church. It is a payment of the debt of justice to God by the application of the merits of Christ and his saints to the contrite soul through the church. It is therefore believed to diminish or destroy for sins the punishment of purgatory.

verb

Indulgence v. t. To grant an indulgence to.

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Etymology of 'Indulgence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Indulgence" Quotes from Famous Books

... could not suspect them of an attempt so audacious as to storm a strong and defensible prison; and, despising the advice by which he might have been saved, he spent the afternoon of the eventful day in giving an entertainment to some friends who visited him in jail, several of whom, by the indulgence of the Captain of the Tolbooth, with whom he had an old intimacy, arising from their official connection, were even permitted to remain to supper with him, though contrary to the rules of ...

— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... awaits it in dignified submission. In fine contrast to him stands the man who has likewise sought the solitude of the wilderness, not because he loves the beauty and the majesty of primeval nature, but because he hates the restraints that human society has thrown about the indulgence of human passions. Criticism has rarely done justice to the skill and power with which Cooper has drawn the squatter of the prairies, who holds that land should be as free as air; who has traveled hundreds of miles beyond the Mississippi to reach a place where title-deeds are ...

— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... arrived at that stage of economic prosperity which would enable all alike to enjoy the luxuries equally," replied the girl, "indulgence in them would have been merely a question of taste. But this waste of wealth by the rich in the presence of a vast population suffering lack of the bare necessaries of life was an illustration of inhumanity that would seem incredible on the part of civilized ...

— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... the fifth class; he had lost his parents in early childhood, and so had been left at the tenderest age without guidance and good, benevolent influences. He was nervous, excitable, had no firm ground under his feet, and, above all, he had been unlucky. Even if he were guilty, anyway he deserved indulgence and the sympathy of all compassionate souls. He ought, of course, to be punished, but he was punished as it was by his conscience and the agonies he was enduring now while awaiting the sentence of his relations. The comparison with the army made by ...

— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the sacred duties of the pastoral office, Mr Skinner appears to have checked the indulgence of his rhyming propensities. His subsequent poetical productions, which include the whole of his popular songs, were written to please his friends, or gratify the members of his family, and without the most distant view ...

— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

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