"Confessional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Sir Kenneth, "I will speak the truth as in the confessional. In a subterranean chapel, to which the anchorite conducted me, I beheld a choir of ladies do homage to a relic of the highest sanctity; but as I saw not their faces, nor heard their voices, unless in the hymns which they chanted, I ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 crosses and the carved ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... and benignly ordered immortality, based in truth and adjudicated by the sole sovereignty of God, is no engine of oppression, though a doctrine of heaven and hell irresponsibly managed by an Orphic association, the guardians of a Delphic tripod, the owners of a secret confessional, or the interpreters of an exclusive creed, may be. In a matter of such grave importance, that searching and decisive discrimination, so rare when the passions get enlisted, is especially needed. Because a doctrine is abused by selfish tyrants is no reason for supposing the doctrine ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to the secrets of the confessional, had gone a step beyond what the rules of his order and of the church permitted. He was baffled by the Fleming's reply, and finding him unmoved by the charge of heresy, he could only answer, in some confusion, "You refuse, then, to admit me to the conference ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 love ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... Not less strong was the hostility of the monastic orders which is often expressed in Matthew Paris's free-spoken abuse of them. They were accused of terrorising dying men out of their possessions, of laxity in the confessional, of absolving their friends too easily, of overweening ambition and restless meddlesomeness. They were violent against heretics and enemies of the Church. They answered hate with hate. They despised the seculars as drones and the monks as lazy and corrupt. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... took pains to declare that any one who pleased might follow other theologians instead of St. Alfonso. After saying that no Priest was to be interfered with who followed St. Alfonso in the Confessional, it added, "This is said, however, without on that account judging that they are reprehended who follow opinions handed down by other ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... admissions and membership, whichever, according to the laws of the club, has the matter in hand. Usually it is the governing committee or board of governors. This communication is treated, as are all club matters, with the secrecy of the confessional. Your sponsors are written to and the objections stated, but the name of the person objecting is withheld. The other method is, if any one has an objection to your admission, that he should go at once in a manly way to one of your sponsors and state ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... impact of the world had stunned their spiritual natures, and as if this had occurred at the very time that a most dangerous experiment is being tried. The public gaieties formerly allowed in Catholic countries where young people were restrained by the confessional, are now permitted in cities where this restraint is altogether unknown to thousands of young people, and only faintly and traditionally operative upon thousands of others. The puritanical history of American cities assumes that these gaieties are ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... whom her husband beats, and the great lady whom her husband cheats, have both come to him. He has been sent for by the shop-keeper whom his wife deceives, and by the millionaire who has been blackmailed. To his office, as to a lay confessional, all passions fatally lead. In his presence the dirty linen of two millions of ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... Poutrincourt, the Jesuits meant divided authority; and the most lawless scoundrel that ever perpetrated crimes in the fur trade could win over the favor of the priests by a hypocritical semblance of contrition at the confessional. Contrition never yet undid a crime; and civil courts can take no ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... of art, her poem and her prayer, to repeat this story, low and precipitately, as if she were in the confessional. You felt that she came to it quite naturally, without transition, so completely did it possess ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... vanity growing lush as jimson, where yesterday, with strained prophetic vision, he saw budding excellence and worth, his soul is wrung by a worry that knows no peace. The matter is so poignantly personal that he dare not share it with another in confessional, and so he hugs his grief to his heart, and tries to ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... this cause I cannot say, but I certainly never felt so suddenly decided in my life from one course to its very opposite, as I now did to make l'aimable to my lovely companion. And here, I fear, I must acknowledge, in the honesty of these confessional details, that vanity had also its share in the decision. To be the admitted and preferred suitor of the prettiest woman in company, is generally a strong inducement to fall desperately in love with her, independently of other ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... 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 ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... you tried forcibly to embrace and 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 by ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... the general reading in the work-rooms. The periodicals I note in the order of their popularity, "Chambers's Journal," "Leisure Hour," "Good Words," "The Quiver," "Sunday Magazine," and "Sunday at Home." The reading of an article in the "Leisure Hour," entitled the "Thief in the Confessional," was the chief cause of the readings being discontinued both in the work-rooms and the hospital. As this happened recently and the particulars are still fresh in my memory I will narrate them here. There were readings aloud in four hospital and three work-rooms in the prison. In the hospital ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... interests of the Church, and to strengthen the authority of the Papacy. Its motto was Omnia ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (that is, All for the greater glory of God), and the means to be employed by it to accomplish these ends were the pulpit, the confessional, the mission, and the school. Of these the school was given the place of first importance. Realizing clearly that the real cause of the Reformation had been the ignorance, neglect, and vicious lives of so many ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... of other schools met on fixed days and that it would be well if his disciples did the same. He assented and ordered that when they met they should recite a formula called Patimokkha which is still in use. It is a confessional service, in which a list of offences is read out and the brethren are asked three times after each item "Are you pure in this matter?" Silence indicates a good conscience. Only if a monk has anything to confess does ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... 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 ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of Barty's imagination for the sole purpose of making the kind old cure laugh; and the kind old cure was just as fond of laughing as was Barty of playing the fool, in and out of season. I wonder if he always thought himself bound to respect the secrets of the confessional in Barty's case! ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... their foe. 70 Now, you must bring me food and drink, And also paper, pen and ink, And carry safe what I shall write To Padua, which you'll reach at night Before the duomo shuts; go in, And wait till Tenebrae begin; Walk to the third confessional, Between the pillar and the wall, And kneeling whisper, Whence comes peace? Say it a second time, then cease; 80 And if the voice inside returns, From Christ and Freedom; what concerns The cause of Peace?—for answer, slip My letter where you placed your lip; Then come back happy ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... Christian, like my brother the cure. Mademoiselle Pineau was accustomed to have visions, ecstasies. Sometimes the angels lifted her from the ground into the air when she was at her prayers. Francis did not like that. He was young, and she came very often to the confessional, and told him of these visions and ecstasies. He discouraged them, and enjoined penances upon her. Bref! she grew to detest him, and she was quite like a female cure in the parish. She set everybody against him. At last, when he removed all the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... indeed surprised, for I saw that he did not understand what he was doing. I could not help being amused at his awkwardness, but I had not yet seen the best part of the comedy. As soon as he had somehow or other finished his mass he went to the confessional, and after hearing in confession every member of the family he took it into his head to refuse absolution to the daughter of his hostess, a girl of twelve or thirteen, pretty and quite charming. He gave his refusal ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... rubber hose, and told the old man. He was mad and glad, at the same time; glad because he had found that his teeth where not to blame, and mad because the grocer had sold him boarding house macaroni. Then the girl came in and was put on the confessional, and told all, and presently there was a sound of revelry by night, in the wood shed, and the still, small voice was saying, "O, Pa, don't! you said you didn't care for innocent jokes. Oh!" And then the old man, between the strokes of the piece of clap-board would say, "Feed your father ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... to be extremely careful. The good bishop, however, returned to his work with all his characteristic energy, and on the very day after the doctor's warning attended three funerals outside Belfast. Later, in the afternoon of the same day, he was seized with illness in his confessional, from which he had to be carried in a dying state. The last sacraments were administered on the same spot, and he was afterwards removed with great difficulty to his residence. During the following days ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... Only three other persons knew anything of that—Caesar, who had his own 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 no pity, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... and stepping down from the censor's seat to share the mortification of the pillory, is at all times a peculiarly painful reverse; hence, powerful indeed must be the conviction which impels a man who prided himself on his legal astuteness, to come boldly into this sacred confessional of truth and justice and plead for absolution from a stupendous mistake. Two years ago, I became Gen'l Darrington's attorney, and when his tragic death occurred in October last, my professional relations, as well as life-long friendship, incited me to the prompt apprehension of the person ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... fideles; le chapelet, le celibat ecclesiastique, les retraites spirituelles, le culte des saints, les jeunes, les processions, les litanies, l'eau benite; voila autant de rapports que les Bouddhistes ont avec nous.' He might have added tonsure, relics, and the confessional.] ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... 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, Stephen, and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... "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 ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... 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 ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... on the manliness of Christ,—His truthfulness, His honor, His fearlessness, His tenderness. He insists that Christ had a particular affection for the young. Witness how He chose His Apostles, and how He attached them to His Sacred Person. And thus my curate's confessional is thronged every Saturday night by silent, humble, thoughtful young fellows, sitting there in the dark, for the two candles at the altar rails throw but a feeble light into the blackness; and Mrs. Darcy, under all ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... only one or two to go in before me I began to tremble. My heart beat dreadfully fast, and I got cramp in my stomach, which prevented me from breathing properly. When my turn came I got up and felt my legs trembling under me. My head buzzed, and my cheeks turned cold. I fell on my knees in the confessional and M. le Cure's voice, which sounded as though it came from a long way off, gave me confidence. But he always had to help me to remember my faults. If he hadn't, I should have forgotten half of them. At the end of confession ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... preferred straightforward, honest damnation to the soft self-deceptions of feminine religiosity. Ah! If she could have been a Roman Catholic, genuine and convinced—with what ardour would she have cast herself down before the confessional, and whispered her sinfulness to the mysterious face within; and with what ecstasy would she have received the absolution—that cleansing bath of the soul! Then—she could have recommenced!... But she was not a Roman Catholic. She could no more become ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... 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 a little ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... of public calamities, or for the cure of particular persons; and it was in the same spirit, that, being one day greatly busied in hearing the confessions of the faithful at Goa, he departed, abruptly in appearance, out of the confessional, and from thence out of the church also, transported with some inward motion, which he could not possibly resist: after he had made many turns about the town, without knowing whither he went, he happened upon a stranger, and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... 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 ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... you hold a receipt in M. Schmucke's hand which did not cost you much.—Ah! you are in the confessional, my lady! Don't deceive your confessor, especially when the confessor has the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the little door of his confessional, leaving the light burning in case someone else turned up; he slipped off ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... know how illusory this sanguine anticipation was destined to prove, and how promptly. In little more than forty years after the triumphant enforcement of the odious system of confessional certificates, then the crowning event of ecclesiastical supremacy, Paris saw the Feast of the Supreme Being, and the adoration of the Goddess of Reason. The Church had scarcely begun to dream before she was rudely and peremptorily awakened. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... took flight. Victurnien went soon afterwards, but not before others had guessed his ecstatic condition; his face wore the expression peculiar to happy men, something between an Inquisitor's calm discretion and the self-contained beatitude of a devotee, fresh from the confessional and absolution. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... me, a red cloud passed over my eyes, I felt my heart freezing, and I thought myself dying. Then I spoke and said: 'Count Leminof, thou canst kill me, but thou shalt not tear from me the secrets of the confessional.'" And at these words, the priest stooping, laid bare his right foot and showed Gilbert the bruised and withered flesh, and bones deformed by torture; then covering it again he recoiled, as if from a serpent in his path, and cried in a ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... thought by some by no means improbable,) they are the words of a sincere Christian penitent. Henry, as we have frequently been reminded in these Memoirs, seems to have made much progress in the knowledge of sacred things, and to have become familiarly acquainted with the Holy Scriptures; and his confessional prayer breathes the aspirations of one who had made the divine word his study. He earnestly implores "his most loving Father to have mercy upon him, not suffering the miserable creature of his hand to perish, but making him as one of ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... "Tell him we'd like to see him alone a while," he said to the girl who was holding the door ajar for him, and she showed him into the reception-room, which had been the Protestant confessional for many burdened souls before their time, coming, as they did, with the belief that they were bowed down with the only misery like theirs in the universe; for each one of us must suffer long to himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of wretchedness ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Smith said acidly, "This is neither a psychiatrist's consulting room, a confessional, nor a court of law. I suggest the witness be excused and her last hysterical remarks ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Hump Doane some things that Hump Doane wished very much to know, but he would go to the confessional under such oath of secrecy as could not recoil upon him. Then whoever triumphed, be it Bas, the white-caps, or the forces of law and order, he would have a protector on ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... natural and amiable, and such as to meet the needs of man as a religious and social creature. You know the conversation which reigns in thousands of middle-class families at this hour, about nunneries, teetotalism, the confessional, eternal punishment, ritualism, disestablishment. It goes wherever the class goes which is moulded on the Puritan type of life. In the long winter evenings of Toronto Mr. Goldwin Smith has had, probably, abundant experience of it. What is its enemy? The instinct of self-preservation ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 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 two celebrated but no longer wealthy families, who deemed the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... such diseases leave with which physicians 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 lewd ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... English novelists. Mary Thorne, Lily Dale, Lucy Roberts—I would almost add, Martha Dunstable—may not be heroines of romance, and are certainly not great creations. But they are pure, right-minded, delicate, brave women; and it does one good to be admitted to the sacred confessional of their hearts. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... detail, and as many of the more important are spoken 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 but you"; "A Lover's Quarrel"; ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... an ally. From the pulpit where he daily employs his eloquence to embellish what he regards as fables, from the altar whence he daily looks down with secret scorn on the prostrate dupes who believe that he can turn a drop of wine into blood, from the confessional where he daily studies with cold and scientific attention the morbid anatomy of guilty consciences, he brings to courts some talents which may move the envy of the more cunning and unscrupulous of lay courtiers; a rare skill in reading characters and in managing tempers, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eyebrow several inches higher than the other, shook her rusty crape-trimmed bonnet discouragingly, as she informed Saxham in a husky voice strongly flavoured with cloves that Father Julius 'ad been in the Confessional all the morning, it being the Eve of the Feast of the Ascension, and was quite wore out. If there was anything she could do, she inferred, with quite a third-hand air of clerical responsibility, she would be happy to oblige ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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 ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... many of the same kidney? I only ask for information, as I said to Peery Hacket's wife, the last day I held the Station in Peery's. There was just such another goose hanging before the fire; but, you must know, the cream of the joke was, that I had been after coming from the confessional, as hungry as a man could conveniently wish himself; and seeing the brown fat goose before the fire just as that is, why my teeth, Mave, began to get lachrymose. Upon my Priesthood it was such a goose as a priest's corpse might get up on its elbow to look at, and exclaim, 'avourneen machree, ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... you take holy orders, Gram?" Jimmie inquired. "How do you work the confessional? I wish I could make anybody give anything up to me, but I can't. Did you just go into that darkened chamber and say to the kid, 'Child of my adoption,—cough,' and she coughed, or are you the master of some subtler system of choking the ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... — N. disclosure; retection|; unveiling &c.v.; deterration[obs3], revealment, revelation; exposition, exposure; expose; whole truth; telltale &c (news) 532. acknowledgment, avowal; confession, confessional; shrift. bursting of a bubble; denouement. [person who discloses a secret] tattletale, snitch, fink, stool pigeon, canary. V. disclose, discover, dismask|; draw the veil, draw aside the veil, lift the veil, raise the veil, lift up the veil, remove the veil, tear aside the veil, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ought to be offered at the mercy-seat—the Brahmin woman, who, deceived by her priests, burns herself on the corpse of her husband to appease the wrath of her wooden gods; and the Roman Catholic woman, who, not less deceived by her priests, suffers a torture far more cruel and ignominious in the confessional-box to appease the wrath of ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... quoted in newspapers, and exposed freely to the gaze of the vulgar. But what could they do? Their own literary qualifications did not warrant them to enter the lists with these writers: they had forgot the way to preach, unless at Lent; they could work the confessional, but even it began to be silenced by the powerful artillery of the press. At an earlier stage they might have roused the peasantry, and marched upon the Constitution, whose life they knew was the death of their power; but it was too late in 1851. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... room, which closely resembled all other similar offices. There were seats all round the room, polished by frequent use. At the end was a sort of compartment shut in by a green baize curtain, jestingly termed "the Confessional" by the frequenters of the office. Between the windows was a tin plate, with the words, "All fees to be paid in advance," in large letters upon it. In one corner a gentleman was seated at a writing table, who, as he made entries in ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... consolation? Would 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 of the little brown box ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had surrendered unconditionally. They had evinced an equally disturbing tendency,—a willingness to be overborne. For had he not, indeed, overborne them? He could not help suspecting these other ladies of a craving for the luxury of the confessional. One thing was certain,—he had much less respect for them than for Eleanor Goodrich . . ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... reason, the confessor told her that his emotion was due to the avowal of a crime which he had just heard in the confessional. But Elizabeth shook her head: it was a trick, she said, to hide from her the sorrow which had fallen upon her. Her agony, instead of calming, became more violent; her tears ceased to flow, and were followed by hysterics. The ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... just going out of the chapel full of unquiet meditations, when passing by the confessional, a magdalen curiously painted which hung near it attracted his eyes: as he was admiring the piece, something fell from above and hit against his arm; he stooped to take it up, and found it a small ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Penwick was greatly frightened of my Lord Cedric; for she would go forth in the heart of the storm, fearing a longer stay would bring uneasiness to the castle; so I gave her protection, a guide and a promise to receive her in a few days for the confessional and some religious direction; and I feel sure she will visit me within ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... suborned were arrested,—a demoiselle, Jeanne de Divion; his clerk, Perrot de Sanis; his fille de chambre, Jeannette des Chaines, and Pierre Tesson, notary. All this made a tremendous sensation in Paris; a Jacobin, called as one of the witnesses, refused to reveal the secrets of the confessional; he was threatened with the rack by the Bishop of Paris; the doctors in theology assembled and decided that he must testify, in the interests of justice, which he did, and was accordingly confined in prison for the rest of his days. The demoiselle La Divion was burned alive on the ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... the Oriental spoke his voice had changed. It was gentle, and packed with sympathy. It was like a voice within the gate of a confessional. ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... fanaticism of this boy who was the minister of Heaven. He led her to the feet of Christ the Consoler, teaching her how the holy joys of religion could alleviate all her sorrows, and, as she knelt in the confessional she humbled herself and felt little and weak before this priest, who ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... being untrue; but it is in moments of surprise and absolute passion, when something happens to one's eye or one's tongue, that one feels is half mad, but when the beast of prey within one, which shrinks at nothing, is the stronger. Untrue in one's beautiful, poetic calm, one's confessional silence, at one's work, I ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... 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. John, only ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... for example, that Watteau's gay pictured visions were the projection—and confession—of his own disappointed dreams. The great advantage of art over ordinary expression, in this respect, is its universality. Art is the confessional of the race. The artist provides a medium through which all men can confess themselves and heal their souls. In making the artist's expression ours, we find an equal relief. Who does not feel a revival of some old or present despair of ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... facts he had observed and the necessity of care. But he did not dare publish it under his own name, nor did he even dare publish it in a Catholic town; he gave it to the world anonymously, and, in order to prevent any tracing of the work to him through the confessional, he secretly caused it to be published in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 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
... shall go out of it," I said. "You are one of those who cause Israel to sin. You bring the Confessional, for it is no better, into the house of a Prelate of the Protestant Church of England!" Would you believe that she had the assurance to answer me with a passage from the Prayer Book, which I have often felt certain must ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... to 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? ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... priest, in the monotonous, gentle voice which he had acquired by years of duty in the confessional, continued whispering in her ear. One evening in the past he had warned her; solitude, he had said, would be harmful to her welfare. No one could with impunity live outside the pale of life. She had imprisoned herself too closely, and the door had ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... can absolve us from it. Let us go, then, to Rome, before death overtakes us, and confess there our sin." So they started on their journey to Rome, and when they arrived there they entered the church where the Pope sat in the confessional. ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... authors suggest several little hints. One is, never to start reading the Hours unless there be ample time for finishing the Hour or Hours intended to be then and there read. The practice of squeezing the small Hours into scraps of time (e.g., in the intervals between hearing confessions in the confessional, at a session) is fatal to careful and pious reading. Another hint is, to read everything, every word (e.g., Pater Noster, Ave, Credo), and to repeat nothing from memory, because the printed words meeting the eyes and the ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... sits," Bob exclaimed, "the little Temple of Bacchus— overgrown with roses. It used to be my shrine and my confessional until I saw the light. Now that I've escaped from the bondage of sin, sickness, and error, I'm giving a triumphal feast upon ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... summed up in simply saying that he was a preacher. During thirty-four laborious and fruitful years he preached the doctrines of the Church; and this is the sole account to be given of him, except, indeed, that in the confessional he was, all that time, learning those secrets of the human heart which he used to such effect in composing his sermons. He had very suave and winning ways as confessor, though he enjoined great strictness as preacher. This led a witty woman of his time to say of him: "Father Bourdaloue ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... she said, in a decisive, emphatic voice, "as a clergyman, as well as my nephew's confidential friend. What I say to you must go no farther than ourselves. We have no confessional in our church, thank Heaven! but that which is confided to a clergyman, even to a curate, ought to be ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... differently in the matter, and I, holding this judgment in so much higher esteem than my own, gave way, bent my neck under the yokes and took my place in the confessional. There I was besieged by penitents, who scarcely allowed me any time ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... true position. Of 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 Church mainly from France, where ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... belief as necessarily beginning in harshness. I fancy the monks have won over the simple Indians here to a great extent by gentle methods. They protect them, and manage their affairs, and know all their secrets through the confessional, and amuse them with no end of feast-days, and gewgaws, and puerile ceremonies. The natives seem to have a great deal of our dear old French Canadian habitans about them, only in a more ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... the other day," I responded. "She had scarcely left the room before three people volunteered, sans rancune, to tell her story. She is a devout Catholic, and her husband contrived in some way to substitute a spy for the priest in the confessional. He acquired an infinite amount of information, but it didn't do him any good. She is so witty that every one invites her everywhere in spite of her reputation, and he is left to dine alone at the Meurice. Dull men simply are not tolerated ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... nothingness. These are struggles in which our strength oozes away without restraint, as blood from an inward wound. The sensibilities flow to waste and the result is a horrible weakening of the soul; an indescribable melancholy for which the confessional itself has no ears. Have I ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... 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 or evil, and whose forgiveness and compassion never fails ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... answer, he simply saluted and withdrew. But he paid no heed to the advice, and one day shortly afterward he again spoke to a priest of the unjust treatment of Corsica. The latter waited until the boy came to him at the confessional and then rebuked him on this subject. Bonaparte ran back through the church crying loud enough for all those present to hear him, "I didn't come in here to talk about Corsica, and that priest has no right to lecture me ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... emperor so heavy a blow on 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 ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... house, well insured, a year ago; if the widow has married secretly her chauffeur two months after her husband's sudden death from ptomaine poisoning; if the man who spoke last night was the preacher who declared all protestant churches will some day return to the confessional;—if such facts can be obtained, they will add greatly to the interest and the value of the story, and the reporter should make every effort to obtain them. Their interest lies, of course, either in the fact that they aid the public in identifying ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... son," said the invalid; "you are perhaps right; but I wish you to know that I had heretofore made my will, giving to you and Cousin Hetty a joint interest in my estate. You know the feeling which induced me to do so. I am in the confessional to-day, and may as well admit that I was hasty and perhaps unjust in so doing. In justice to Cousin Hetty I wish ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... 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 ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... moved, kissed his hand and withdrew, Rodolph retired to an oratory into which his apartments opened. He had been there engaged in prayer for more than an hour, when the Archbishop of Mayence appeared, and, after a brief adoration, entered the confessional. There, in the silent hour of midnight, the king knelt before the priest, in obedience to the voice of that God who bequeathed us a Church to administer the Sacraments which He appointed for our salvation, and through which we can only attain it. When Rodolph sat again in his chamber, his brow ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... spend three hours a day among skirts: they ought to have worn 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 ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... in case there was one there. The priest performed his office, but found no devil. He merely hurt Joan's feelings and offended her piety without need, for he had already confessed her before this, and should have known, if he knew anything, that devils cannot abide the confessional, but utter cries of anguish and the most profane and furious cursings whenever they are confronted with that ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the final proof of Constanze's devotion and her understanding of him, for, while there never was a breath of slander against herself, she found heart to forgive Mozart's ficklenesses. He actually made her the confessional of his excursions from the path of rectitude, and found forgiveness there! "He loved her dearly, and confided everything to her, even his little sins, and she requited him ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... venerable father confessor and Jesuit, Signor Silvio. By the way, I regard him as a man turned serpent, and would avoid exposing a shoeless heel to him. But one thing is certain, that he has the Emperor's ear not only in the confessional, but in the council chamber as well, and what he says is just as good as if the Emperor himself said it. For the rest, they affirm at the imperial court that he is a sorcerer, and can look through ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... my going over to politics, isn't it? Don't take it so tragically, my dear. The truth is, I suspect, Harriet worries about having deceived Molly and me, and the camp-meeting is probably to the Methodist what the confessional is to the Catholic. Both must ease one's ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... telling his beads in the corner of the cloister garden, sighed. Father Tomasso, who had brought him from his confessional in the great church to the bench where day after day he kept his sightless vigil over the pond of the goldfish, turned back at the sound, then, seeing the peace of Father Denfili's face, thought he must have fancied the sigh. For sadness came alien to the little ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... and Lucia conversed in the cottage of the former, M. Brianza, cure of Luserna, seated in the confessional, listened with horror and indignation to a tale of intended wholesale rapine, murder, and arson, which his penitent ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... entirely at peace with her world, and with heaven as well, that was certain. Whatever her sins, the confessional had purged her. Like others, doubtless, she had found a husband and the provinces excellent remedies for a damaged reputation. She lived now in the very odor of sanctity; the cure had a pipe in her kitchen, with something more sustaining, on certain bright afternoons. Although ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... last count of 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 ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... father, sent to HIS CARE, read by him first, of course; letters hoping that I was well, and obeying my father's commands; letters assuring me of his unaltered devotion; letters that, compared with the ones he used to hide in the confessional of the ruined mission church, were as ice to fire, were as that snow-flower you value so much, Mary, to this mariposa blossom I wear in my hair. And then to think that this man—this John Oakhurst, as I knew him; this man who used to ride twenty ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... but unluckily none with a star in it. Of course, if when on coming to the door he was unable to produce the necessary signs, he would be suspected and examined. He gained the shade of a pillar, which stood at the corner of a confessional, and stood there wondering what he should do. An assistant cried, "Is everyone out, the doors are about ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... one another to love and to good works.' Hence among Protestants the duty of Church Discipline is acknowledged, which deals with such sins or lapses from rectitude as constitute 'offences' or 'scandals,' and tend to bring into disrepute the Christian name and profession. In the Roman Church, the Confessional, through which moral error is avowed, with its system of penances, has in view the same object—viz., to reprove, correct, and reclaim {238} those who have lapsed into sin—thus seeking to fulfil Christ's ideal ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... shape of a 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, and his desire ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... can be extraordinarily nettling in conversation, as I have suggested, is evidently of a very soothing character in the confessional—if that is the proper term. He has a remarkable following among women, and it is said that "if he put a brass plate on his door and charged five guineas a time" he might be one of the richest mind-doctors in London. He himself ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... 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 women believe and do this and that. The novel is not a new sort of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... blindfold. The adventure of Mademoiselle de la Mothe-Houdancour seemed to her just what it actually was,—a subterfuge; as she surmised, it could only be La Valliere. Having discovered the name of her confessor, the Queen herself went in disguise to the Theatin Church, flung herself into the confessional where this man officiated, and promised him the sum of thirty thousand francs for their new church if he would help her ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Pope on his own {183} ground, meeting his rapier-like dexterity of neatness with heavy sword-strokes of sincerity and strength. But here, as in the prose, the true Johnsonian excellence is best seen when he is in the confessional. ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... sacrament for the reason that the inward assurance of GOD'S pardon is in this connexion outwardly mediated by words of Absolution audibly pronounced. In medieval times there grew up a regular system of the confessional and an elaborate science of the guidance and direction of souls. Recourse to sacramental confession was made obligatory for all Christians at least once in the year. [Footnote: This is still the formal rule of the Church of Rome.] The system came to be attended by many superstitions and abuses, ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... crossed herself in the correct fashion. And afterwards, with hushed footsteps, she made her way to the chapel of Saint Agnes, where two kneeling women with their faces buried in their hands were waiting, whilst the blue skirts of a third protruded from the confessional. Lisa seemed rather put out by the sight of these women, and, addressing a verger who happened to pass along, wearing a black skullcap and dragging his feet over the slabs, she inquired: "Is this Monsieur l'Abbe ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... 337.—It is easy to discern in every part of the odious scheme of the Inquisition the contrivance of the monks, a class of men, cut off by their profession from the usual sympathies of social life, and who, accustomed to the tyranny of the confessional, aimed at establishing the same jurisdiction over thoughts, which secular tribunals have wisely confined to actions. Time, instead of softening, gave increased harshness to the features of the new system. The most humane ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... have a superior claim on your clemency," said the fisherman; "for I am sorry and humiliate my soul to the lowest depths of the confessional." ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... 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 with such ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... at a remote confessional of the church he declared an unholy and forbidden passion to a young and beautiful married lady, whom he had long 'followed with his eyes,' and begged permission to visit her at her residence. Struck ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... countries have had no reason to complain; but in the new conditions of mixed races and creeds which confront those States, and in face of the symptoms already apparent of an accentuation of the long-standing inter-confessional bitterness and strife, they prefer not to relinquish the international obligations by which the rights of their co-religionists have hitherto been secured. In this view they find themselves supported not only by all the Jewish communities of the Balkans, but also by all ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... Bible, encourages ignorance, superstition and bigotry. It also tends to break down the sanctity of the Sabbath as the Lord's day; winks at the liquor traffic, and by its confessional strikes at the very foundation of free manhood, freedom of thought and ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... consciences 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
... dans cette glise, Auprs d'un confessional, Le prtre, qui veut faire croire Lise, Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;— Pour prouver la mignonne Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux, N'a jamais damn personne Petits ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... was rather long, and somewhat narrow. At the far end there was a small altar and a prie dieu. A candle was burning and its light defined the ivory crucifix above. In the corner a curtained something that might be a confessional. Indeed, not a few startling confessions had been breathed there. An escritoire with some shelves above, curiously carved, that bespoke its journey across the sea, took a great wall space and seemed almost to divide the room. The window in the front end was quite wide, and the shutters ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... garb set off the seeming haggardness of his keen features so effectively that I thought him either broken down in health or just recovering from some protracted illness. The unspoken words on my lips were, "Why, Professor Cayley, what has happened to you?" Being now in the confessional, I must own that I did not, at the moment, recognize the marked intellectuality of a very striking face. As a representation of a mathematician in the throes of thought, I know nothing to equal his portrait ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... These are here still,—how long, O ye heavens, in the country of Dante? These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you see them,— Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu, Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,— Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,— Here, overcrusting with slime, perverting, defacing, debasing, Michael Angelo's Dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven, Raphael's Joys and Graces, and ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... best among the priests are the Jesuits, who returned from repeated banishment with the Austrians in this century. Their influence is very extended, and the confessional is their forte. Venetians say that with the old and the old-fashioned these crafty priests suggest remorse and impose penances; that with the young men and the latter-day thinkers they are men of the world, and pass off pleasant sins as trifles. All ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the church 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 ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... depression both these great Protestant writers went further on 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, ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... action. His conscience provides him, in this difficulty, with the best means of self-advertisement he has yet found. He has consulted several Bishops, the Lord Chief Justice, all the ambassadors, and most of the intelligent Peers. He wanders from one confessional to another: St. Philip, St. Teresa, St. Benedict, and St. Dominic are invoked perpetually for the disarmament of his scruples. Vanity blinds him to the danger of assassination. Alberia is in a red mood. Carissime, the dark, inevitable ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... confess at a convent. Why not imagine me a venerable father, dozing after a good dinner, and make your first essay at the confessional?" ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... drank I longed, but did not dare, to say, "Are you afraid of ... that?" I thought if one could say the word it might break down that dumb fright, draw the flesh up again over those bulging eyes, give him a sort of anchor, a confessional, even if it was only me. But I didn't dare. Gayner is one of those men so pent up, so rigid with some inner indignation, one cannot ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... with an altered visage; "follow me to my oratory within: my heart is heavy, and I would fain seek the solace of the confessional." ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Also in Article IX., "of baptism they teach that it is necessary to salvation, and that by baptism the Grace of God is offered, and that children are to be baptized, who by baptism being offered to God, are received into God's favor." And so with all our other confessional writings. ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... 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 dioceses, or ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... 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 the mirror. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... priest—auricular confession—being at that time formally established. This, so far as domestic life was concerned, gave omnipresence and omniscience to the Inquisition. Not a man was safe. In the hands of the priest, who, at the confessional, could extract or extort from them their most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants were turned into spies. Summoned before the dread tribunal, he was simply informed that he lay under strong suspicions of heresy. No accuser was named; but the thumb-screw, the stretching-rope, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... saved Ringwood to her father; how he had won Alan's supposed price of redemption for Mortimer; how he had stood sturdy and true to the girl of much faith and all gentleness. And the room became a crypt of confessional when she, in penitence, told of her ride on the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... candid men whose eyes have not been blinded by the dust of Popery and Democracy, can a Bishop or Priest, a Jesuit or Catholic, with these oaths upon their souls, be true American citizens? Not without the guilt of perjury, as black as the altar of a Roman Confessional! And if guilty of such perjury, the penitentiary should be their canonical residence for life! Strange to say, however, the Chief Justice of the United States, Roger B. Taney, is a Roman Catholic! Gen. Pierce's Postmaster-General, James ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... been nothing to him. But now,—now that the matter had been put before him in this way, might it not become him, as a gentleman, to fall in love with so very beautiful a woman, whose name had already been linked with his own? We all know that story of the priest, who, by his question in the confessional, taught the ostler to grease the horses' teeth. "I never did yet," said the ostler, "but I'll have a try at it." In this case, the duke had acted the part of the priest, and Mr Palliser, before the night was over, had almost become as ready a pupil as the ostler. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the sheets and tablecloths of the establishment to fix up a confessional room, and we had to wait till noon for the blessing at breakfast; but worse than all that, my commadres, who used to embrace me with such affection, went away with their reybosas over their heads without ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... two sides, Mademoiselle. On the one is the confessional: you must go—you shall not choose. You kneel; you speak out all—every thought in your heart, every secret of your dearest friend. You may not hide one little thought. The priest hears you hesitate? The questions come:—Mademoiselle, terrible questions, questions I could not ask, nor you understand. ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... act, they had notified the minister of Santa Cruz of another (that place being a mission of the Society), in order that he should not instruct certain Indians, a right which the preceding prelate had given to the Society. [64] It was rumored that the archbishop was trying to deprive them of the confessional. Daily new troubles were feared, and the fathers of the Society were compelled to appoint a judge-conservator; and one was in fact appointed on the second of November, 1635. This was Don Fabian de Santillan y Cavilanes, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... S. aisle marks the site of what was formerly the lady-chapel. The 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 medallion ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... no choice between the peasant-woman toiling in the ploughed fields, and growing black with the scorch of the sun, and bowed and aged with the burdens she bears, and the ladies who live between the alcove and the confessional, only going forth from their chambers by night as fireflies glisten, and living on secret love and daily gossip. What can these do in their gaunt, dull villas—they who detest the sough of the wind and the sight of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... distinctly evangelical boots, though, in the absence of her husband, she had expressed her willingness to discuss the advantages of the confessional. She had, however, declined, in the presence of her husband, to entertain the dogma of infallibility: though she admitted that the cardinals were showy; she would have liked one about her house, say, as a footman. She thought there was a great deal in Buddhism ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... look like a man in miniature. Such had been the style pronounced by the village tailor to be in the height of Parisian fashion, but being a novelty to the London "gamins," it attracted more notice from them than we could have wished. After Signora Mortera and her children had attended the confessional she seemed to be much easier in her mind, and was so amiable as to tell my mother on our return home that it was edifying to behold the signorina walking like a Roman matron, in contrast to those who were giggling and turning their heads ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... 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, the spiritual ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... dead! To uncover, even to their own eyes only, the fact that lay hidden behind those words was like personating the priest and listening at the grating of the confessional! ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... frailties by the restraints of his situation. No man out of a cloister ever wrote about love, for example, so coldly and at the same time so grossly. His descriptions of it are just what we should hear from a recluse who knew the passion only from the details of the confessional. Almost all his heroes make love either like Seraphim or like cattle. He seems to have no notion of any thing between the Platonic passion of the Glendoveer who gazes with rapture on his mistress's leprosy, and the brutal ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and Death are themes of Petrarch's Triumphs. The same profound sense of the transiency of things, which meets us in the studied pages of his confessional—the Latin treatise De Contemptu Mundi—pervades these exquisite poems. Du Bellay's Antiquities, which Spenser's translation under the title of The Ruines of Rome has made familiar, were written after a visit to Rome in attendance upon the Cardinal du Bellay, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... which belongs alike to the man of the world as to the doctor before whom all veils and pretenses are discarded. It is difficult, indeed, to banish the idea that the consultation-room of Arthur Schnitzler, Dr. med., is the confessional which furnishes material to Arthur Schnitzler, author. For the modern physician is not concerned with his patient's body only, but also with his soul. He must be a psychologist as well, and the success of his diagnosis depends upon his skill to unravel the intricate interrelations between both. That ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... won; For sought by numbers, given to none, Had young Francesca's hand remained Still by the Church's bonds unchained: And when the Adriatic bore Lanciotto to the Paynim shore, Her wonted smiles were seen to fail, 200 And pensive waxed the maid and pale; More constant at confessional, More rare at masque and festival; Or seen at such, with downcast eyes, Which conquered hearts they ceased to prize: With listless look she seems to gaze: With humbler care her form arrays; Her voice less lively in the song; Her step, though light, less fleet among The pairs, on whom the Morning's ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron |
