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Penitence   Listen
noun
Penitence  n.  The quality or condition of being penitent; the disposition of a penitent; sorrow for sins or faults; repentance; contrition. "Penitence of his old guilt." "Death is deferred, and penitenance has room To mitigate, if not reverse, the doom."
Synonyms: Repentance; contrition; compunction.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Penitence" Quotes from Famous Books



... like damaged goods, and go the circuit of my father's acquaintance, cap in hand, and begging to sweep offices! No, by Napoleon! I would die at my chosen trade; and the two who had that day flouted me should live to envy my success, or to weep tears of unavailing penitence ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... inquired of him what he had to say touching their punishment in riding the asses in the plaza, which grievously wounded their feelings. "As to the asses, gentlemen," replied Ruler Potter, "they, I take it, are emblematic of penitence, which I am sure your reverences ought not be ashamed of, since if my memory serves me right, (and it is good enough to trust on such matter,) I have read somewhere in Scripture that the apostles rode asses, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... not say more about what are called 'religious duties,' and 'acts of worship,' 'mortification,' 'penitence,' and 'good works.' Others wonder no less why it says nothing about what are called 'Christian frames and feelings,' ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley

... things, I took courage to look at Mr. Winthrop. He sat facing Mrs. Le Grande, but with face as unruffled as if he were reading his morning paper. I glanced next at Mrs. Le Grande. She sat with downcast eyes, her color varying fitfully. She might have been taken for some beautiful picture of penitence. I do not know if Mr. Winthrop vouchsafed her a single look, but from her expression I judged that she thought he was watching her closely. It was a relief when the service was ended, although my conscience painfully reminded me that I would ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... forth in very truth, would have been far nearer real penitence than all the "acts of contrition" which passed her lips ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... but his penitence touched me with compassion. Softly I pressed the hand, in token of a relenting heart. How could I be hard on a man who meant no real ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... essential to the salvation of men. If the Lord's Supper were essential the Army would have it; but the Army had proved that no other power was necessary to the working of miracles in the souls of men beyond the direct mercy of God acting on the centre of true penitence. He was the uncompromising protagonist of conversion, and his father came ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... she preached concerning the Eucharist that in swallowing the consecrated wafer they had swallowed a poison as venomous as the head of the basilisk, that they had bent the knee to Baal, and that no penitence on their part could be great enough to save them. These doctrines inspired such profound terror that the Rev. Father Louvreloeil himself tells us that Satan by his efforts succeeded in nearly emptying the churches, and that at the ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... a matter of fact holds the first place among the small Correggios. There are two kinds of Magdalens in art: I. the Repentant, emaciated, growing ugly, disfigured by tears and penitence at the end of her life, with a skull in her hand or before her eyes, not having had even—like the one sculptured in the Cathedral of Rouen—"for three times ten winters any other vesture than her long ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... here. There is no merit and no salvation in the publican's conviction and confession; although he confesses his sin, he is still a sinner. His own tears are not the fountain in which his guilt can be washed away. If there were no Saviour, his penitence would do him no good; if Christ had not come to save the lost, the lost, though alarmed, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... whose profession was Theology. He may have been a man whose practice was not suitable to his principles, so that his character might injure the effect of his book, which he had written in a season of penitence. Or he may have been a man of rigid self-denial, so that he would have no reward for his pious labours while in this world, but refer it all ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... group vying with the other in providing interest and amusement for the weary, restless, fevered girl. Often, at the first, the old impatience would break out, mostly in her talk with Charrington, at rare times to her hostess, too, but at such times followed by quick penitence. ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... jerkily, rose headachy, and set out for the Convalescent Hospital in that stage of penitence that immediately precedes hysterical breakdown. She experienced a crisis of the nerves upon meeting a man, who, regardless of quite a brisk bombardment that happened to be going on just then, was walking along ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... of the ministry. He kept himself somewhat in the background, as tho' from humility. The duc de Choiseul came up to him, and said, with a smile, "Monseigneur, what brings you in contact with a heretic?" "To watch for the moment of penitence." "But what will you do if it become necessary to teach him his ?" M. de Jarente understood the joke, and was the first to jest upon his own unepiscopal conduct, replying to the duc de Choiseul, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... and carefully supply her plate — the ham and the eggs and the bread and the butter, — and then Winnie jumped up and came to his arms to cry; the other turn of feeling had come again. He let it have its way, till she had wept out her penitence and kissed her acknowledgment of it, and then she went back to her seat and her plate and betook herself to her breakfast. Before much was done with it, however, Mrs. Nettley and Mr. Inchbald came to the door; and being let in, overwhelmed them with kind reproaches ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... me how horrified Meg and Eleanor and Nan are, and of course Rose and Donna have not pretended to hide their disapproval, even during their consolation visits to me as an invalid. But you will forgive me, won't you, Betty?" Polly ended with more penitence than she had yet shown to any one ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook

... sunset that day; yet he repented and believed in the crucified Saviour, who was able to pardon him. Christ is still waiting to forgive; He is stretching out His arms to receive you. Only look at Him with the same penitence and faith ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... enough, and once or twice got cheated in a way that did no great credit to her sagacity. A little Frenchwoman would have sailed around her easily; and as it was, shrewish though she was in her speech when provoked, her husband not only deceived but chastised her, and reduced her to penitence and obedience as no little woman would have suffered ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... the serious verses of Bret Harte, the lines on San Francisco,—wherein the city is pictured as a penitent Magdalen, cowled in the grey of the Franciscans, —the soft pale grey of the sea fog. The literary value of the figure is hardly injured by the cold fog that the penitence of this particular Magdalen has never been of an enduring quality. It is to be noted that what Harte speaks of is not the beauty of the fog, ...
— The Sea Fogs • Robert Louis Stevenson

... neither time nor change can break. The darkest villainies which have disgraced humanity cannot neutralize it. Gray-haired and demon guilt will make his dismal cell the sacred urn of tears wept over the memories of home; and these will soften and melt into penitence ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... bidding, and praying with him in the best way for the ceasing of this new trouble, as in time of pestilence once I remembered that he made litanies for us. And Humbert himself knelt before the altar during that psalm, fully vested, but as in times of fast and penitence. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... and wept, and was for an hour in this state, in all the indecision and imbecility of a child. At last, she wrote a few scarcely legible lines to Crawley, forbidding him to see or think of her more. I despatched the note, and she was full of penitence, and gratitude, and tears. The next morning, when I wakened, I in my turn received a note ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... offence, she had wept so much over the sorrows of Jane Eyre that even Aunt Matilda was affected when she brought up the bread and milk for the captive's supper. Rosemary had hidden the book under the mattress at the first sound of approaching footsteps, but Aunt Matilda, by describing the tears of penitence to the stern authority below, obtained permission for Rosemary to come down-stairs, eat her bread and milk at the table, and, afterward, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... beautiful, no doubt, after the Bishop's holy words, after so many years of repentance and abnegation, in the midst of a penitence admirably begun, if this man had not flinched for an instant, even in the presence of so terrible a conjecture, but had continued to walk with the same step towards this yawning precipice, at the bottom of which lay heaven; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... only way to get into this road—the way of righteousness—is by taking the same attitude. No man can enter unless—like that German Emperor whom a Pope kept standing in the snow for three days outside the gate of Canossa—he is stripped of everything, down to the hair-shirt of penitence. And that is not easy. Naaman wanted to be healed as a great man in the court of Damascus. He had to strip himself of his offices, and dignities, and pride, and to come down to the level of any other leper. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... of the Saracen exile tells the story of penitence and shame; and to the last moment of his sad life he sighs in the sultry desert for the fair home of his ancestors, the gorgeous Alhambra. We, too, are descended from a race of conquerors, who crossed the ocean to establish the glory of ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... her close to him, kissing and comforting her, while his own eyes were wet. What her emotion meant, or his own, he could not have told clearly; but it was a moment for both of healing, of impulsive return, the one to the other, unspoken penitence on her side, a hidden self-blame on his. She clung to him fiercely, courting the pressure of his arms, the warm contact of his youth; while, in his inner mind, he renounced with energy the temptress Chloe and all her works, vowing to himself that ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the altar." His piety, however, appears to have been but short-lived. A few years only elapsed before the same nobleman was guilty of flagrant sacrilege in the very abbey that he had sworn to protect. His crime and his penitence are together recorded in an instrument printed ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... all else is the consciousness of his utter helplessness. Succor or sympathy there is none. Penitence for embarking avails not. The final satisfaction of despairing may not be his with a relish. Vain the idea of idling out the calm. He may sleep if he can, or purposely delude himself into a crazy fancy, that he is merely at leisure. All this he may compass; but he may ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... to his eyes as he murmured the name of the girl who had sailed so blithely from New York with his love as her only haven. He called himself the basest of wretches, the most graceless of lovers. He sobbed aloud at last in his penitence, and his heart went back to the night of the wreck. His love went down to the bottom of the sea, craving a single chance to redeem itself before the one it had wounded and humiliated. Before he fell asleep his conscience ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... fear and loneliness and penitence was piercing her. His voice: poor Franklin's voice. What had she done to him? What had they all done to him among them? And dimly, like the memory of a dream, yet sharply, too, as such memory may be sharp, there drifted for Althea the formless fear that hovered—formless yet urgent—when ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... to combat the disorder in men's minds they are addressing despairing appeals to those moral forces of the Church for which they formerly professed so much disdain. They talk to us of the bankruptcy of science, go back in penitence to Rome, and remind us of the teachings of revealed truth. These new converts forget that it is too late. Had they been really touched by grace, a like operation could not have the same influence on minds less concerned with the preoccupations which beset these recent adherents ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... which would be very agreeable, but if you keep your purpose of being here in the beginning of June I hope you will calculate on dining here on Sunday 2d at five o'clock. I will get Sharpe to meet you who knows more about L'd Fountainhall than any one.—I am with great penitence, dear Sir Thomas, your very faithful ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... when she was left alone with the teacher for her grammar lesson she had nearly recovered her equanimity, which was more than Miss Dearborn had. The last clattering foot had echoed through the hall, Seesaw's backward glance of penitence had been met and answered defiantly by one ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... starting in his own eyes, Sergius doubted not the effect of the reproof upon the son; and he pitied him, and even regretted remaining to witness the outburst of penitence and grief he imagined forthcoming. The object of his sympathy took down the hand, kissed it in a matter-of-fact way, arose, and said, carelessly: "This lamentation should cease. Why can I not get you to understand, father, that there is a new Byzantium? That even ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... open shame, he added, "I'm fearful it's yet owre soon to hope for her amendment: she'll hae to fin the evil upshot of her ungodly courses, I doubt, before she'll be wrought into a frame of sincere penitence." ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... to which you allude," she said, "are the condition of the lives of the high in rank upon earth, to whom Heaven has imparted mind. When those evils become too heavy to be borne, Heaven lightens their burden by penitence and confession. There we lay down our burden, and the secrets which oppress us. But, forget not, that the same gracious Heaven, in its mercy, apportions to their trials the strength of the feeble creatures of its hand; and my strength ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... Cruzalaegui. [Murillo Velarde says (fol. 344) that they were plotting to put Zalaeta in the governor's place.] The wife of Bolivar "died at Orion, impenitent, unwilling to confess; when her husband heard of this, he performed condign penitence for his sins, and publicly professed his detestation of his transgressions, and thus he gained absolution from the censures—but, returning from his exile, he died on the way." Calderon "also died very suddenly, although at the hour of death he acknowledged his errors, and, to secure ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... eighteenth century depicted by a man, who to-day sat with cardinals and saluted crowned heads, and to morrow lurked in dens of profligacy and crime; a book of confessions penned without reticence and without penitence; a record of forty years of "occult" charlatanism; a collection of tales of successful imposture, of 'bonnes fortunes', of marvellous escapes, of transcendent audacity, told with the humour of Smollett and the delicate wit ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova • David Widger

... saying, it was a little something for him to drink. About three months after this, the author saw this poor Gipsy in his tent, in the last stage of a consumption; but he was without any marks of true penitence. Surely the way of wickedness ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb

... smoking, replies, "If I had, I shouldn't trouble them. I have been trouble enough to my belongings in my day. It MAY be a very good sort of penitence in a vagabond, who has wasted the best time of his life, to go back then to decent people that he never was a credit to and live upon them, but it's not my sort. The best kind of amends then for having gone away is to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... into Tartarus, whence they never come forth. But those who appear to have been guilty of curable, yet great offences, such as those who through anger have committed any violence against father or mother, and have lived the remainder of their life in a state of penitence, or they who have become homicides in a similar manner, these must fall into Tartarus, but after they have fallen, and have been there for a year, the wave casts them forth, the homicides into Cocytus, but the parricides and matricides into Pyriphlegethon; but when, being borne ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... the whole proceedings, and made a public statement of his errors. His diary contains many passages showing deep contrition, and ever afterward, to the end of his life, he was wont, on one day in the year, to enter into solitude, and there remain all the day long in fasting, prayer, and penitence. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... eyes looked odd in their expression of mingled fun and sadness; he was trying to feel sorry and ashamed, as he knew he ought, but penitence was so very difficult to him. 'Dear little mother, don't fret; I'll do better for the future,' ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford

... 1660, for the part he now took, Tichborne pleaded that what he had done was through ignorance, and that had he known more he would sooner have entered a "red hot oven" than the room in which the warrant was signed.(930) His penitence saved his life, and he, like Pennington, spent the remainder of his days ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... expressed great penitence for his vices, and having undergone a very severe discipline from the hands of the clergy, who attended him in his last moments," &c.—Vol. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various

... man and a woman. The latter was habited in a nun-like dress of black, and the former in a long pilgrim's coat of coarse blue stuff. He bore a pilgrim's staff in his hand, and showed under his close hood a fine, handsome, reverent face, full of a sort of tender awe, touched with the pathos of penitence. In attendance upon the two was a dapper little silk-hatted man, with rogue so plainly written in his devotional countenance that I was not surprised to be told that he was a species of spiritual valet de place, whose occupation it was to attend pilgrims on their tour to the ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... chagrined at this intelligence; for she had already begun to build castles in the air, which poor Lucilla, with a frame restored, and a heart at ease, and nothing left of the past but a soft and holy penitence, should inhabit. The countess, however, consoled herself with the hope that Lucilla would at least write to her, and mention her new place of residence; but days ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... here," said Constans, decidedly, for they had now reached the north gate of the citadel and he was beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable under those sharp eyes. "Farewell, my son, and remember that penitence precedes healing, whether ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... But who for thee, O Charity! will bear Hardship, and cope with peril and with care! 30 Who, for thy sake, will social sweets forego For scenes of sickness, and the sights of woe! Who, for thy sake, will seek the prison's gloom, Where ghastly Guilt implores her lingering doom; Where Penitence unpitied sits, and pale, That never told to human ears her tale; Where Agony, half-famished, cries in vain; Where dark Despondence murmurs o'er her chain; Where gaunt Disease is wasted to the bone, And hollow-eyed Despair forgets to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... out her penitence and her disappointment in the nurse's arms, while Polly sat by, distressed at the way ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd

... matter for Solmes to transfer the invalid from the wretched cottage to the clergyman's Manse. The first appearance of the associate of much of her guilt had indeed terrified her; but he scrupled not to assure her, that his penitence was equal to her own, and that he was conveying her where their joint deposition would be formally received, in order that they might, so far as possible, atone for the evil of which they had been jointly guilty. He also promised her kind usage for ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... this enterprize, Which doth import the safetie of our soules, There take my earnest of impietie. [Give him his mony. Onely forbeare to lay thy ruder handes Upon the poore mistrustlesse tender child. As for our vowes, feare not their violence; God will forgive on hartie penitence. ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... The court, the jury, and all these good people, The prisoner prays that I would beg for him, As on his soul's behalf, your prayers and pardon: That is, while he in penitence will yield To the just punishment the law awards, You'll think of him as one misled—not cruel. The murderous deed his hand did was not done With heart consent—he knew it not. The fiend That rum evokes had ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various

... possible to believe, that any woman would confess those facts which are divulged by Maria Monk, unless from dread of death and the judgment to come, or from the effect of profound Christian penitence. Feminine repugnance would be invincible. Thus, the alarm of eternity, her entrance upon which appeared to be so immediate, was the only cause of those communications; which incontestably prove, that Nunneries are ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... favorites, "That woman will be the death of me." La Valliere she could afford to forgive, for the first mistress paid for the brief royal favor that she enjoyed by thirty-six years of rigid and austere penitence. Other favorites, however, pursued a path of pride, lowering their heads only under the "bludgeonings of Fate." Yet most of them, while Marie Therese lived, respected and honored her and felt a certain sense of shame in her presence. ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... sentimentality the long-lost instinctive human rationalism of the ancient philosophers. How could St. Luke recommend us to desist from getting back our stolen property? She feels, however obscurely, that this is foolish, antisocial, unnatural. Nay, why should God prefer the penitence of one sinner to the constant goodness of ninety-nine righteous men? She is, this learned theologian of the eleventh century, as passionately human in thought as any Mme. Roland or Mary Wolstonecraft of a ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... 'Our aspect of penitence won upon Sir Hussey. "If you had not bolted," he added after the lecture, "I'm not sure that I should have felt it necessary to summon you before me. But, frankly, I could not stand the notion that any of my officers should ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... above rubies. Indeed, when David has ceased speaking, one waits involuntarily for Ananias to begin in his shrill treble tones. He is a hopeless child to correct, for when you imagine you are scolding him very severely, and you look for the tears of penitence to flow, he puts up his little face with an angelic smile, and ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... convents. They preached many afternoons; persuaded the sailors to be present at the prayer of the rosary daily, exhorted them never to let the sun go down on their sins, since they had the sacrament of penitence so near at hand; and were very urgent in teaching them all the Christian doctrine. God granted them the consolation of experiencing considerable fruit by that means; for morals were considerably reformed, and oaths and blasphemies were banished, so that the ship was like a religious ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... cried, with an irresistible outburst of penitence, "you little know what crooked things I ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... regained his strength, though Keating, and the authors he followed, think he was never the same man again, after the fright he received from the head of Conor O'Melaghlin. He died peaceably and full of penitence, at Kinkora, on the eve of the Ides of July, A.D. 1086, after severe physical suffering. He was in the 77th year of his age, the 32nd of his rule over Munster, and the 13th—since the death of Dermid of Leinster—in ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... and she, Inge, trembled and wept such tears as she had never yet wept. She was filled with sorrow about herself: it seemed as though the gate of mercy could never open to her; and while in deep penitence she acknowledged this, a beam, of light shot radiantly down into the depths to her, with a greater force than that of the sunbeam which melts the snow man the boys have built up; and quicker than ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... Stael commenced the first effort at evangelization immediately after he left England, and found her catechumen in a most edifying state of humility. He was, metaphorically, on his knees in penitence, and confessed himself a miserable sinner in the loveliest manner possible. Such sweetness and humility took all hearts. His conversations with Madame de Stael were printed, and circulated all over the world; making it to appear that only ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... It's cheap. Penitence is always on the free list. And in your case, as in most, it comes too late to do any good, except to salve the penitent's feelings. Willem lived in the same house with you for three years. All around him was Love. Except from the one person whose sacred duty it was to ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... said Lady Belamour, "but it is well that it is no worse; nor shall I visit our offences on your father if you show your penitence by absolute submission. The absurd ceremony you went through was a mere mockery, and the old fool, Belamour, showed himself crazed for consenting to such an improper frolic on the part of my son. Whether your ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Jerusalem, refusing all assistance except that which he earned by manual labor. After such a term of years as should satisfy all men (and particularly his own spiritual sense) of the genuineness of his penitence, he would apply to his church for reinstatement, and ask for an appointment to some difficult mission in a wild and savage country. The Rev. Mr. Calthrop intimated that if he chose to accept rehabilitation on less arduous terms, he might obtain ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... who are willing on the Lord's Day to wend their way to the house of God and engage in religious worship, is a phenomenon which is worth thinking about. How does the Roman Catholic Church do it? Somebody says she does it all by appealing to men's fears, she scares men into penitence and devotion. Do you think that that is a fair explanation? I do not think so. I can conceive how she might frighten people for one generation, or for two, but I can not conceive how she could frighten a dozen generations. One would suppose that the spell would wear ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... over. He had sought out the sergeant of the firing party, and questioned him as to the last moments of the condemned. The sergeant said that they died as Malignants, and without showing any sign of Penitence; but he could not gainsay that their bearing ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... not thine—embrace it not, nor hate it. Precious or vile, how dare we seize that offering, Scatter it, spurn it, in its way to heaven, Because we know it not? the Sovereign Lord Accepts his tribute, myrrh and frankincense From some, from others penitence and prayer: Why intercept them from his gracious hand? Why dash them down? why smite ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... vessel to be got ready, and loaded with the necessaries for so long a voyage. Meanwhile preparations were made in matters of conscience, so that each one of us might examine himself, and cleanse himself from his sins by penitence and confession, in order to celebrate the sacrament and attain a state of grace, so that, being thereby freer in conscience, we might under the guidance of God, expose ourselves to the mercy of the waves of the great and ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... the boy, slipping into his place—with a compound expression in which the spirit of fun, whom no one doubted, gave the lie to the spirit of penitence, in whom no one believed—"but I've bin to a sort o' Sunday ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne

... back to San Marco, and Maso went to him there. He is very ill, and he has adjured me to go and see him. I cannot refuse it, though I hold him guilty; I still remember how I loved him when I was a little girl, before I knew that he would forsake my father. And perhaps he has some word of penitence to send by me. It cost me a struggle to act in opposition to my father's feeling, which I have always held to be just. I am almost sure you will think I have chosen rightly, Tito, because I have noticed that your nature is less rigid ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... the jurets of the parish. Legaret defended himself with a sharp knife at the time, and went to law afterwards; the end of which was, that the abbe and his two accomplices were condemned to a public confession of penitence, to be uttered while on their knees at the church door, just after high-mass. They appealed to the parliament of Bourdeaux against this decision, but met with no better success than the opponents of the miller Arnauld. Legaret was confirmed ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell

... was none with Him. He knows that he is permitted to walk the same lonely path as Jesus trod before him. He knows that as he kneels in the darkened room with his solitary sorrow, with his breaking heart, with his sinful soul bowed down in penitence, that Jesus is with him—he is alone with God. And again, we must all die alone. The moment of death is the most solitary of all our life. The Prince, with his armies, and crowds of friends and courtiers, is, at his death, as much alone as the beggar who drops and dies by the ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... know that more than half the wealth of the burgomaster belonged to old Peter Brandt, now dependent on Gerard for his soup; but Ghysbrecht knew it, and carried it in his heart, a scorpion of remorse that was not penitence. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... which henceforth I shall guard against with a penitential earnestness. Reformation meanwhile must begin, I fear, simultaneously with this confession of guilt. It would not be possible (would it?) that, beginning the penitence this month of November, I should postpone the amendment till the next? No, that would look too brazen. I must confine myself to the two and a half pages prescribed as the maximum extent—and of that allowance already perhaps have used up one half at the least. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... rewarding merit, and punishing offences. The vexatious monopolies which previous governors had granted, he did away with; and, while he firmly dealt with every symptom of disloyalty, his aim was "not penalty but penitence" [nom paena sed saepius paenitentia]—penitence shown in a frank acceptance of Roman civilization. Under his influence Roman temples, Roman forums, Roman dwelling-houses, Roman baths and porticoes, rose all over the land, and, above all, Roman schools, where the ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... converted under the compulsion of violence, and who sincerely regretted their involuntary or imposed apostasy. On one occasion, he was asked if the wine belonging to such unfortunates should be forbidden, though they had proved their return to the Jewish faith by a long period of penitence. Rashi replied: "Let us be careful not to take measures for isolating them and thereby wounding them. Their defection was made under the menace of the sword, and they hastened to return from their wanderings." ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... its leaves droop in our moistureless hands, though it has lost some of the freshness it had when it first came to our keeping, thank God! thank God! it is not dead, it lives! and can be revived. It wants more moisture; sprinkle tear-drops of penitence upon its shrunken foliage; let the springs of our sympathy once more flow over it; let us ask God to give us the "upper and the nether springs," that His love and ours may flow out in one united stream; let us come to that stream, near, nearer, to the brink, and olive branch ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... Divine Majesty will mete out in His just tribunal to those men who were the cause and instrument of so sacrilegious and scandalous a desecration, unless they first hastened to atone for it by works of true penitence, in order to be deserving ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various

... innocent-like, not dreaming of the comether she had put upon them, she secretly and unbeknownst let a few tears fall into the cream-pitcher. Whether or not it was this material expression of Margaret's penitence that spoiled the coffee does not admit of inquiry; but the coffee was bad. In fact, the whole breakfast was a ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... us are concerned because as yet the South shows no penitence. But what exactly do we mean by this? Since down to the close of the war she never confessed any for braving it, the only penitence now left her is that which springs solely from the sense of discomfiture; and since this evidently would be a contrition hypocritical, it would be unworthy in ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... they were alone, the Angel said, "Art thou the King?" Then bowing down his head, King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast, And meekly answered him: "Thou knowest best! My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence, And in some cloister's school of penitence, Across those stones, that pave the way to heaven, Walk barefoot, till my guilty soul is shriven!" The Angel smiled, and from his radiant face A holy light illumined all the place, And through the open window, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... some more, scalding tears of still another sort of penitence: Aunt 'Senath was such a darling! The back of Miss Asenath's woolly white wrapper was ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... he meant what he said. "I am sorry that I hurt your feelings," she said, with a pretty air of penitence; "but if you will kindly take me from these steps, I will make a gift to the patron saint of the fishermen, if we find ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald

... better aim, courted destruction. Naturally, their enemies wished for nothing better. And now it will need centuries of infamous oppression before the flame of revolt shall again be lighted. Christianity has clothed human individuality, too obstinate ever to accept slavery, with a garb of penitence, hiding under it all the colours of liberty. It deceived the strong who to-day could have captured fortune and happiness, transferring life's centre of gravity to the future, to a dreamland that does ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... I made haste, in a kind of penitence, to blot out all the good effect of my last speech. In this direction progress was more easy, being down hill; she led me forward, smiling; at the sight of her, in the brightness of the fire and with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... consideration of Dick's welfare. Even Clemence Verney, whom she secretly accused of a want of heart, had been struck by Darrow's ill looks, while she had had eyes only for her son. Poor Darrow! How cold and self-engrossed he must have thought her! In the first rush of penitence her impulse was to drive at once to his lodgings; but the infection of his own shyness restrained her. Dick's note gave no details; the illness was evidently grave, but might not Darrow regard her coming as an intrusion? To repair her negligence of yesterday by a sudden invasion ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... moments, he was restored to the embrace, of his father. Thus he suffered shame and ignominy, and the agonies of death, as a punishment for his disobedience to his parents; though, in consequence of his penitence, his ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb

... a loathsome jail. Human retribution cannot reach this guilt; human feeling may not penetrate the flinty heart that perpetrates it; but an hour is surely coming, with more than human retribution on its wings, when that flint shall be melted, either by the power of penitence and grace, or in the fires ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... forward such things is obvious. Now, let us compare the rank of the emperor with that of the pontiff. Between them the difference is as great as the charge of human and divine things. You, emperor, receive baptism from the pontiff, accept sacraments, request prayers, hope for blessing, beg for penitence. In a word, you administer things human, he dispenses to you things divine. If, then, I do not put his rank superior, it is at least equal. And do not think that in mundane pomp you are before him, for 'the weakness of ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... him of the four, with her dark hair, and her luscious brown glance. Just coming out, a pretty thing! He set down the two valises. This almost formal abdication of fatherhood hurt him. The morning light fell on a face which worked with real emotion. Nothing so false as penitence moved him; but genuine paternal feeling, and that melancholy of 'never again.' He moistened his lips; and complete irresolution for a moment paralysed his legs in their check trousers. It was hard—hard to be thus compelled ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... heaven and earth! Thou hast opened mine eyes that I follow from henceforth none other than Thee—Have mercy upon me!'—He forthwith gave all he had to the poor for the love of God, and went up into a mountain where there was a great hermitage, and dwelt there the rest of his days in penitence and sanctity, surviving down to the days of Pope Martin, who reigned from 1281 to 1284. 'Certain youths,' adds Ghiberti, 'who sought to be skilled in statuary, told me how he was versed both in painting and sculpture, and how he had painted ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... forth as being the highest and clearest of all the revelations that God has made to the world, and asserts that in Him, in His character, in His deeds, men ought to find motives that should bow them in penitence before God; motives sweeter, tenderer, stronger than any that the world knows besides. There is no such light of the knowledge of the glory of God anywhere else as there is in the face of Jesus Christ. And oh! brother; no thoughts of the nobleness of rectitude, and the imperfection ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... do. Only women indulge in such luxuries. It is a nice sort of feeling, when you have nothing else to do, giving way to endless grief and penitence, and steeping yourself to the eyes in contrition; but it is silly. Why cry over things that are done? Why do naughty things at all, if you are going to repent afterward? Nobody is naughty unless they like being naughty; and nobody ever really repents ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... very willing, after all, to give up his country travelling. That his departure on that business befell at a moment of domestic quarrel was merely chance; secretly he had made the arrangement with his firm some weeks before. The penitence which affected him upon Jane's appeal could not be of abiding result; for, like all married men at a certain point of their lives, he felt heartily tired of home and wished to see the world a little. Hanover Street heard endless discussions of ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... in your hands the resignation of the office on which I have brought such deep disgrace. It was my pride to be an elder in St. Cuthbert's, for it was here I first tasted of the Saviour's forgiving grace; it was here I first learned the luxury of penitence, and here was born my heart's deep purpose to retrieve the past—it was my pride, I say to be an elder here, but it is ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... Paris; and now repose near the gateway of the cemetery of Pere la Chaise. What a singular destiny was theirs! that, after a life of such passionate and disastrous love,—such sorrows, and tears, and penitence—their very dust should not be suffered to rest quietly in the grave!—that their death should so much resemble their life in its changes and vicissitudes, its partings and its meetings, its inquietudes and its persecutions!—that mistaken zeal ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... but he was glad to have even a pretext so that he could help Danusia and Zbyszko, because he loved the girl, whom he had known from childhood. Then he remembered that at the worst, he would be punished with church penitence, therefore turning toward the ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... Diana and her generous lover, the Captain was not a difficult penitent. He was indeed a man who, having lost the capacity and the need for sin, took very kindly to penitence, as a ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... about Fanny, the laundry-maid. I don't think we shall do much if your dear mother relents, and says the girl is penitent as soon as she cries. She ought to know girls better than that. A little thing makes them cry: but penitence,—that is getting rarer and rarer ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... they have sinned, they show how discord begins in mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbearance; how confidence of the divine favour is forfeited by sin; and how hope of pardon may be obtained by penitence and prayer. A state of innocence we can only conceive, if, indeed, in our present misery, it be possible to conceive it; but the sentiments and worship proper to a fallen and offending being, we have all to learn, as we ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... offense was intended and he found himself apologizing when, to say the least, the fault, if there was any, was not more than half his. But she always followed those moods with others of contrition and penitence and then he was petted and fondled and ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... more than either; and father says he loves to see us slice away at the cob-loaf; it does him goode. What a kind father he is! I wish my step-mother were as kind. I hate alle sneaping and snubbing, flowting, fleering, pinching, nipping, and such-like; it onlie creates resentment insteade of penitence, and lowers y'e minde of either partie. Gillian throws a rolling-pin at y'e turnspit's head, and we call it low-life; but we looke for such unmannerlinesse in the kitchen. A whip is onlie fit ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... her; one is saved after having almost crossed the border, and I shall long remember my interview with that man just after he was brought ashore, appalled with the sense of the nearness of the spirit land, and just as if he had had a revelation—his gratitude, his convulsive sobs, his penitence. Another man has his leg or his arm caught by the tow-rope as it is paid out to the flying steamer; in one man's case the keen axe is just used in time to cut the line as it smokes over the gunwale before the coil tears his leg off; in another's case ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... Paradise, once the seat of Adam and Eve. It forms the principal part of an island in a sea, and possesses a pure air. Its lowest region, with one or two exceptions of redeemed Pagans, is occupied by Excommunicated Penitents and by Delayers of Penitence, all of whom are compelled to lose time before their atonement commences. The other and greater portion of the ascent is divided into circles or plains, in which are expiated the Seven Deadly Sins. The Poet ascends from circle to circle with Virgil and Statius, and is met in a forest on the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... brother's greeting, rushed up to his room, and, flinging himself on his bed, sobbed like a child at the remembrance of his disgrace. They were not refreshing tears; he felt something hard at his heart, and, as he prayed neither for help nor forgiveness, it was pride and rebellion, not penitence, that made him miserable. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... poor fellow rolled and tossed upon one of Mrs. Fortune's soft beds, oblivious to the kind offices of those about him. They had taken him there at Kate's command, and she had worn herself to a shadow with anguish, love and penitence. She watched him by day and by night—in her restless dreams; her whole existence was in the tossing victim of her folly. Every twitch of that pain-stricken body seemed to show her that he was shrinking from her in hatred. Her pretty face was white and drawn, the ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... together till his death. In his letters we find him, during one of his sober intervals, living quietly with her in Richmond. In "The Conference," he makes some allusions to this unhappy affair, and discovers the spirit, if not of true penitence, certainly of keen remorse, and strong self-crimination. In the autumn of 1763 he became the comforter of his friend, Lloyd, in the Fleet, supported him in confinement, and opened a subscription for the discharge of his heavy ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... pictured the desperate boy, flying perhaps to a far country, to suffer, and sin and go down to the lowest depths of degradation. The prayer burst forth from the depths of the colonel's heart, "God have mercy on my son! God have mercy on me, a sinner!" There was a thoroughgoing penitence in that closed room. The colonel's whole life stood before him, with all its shortcomings and its sins. To the world it had been an outwardly blameless life, but within there had been an uncertain faith, a half-heartedness, an indecision ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker

... kindly. 'Girls do.' It was pride that made the sharp addition. But Monkey was not hurt; she did not even notice what he said. The insult thus ignored might seem almost a compliment Jimbo thought with quick penitence. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... dwelling on what Mr. Shovelin said, and Uncle Sam and others, I became quite happy in the firm conviction that I ought to be put upon bread and water for having such vile visions. Then suddenly a thing came to my mind which shattered happy penitence. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... by night, a disused and ruinous prison for a bedroom, his diet begged or pilfered out of rubbish heaps, his associates two creatures equally outcast with himself, he had drained for months the cup of penitence. He had known what it was to be resigned, what it was to break forth in a childish fury of rebellion against fate, and what it was to sink into the coma of despair. The time had changed him. He told himself no longer tales of an easy and perhaps agreeable declension; ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... persecution, had made the most brilliant preparations for his reception, he proceeded to Igualada, where an interview took place between him and the king and queen, in which he conducted himself with unfeigned humility and penitence, reciprocated on their part by ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... help us, Dr. Sandford, if we ask Him." And tears, that were tears of deep penitence now, rushed ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... all the proprieties to permit such a woman to stay at his feet, making such demonstrations. If he had been a Jewish rabbi, he would have thrust her away with execrations, as bringing pollution in her touch. But Jesus let the woman stay and finish her act of penitence and love, and then spoke words which assured ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... moderate excitement; that he is interested in the relation of himself to others, and, consequently, in the effect of his utterances upon them; or that, subjectively, he is interested in himself: it is the language of admiration, reverence, awe, sincerity, dignity, of pathos, supplication, penitence. To the third division, which may be called the diction of passion, belongs all language expressive of deeper excitement and more vehement interest than that described as animating the diction of feeling: it is the language of earnest or anxious interrogation, of passionate ejaculation, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... find a certain amusement in his confusion and penitence, she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... bravest girl in the world," said Peter, taking her hands with a movement of quick penitence. "You—you're a brick." ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... years later. Alma and her child in a cornfield, listening to bells ringing for Cyril's homecoming with his bride. All the softness and youth gone from Alma's tragic face, and the last gleams of penitence from her heart, since her perjury. Jealousy is prompting her to go and tell Marion all. But Judkins comes and interrupts these wild thoughts. He offers marriage, rehabilitation, and a home in America. She hesitates. She is shunned by all, and can get no work in Malbourne, but has ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... appeared, and the goddess of earth, seated upon it, took Sita beside her and conveyed her to the realms of eternal happiness, leaving the too late repentant Rama to wear out his remaining years in shame and penitence. ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... anguish so far gave way, that Mrs. Harewood was able to command her attention, and she seized this precious season of penitence and humility to imprint the leading truths of Christianity, and those plain and invaluable doctrines which are deducible from them, and evident to the capacity of any sensible child, without leading ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland

... me. "I don't believe in that woman's penitence," he remarked; "and I look upon the parson as a poor weak creature. What is ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... opening his eyes to the light of truth. He held on to spectral evidence, and his corollary from it, when everybody else had abandoned both. He would not admit that he, or any one concerned, had been in error. He never could bear to hear any persons express penitence or regret for the part they had taken in the proceedings. When the public delusion had so far subsided that it became difficult to procure the execution of a witch, he was disturbed and incensed to such a degree ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... of lightning, followed by rolling thunder, caused Doray to start up and exclaim, as she crossed herself: "Jesus, Maria, y Jose! I'm going to leave you, I'm going to burn some sacred palm and light candles of penitence." ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... Christ's death the expiation of man's sin and the reconciliation of an offended Deity; in McLeod Campbell in Scotland and Horace Bushnell in New England, the Atonement was restated, in forms that did not revolt men's consciences, as the vicarious penitence of the one sensitive Conscience which creates a new moral world, or as the unveiling of the suffering heart of God, who bears His children's sins, as Jesus bore His brethren's transgressions on the cross. They were insisting that ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... him hope for his liberation from S. James, although opposite there is seen the Devil, hideous to a marvel, who is warmly speaking and declaring his rights to the Saint, who, after having instilled into Marino extreme penitence for his sin and for the promise made, is liberating him and leading him back to God. This same story, says Lorenzo Ghiberti, by the hand of the same man, was in a chapel of the Capponi, dedicated to S. Nicholas, in S. Spirito at Florence, before that church was burnt down. After this ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... an earlier period. They would have had recourse in his behalf, to the means of religion, and have applied to pious men, desiring them to employ their power to intercede with Heaven in his favor. Prayer and penitence might have done much for him; and the mercy of Heaven was unbounded. They advised him to still call upon God, and endeavor to secure an interest in the merits of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... promise to undo the acts by which England had separated itself from Rome, the legate required a simple statute of repeal. The pope had granted a dispensation; it was enough, and it should be accepted gratefully: the penitence of sinners ought not to be mixed with questions of worldly interest; the returning prodigal, when asking pardon at his father's feet, had made no conditions; the English nation must not disfigure their obedience by alluding, in ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... admirably expresses, has torn one of his feet from the tree to which it was nailed. The expression in the action of this figure is wonderful. The attitude of the other is more composed, and he looks at the dying Christ with a countenance perfectly expressive of his penitence. This figure is likewise admirable. The Virgin, St. John, and Mary the wife of Cleophas, are standing by, with great expression of grief and resignation; whilst the Magdalen, who is at the feet of Christ, and may be supposed to have been kissing ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet

... utility has been owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient indulgence has been said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so. But we know if feeling is evidence that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt to mend it; and our sin far more salutary than our penitence. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... Nature can never be dull. They may have other temptations; but at least they will run no risk of being beguiled, by ennui, idleness, or want of occupation, "to buy the merry madness of an hour with the long penitence of after time." The love of Nature, again, helps us greatly to keep ourselves free from those mean and petty cares which interfere so much with calm and peace of mind. It turns "every ordinary walk into a morning or evening sacrifice," and brightens life until it becomes ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... am summoned to that offended tribunal, to propitiate which I have passed so many years in penitence and prayer, let me record for the benefit of others the history of one, who, yielding to fatal passion, embittered the remainder of his own days, and shortened those of the adored partner of his guilt. Let my confession ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Jehovah answered Job out of the storm, it was not so much the thought expressed as the fact that God had spoken directly to him that brought penitence and peace: ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... of penitence conveyed by this deep, vibrating, bell-like voice. A penitential hymn in the house of ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... your resemblance to Dante's hill of penitence complete, as Ethel says,' returned ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... carrying in a golden boat, concealed by curtains, the revered statue of the divinity; whereat the people prostrated themselves and confessed their faults loudly, while prophets disposed in the crowd numerously helped them to penitence by appropriate questions. A similar thing was done in the forecourt of the temple. But since officials and rich people did not like to accuse themselves openly, the holy fathers took them aside, and gave advice ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... the matter more closely. Let us make an appointment for this evening at nine o'clock in the Church of St. Germain. For I am going to preach to the inmates of St. Lazare, and that may be your first step along the hard road of penitence. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... left to her own reflections, she became more calm. A tear of real penitence for her hasty words, stole down her cheek. "I will go and tell Howard I am sorry for my unkind remarks," she said, as she brushed it from her face, and she rose to do so. At that moment a short, quick ring of the ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... that they saw him. And so I command that, whereas I had formerly raised you to honourable rank as Mistress of the Novices, you shall now be the lowest placed of all, and further, shall eat only bread and water on the ground, and in presence of all the Sisters, until you have shown sufficient penitence to receive forgiveness." ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... minister to a mind diseased? can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, remorse, head-ache, nausea, and all the rest of the damn'd hounds of hell that beset a poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of drunkenness—can you speak peace ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... spirit of innovation, under the name of reform. I was, indeed, well aware that power rarely reforms itself. So it is, undoubtedly, when all is quiet about it. But I was in hopes that provident fear might prevent fruitless penitence. I trusted that danger might produce at least circumspection. I flattered myself, in a moment like this, that nothing would be added to make authority top-heavy,—that the very moment of an earthquake ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... I live on the praises of Henry? and don't I tear every man that utters a doubt of his infallibility? Poor old Dominie Young! I was savage on him last night, for an unnecessary remark about Henry; and I'll go and hear him preach, to show my contrition; and penitence can't go further. Now, mother dear, I probably wanted this, and I am now down on the flat, hard foundation of things. Don't blame this Julia, and don't think of her in connection with me. No girl will ever scorn one of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... investigations, and allegorical and oriental tales, that no mind can be thought very deficient that has, by constant study and meditation, assimilated to itself all that may be found there. No. 7, written in Passion-week on abstraction and self-examination[640], and No. 110, on penitence and the placability of the Divine Nature, cannot be too often read. No. 54, on the effect which the death of a friend should have upon us, though rather too dispiriting, may be occasionally very medicinal ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... all monasteries, but particularly in the churches and houses of the Jeronimites. A beautiful example is the Madonna, by Francia. (Borghese Palace. Rome.) St. Jerome, with Mary Magdalene, also a frequent combination, expresses theological learning in union with religious penitence and humility. Correggio's famous picture is an example, where St. Jerome on one side presents his works in defence of the Church, and his translation of the Scriptures; while, on the other, Mary Magdalene, bending down devoutly, kisses the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... already manfully grappling. An illustration may be too pathetic, and people may weep from the wrong cause, an event which often occurs in church. It is one thing to shed tears over a touching story and another to shed them from penitence. An illustration should not be more sublime than the lesson to be taught lest there follow a swift descent with loss of reverence by the way. There is a place for humour in the pulpit, if it be natural to the preacher and ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... Antonio, the false brother, repented the injustice they had done to Prospero; and Ariel told his master he was certain their penitence was sincere, and that he, though a spirit, could ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... the king, Charles III., commuted the sentence to perpetual banishment and imprisonment. The assassin was conducted to Puerto Rico, where he ended his life, weighed down by remorse, though his hours were consecrated to penitence and prayer. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... such was his confidence in the goodness of his Lord, that he dared to trust himself with him—had no concern, that resentment of the part he had acted, would induce him, in whom he trusted, to overlook his penitence, and pass his humble confidence unnoticed—did not fear to trust himself in Christ's hands, and leave it to him to make known his character to his ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... justificative more apt for the purpose, or more worthy of such dishonour, than the article in the 'Quarterly Review' for July, 1860. (I was not aware when I wrote these passages that the authorship of the article had been publicly acknowledged. Confession unaccompanied by penitence, however, affords no ground for mitigation of judgment; and the kindliness with which Mr. Darwin speaks of his assailant, Bishop Wilberforce (vol. ii.), is so striking an exemplification of his singular gentleness ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley

... extravagant sacrifices, in which the blood of the victims flowed like water. Days of sorrow and mourning alternated with these days of joy, during which the people and the magnates gave themselves up to severe fasting and acts of penitence. The Chaldeans had a lively sense of human frailty, and of the risks entailed upon the sinner by disobedience to the gods. The dread of sinning haunted them during their whole life; they continually subjected the motives of their actions to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... was heriot to be levied on his land. After six years' hard riding and scant feeding, peradventure Richard Andrew would rather have had the hard cash than the poor brute, which by this time, probably, had died and gone to the dogs! A shudder of penitence and remorse had thrilled through John Bonington when the plague was stalking grimly up and down the land; and this is what we learn about him—this ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... manner, that the death of Christ was to have any effect on God, any power to change his feeling or his government. It was not to make a purchasing expiation for sins and thus to reconcile God to us; but it was, by a revelation of the Father's freely pardoning love, to give us penitence, purification, confidence, and a regenerating piety, and so to reconcile us to God. He says in one place, in emphatic words, that the express purpose of Christ's death was simply "that he might lead us to God." In the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... people go out of doors at one o'clock in the morning, to pray? Nay, but I fear it was to do an act that years of prayer and penitence cannot efface. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... of the crime, the grewsome picture it suggested, flashed upon her with such sinister power that her knees weakened and caused her to stumble. He overtook her in a few long strides, and walked beside her in dumb penitence. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... whole period of ecclesiastical history may be summed up in a sentence: The numerous theological controversies, and the pastoral neglect of the people, before the war, had unfitted both the clergy and the masses for deriving from it that deep penitence and thorough reconsecration which a season of great national affliction should have engendered. The moral excesses apparent during this time had been produced by causes long anterior to it. Hence, when the protracted time of carnage and the destruction of property did ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... usage Baptism is normally administered by a priest, Confirmation always by a Bishop. Candidates are received by the latter upon the assurance of one of his subordinate clergy that they are adequately instructed and rightly disposed by faith and penitence to receive the gifts of the Holy Ghost—"the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." As an immediate preliminary to the actual rite the candidate solemnly and deliberately declares his acceptance of the ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... But the next conviction she came to was clear enough;—Mr. Thornton had seen her close to Outwood station on the fatal Thursday night, and had been told of her denial that she was there. She stood as a liar in his eyes. She was a liar. But she had no thought of penitence before God; nothing but chaos and night surrounded the one lurid fact that, in Mr. Thornton's eyes, she was degraded. She cared not to think, even to herself, of how much of excuse she might plead. That had nothing to do with Mr. Thornton; she never dreamed ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... smoke, neither did Shakespeare. I cannot recall a single allusion to Tobacco in all his plays; even Sir Toby Belch does not add the pipe to his burnt sack. But Shakespeare hated every form of debauchery. The penitence of Cassio is more prominent than was his fun. 'What! drunk? and talk fustian and speak parrot, and discourse with one's shadow?' Shakespeare held drunkenness in disgust. Even Falstaff is more an intellectual man than a sot. What actor could ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... which, in and out of poetry, the understanding contemplates the will. Then first the soul has its proper strength. Disorderly passions are then tamed, and become the massy pillars of high-built virtue. Criticism? It is a shape of self-intuition. Confession and penitence, in the church, are a moral and a religious criticism. The imagination is less august and solemn, but of the same character. The first age of the world lived by divine instincts; the later must by reason. How, then, shall we possess the poetry of our being, unless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... was dry and tight. Through his thick clothing he was not likely to be very cold, there, for an hour or two. He could snuggle down in the warm hay and play Indians, with considerable comfort; until such time as the fright and penitence of his hosts should have come to a climax and make his return ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... course—give up seeing Blanche, dismiss Bowfort, wash her hands, in short, of the imprudent pair—in such matters a woman needed a man's guidance, a wife must of necessity see with her husband's eyes; and she looked up into his through a mist of penitence and admiration.... ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... were set upon him, and she would never see him again. It was useless to argue that the idea was childish; a mere nightmare of overwrought nerves. It persisted and prevailed, till she felt herself crushed in the grip of a relentless, impersonal Force, against which neither penitence nor tears ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver



Words linked to "Penitence" :   penitential, compunction, self-reproach, penitentiary



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