Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.
I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis, and I don't deserve that, either.
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
In confession... we open our lives to healing, reconciling, restoring, uplifting grace of him who loves us in spite of what we are.
I saved a girl from being attacked last night. I controlled myself.
Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence.
The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.
We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.
Forgiveness is always free. But that doesn't mean that confession is always easy. Sometimes it is hard. Incredibly hard. It is painful to admit our sins and entrust ourselves to God's care.
Teach thy tongue to say I do not know and thou shalt progress.
There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.
The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own -- the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple -- a few plain words -- My Heart Laid Bare. But -- this little book must be true to its title.
Confess you were wrong yesterday; it will show you are wise today.
— Proverb
He that jokes confesses.
Open confession is good for the soul.
Confessed faults are half-mended.
Confession, alas, is the new handshake.
Let the trumpet of the day of judgment sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand before the Sovereign Judge, and cry with a loud voice, This is my work, there were my thoughts, and thus was I. I have freely told both the good and the bad, have hid nothing wicked, added nothing good.
It is not the criminal things that are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and the shameful.
To confess a fault freely is the next thing to being innocent of it.
A wise man admits his weaknesses. I'd admit mine if I had any.
He who denies all, confesses all.
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff -- it is a palliative rather than a remedy.
There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.
A confession has to be part of your new life.