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Confessional   /kənfˈɛʃənəl/   Listen
Confessional

noun
1.
A booth where a priest sits to hear confessions.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Confessional" Quotes from Famous Books



... kind, who would record in judgment against such a man words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity?—who would ignobly strike the self-disarmed?—scornfully insult him who, kneeling at the Muses' confessional, whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who do so? who find it in their hearts thus to think, and speak, and write of Robert Burns?—He who has reconciled poverty to its lot, toil to its taskwork, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... to one of the temple-servants, and said: "Perform his duty, watch the man, and if he escapes you will go after the geese to-morrow too. See, my friends, how many worshippers kneel there before our altars—go and fulfil your office. I will wait in the confessional to receive complaints, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... widow of Simon Fish, the author of the famous Beggars' Petition, who had died in 1528; and, soon after his marriage, was challenged to give an account of his faith. He was charged with denying transubstantiation, with questioning the value of the confessional, and the power of the keys; and the absence of authoritative Protestant dogma had left his mind free to expand to a yet larger belief. He had ventured to assert, that "if a Turk, a Jew, or a Saracen do trust in God and keep his ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... besought his hearers to come to their Saviour with their load of sin—their Saviour, who was the one and only Mediator between God and man. Were not His own words enough—"Father, forgive them"? What need, then, of the priest; the confessional; the absolution of man? To God and to Him alone was the remission of sins. Let those who loved their Lord seek to Him, and see what bliss and happiness resulted from this personal bond between the erring soul ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... stoutest Evangelical and turn to blue ruin such men as the editor of the "Bulwark" are elevated in front; over all, as well as collaterally, there are inscriptions in Latin; designs in gold and azure and vermilion fill up the details; and on each side there is a confessional wherein all members, whether large or diminutive, whether dressed in corduroy or smoothest, blackest broad cloth, in silk or Surat cotton, must unravel the sins they have committed. This confession must be a hard sort of job, we know, for some people; but we are not ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... is said," was Mrs. Pitt's reply. "Perhaps it may have been a kind of confessional, where the ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson

... labouring in Madrid, wrote of a civil guard who, because of his bold witness for Christ and renunciation of the Romish confessional, was sent from place to place and most cruelly treated, and threatened with banishment to a penal settlement. Again he writes of a convert from Borne who, for trying to establish a small meeting, was summoned before ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... mental balance than feelings and emotions which do not come to a normal expression. It is no chance that in countries of mixed Protestant and Catholic civilization, the number of suicides is larger in Protestant regions than in the Catholic ones where the confessional relieves the suppressed emotions of the masses. This is also the most destructive effect of social and legal injustice; emotions are strangulated and then begin to work mischief. The community should take care early that secret feelings are avoided, that the child is cured from all sullenness ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... increased our confidence, and at the same time showed to us the inferiority of our own reports. Only victors could publish such revelations, and Britain, with her passion for forgetting mistakes and her hatred of the confessional, could never bring herself to publish them. These reports were confirmed and capped by the remarkable communications of General Joffre to a journalistic friend. The New York Stock Exchange began to gamble about the date of victory. The ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... to their clubs. They love to be alone with themselves, and dread to be benumbed or drained of their mental force by uncongenial persons. To such a man his Journal becomes his duplicate self and he says to it what he could not say to his nearest friend. It becomes both an altar and a confessional. Especially is this true of deeply religious souls such as the men I have named. They commune, through their Journals, with the demons that attend them. Amiel begins his Journal with the sentence, "There is but one thing needful—to possess God," and Emerson's Journal ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... 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 liked to ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... was by terror that he mastered the king, so it was by terror that he mastered the people. Men felt in England, to use the figure by which Erasmus paints the time, "as if a scorpion lay sleeping under every stone." The confessional had no secrets for Cromwell. Men's talk with their closest friends found its way to his ear. "Words idly spoken," the murmurs of a petulant abbot, the ravings of a moon-struck nun, were, as the nobles cried passionately at his fall, "tortured into treason." The only chance of safety lay ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... her swimmingly to the confessional, where sat a man with his head in a hood, and he soon heard enough of mixed substance to dash his hood, almost his head, off. Beauty may be immoderately frank in soul to the ghostly. The black page comprised a very long ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... one morning shut up in his confessional, Constantia kneeling by him opened the state of her soul to him; and after having given him the history of a life full of innocence, she burst out into tears, and entered upon that part of her story in which he himself ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... the welcome humiliation of his reprimands, to confide to him her inmost thoughts, scruples, and fears. You must not imagine, however, that she told him everything, for a pious woman has rarely the courage to make use of the confessional for a love confidence. She may perhaps give herself up to the enjoyment of sentiments which are not devoid of peril, but there is always a certain degree of mysticism about them which is not to be conciliated with anything so horrible as sacrilege. At all events, in this particular case, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... Ellison grew more haggard. Suddenly all the weakness of her sex swept over her—all the weakness also of the wrong-doer. The comfort of the confessional seemed the sole happiness possible for her. And so it was that she gave to Eddring the first direct confirmation of that which he had by piece-work reasoning convinced himself to be the truth. He first rapidly ran over ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... them 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 improvements, has ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... like Tetzel a century later, caused trouble. He came to Prag and with beating of drums ordered the people into the churches, where contribution boxes had been placed; even the confessional was abused to extort money from ...
— John Hus - A brief story of the life of a martyr • William Dallmann

... 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

... swallowing, of his own free-will, the heap of rubbish which every Catholic has to believe! in cold blood tying a collar round his neck, and politely putting the chain into the hands of a priest!... And then the Confessional! 'Tis marvellous!" and he began to break the coals with the poker. "It's very well," he continued, "if a man is born a Catholic; I don't suppose they really believe what they are obliged to profess; but how an Englishman, a gentleman, a man here at Oxford, with all his advantages, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... told? . . . I tell you what, Cherry Oliver! It's my belief that man would set up a confessional, if he could." ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... 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 ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... did perceive it, he set to work, with the inquisitorial sagacity which priests acquire by directing consciences and burrowing into the nothings of the confessional, to establish, as though it were a matter of religious controversy, the following proposition: "Admitting that Mademoiselle Gamard did not remember it was Madame de Listomere's evening, and that Marianne did think I was home, and did really forget ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac

... 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 ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang

... must find itself cracked and thawing in the intimacies which a jerking railway car precipitates. There is no dignity which is proof against a sound bump upon the head. Thus our irritations and suspicions gave way to laughter, and laughter brings all the barriers down. The compartment became a confessional. The anxious looking man opposite was hoping to get to his estate and to bury a few of his most treasured things before the Germans came. The two young fellows with scraggly beards were brothers, given ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... possession of it. Yet I do verily believe that there are brutes that would not have forgiven in their wives this error—that would argue thus, You may sin, madam, against your Maker; but you shall not sin against me. Is there not a story somewhere, of a wretched vagabond at the confessional—dreadful were the crimes for which he was promised absolution; but after all his compunctions, contortions, self-cursings, breast-beatings, hand-wringings, out came the sin of sins—he had once spit by accident upon the priest's robe, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... moment to Monsieur le Cure. He had been watching its progress with glistening eye and moistening lips. Madame Poulard, as she slipped the melting morsel beneath his elbow, had suddenly assumed the role of the penitent. Her tone was a reminder of the confessional, as of one who passed her masterpiece apologetically. She, forsooth, a sinner, to have the honor of ministering to the carnal needs of a ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... penitence and no confessional, No priest ordains it, yet they're forced to sit Amid deep ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... 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 with surprise at this new revelation ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... what terrible thing she had done and Kennedy, for the present, did not try to lead the conversation. But of all the stories that I have heard poured forth in the confessional of the detective's office, hers, I think, was ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... God! Yes,—letters delivered by my 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 ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte

... the confidences which a stranger might not hear. When a woman is afraid to look at her interlocutor, there is in truth no gentler, meeker, more accommodating confidant than the cornice. The cornice is quite an institution in the boudoir; what is it but the confessional, minus the priest? ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... to render them pleasurable to those who patronize them. Strip them bare until they stand in the simple innocence to which their defenders' arguments would reduce them and the world would not have them." A Roman Catholic priest testifies that "the confessional revealed the fact that nineteen out of every twenty women who fall can trace the beginning of their state ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... 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, Caesar ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... thousands of men of all ranks have had to bear the same trial and with much less alleviation. You know now that your wife is innocent and is prepared to forgive you." It did not strike Mr. Stafford that men like Bernard Clowes do not care to be forgiven by their wives. There was no confessional box in Chilmark church. "You have plenty of interests left and plenty of friends: so long as you don't alienate them by behaving in such an unmanly way. Lift him, Val.— Come, Major Clowes, you're torturing your wife. ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... learn what knowledge this worthy father could have of her brother's goodness, questioned him so pressingly that he at last told her the secret under the seal of the confessional, saying— ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... sacrifice to win. After enduring much, he flings himself at the feet of his confessor, and begs for his sympathy and counsel; but the confessor spurns him away, and accuses him, fiercely, of some unknown and terrible crime—bids him never return to the confessional until contrition has touched his heart, and the stains which sully his spirit are, by ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... you had to give," she said with the manner of one in the confessional, "and I never stopped to think that you might want something more than I was giving." Still he waited and she hurriedly talked on. "I must be honest with you. I owe you many debts, but that comes first of all. I've tried to forget—tried ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... than the mere saying, "I like honey and milk better than meat and wine" or "I like girls who are plump and fair better than those who are slim and dark." That is why so much of modern autobiographical and confessional writing is dull beyond words. Even impertinence will not save our essays upon ourselves from being tedious—nor will shamelessness in the flaunting of our vices. Something else is required than a mere wish to strip ourselves bare; something else than a mere desire to call attention ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... a grand affair. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the Semana Santa have only this to distinguish them from ordinary days, that the churches are crowded with men and women waiting their turn at the confessional; and that in the afternoons the old promenade of Las Vigas, down in the Indian quarter by the canal of Chalco, is patronized by fashionable Mexico, which, except on some four or five special days, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... the Knight, assisting her to a seat. "Henceforth let no distrust exist between us, and, that it may be so, inquire, and I will answer as at the confessional." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... perfect sincerity. He pours out his soul in song; tells the tale of his loves, his joys and sorrows, of his faults and failings, and the awful pangs of remorse. And if a man be candid and sincere, he will be taken at his word when he makes the world his confessional, and calls himself a sinner. There is pleasure to small minds in discovering that the gods are only clay; that they who are guides and leaders are men of like passions with themselves, subject to the same temptations, and as liable ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... generations, now, we have tried to make people good in a vague, general way, by using priests, sacraments and confessional boxes. For some centuries we have been trying to make people good with lawyers and juries and ballot boxes. We are now to try, at last, religion or gospel or news or ideals—practical, shrewd aimed ideals, that is, news ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... church of 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 ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... as a sanctified priestess of the great worship of sorrow. Many were the hearts now dependent on her, the spiritual histories, the threads of which were held in her loving hand,—many the souls burdened with sins, or oppressed with sorrow, who found in her bosom at once confessional and sanctuary. So many sought her prayers, that her hours of intercession were full, and often needed to be lengthened to embrace all for whom she would plead. United to the good Doctor by a constant friendship and fellowship, she had gradually grown accustomed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... last, "I cannot, I dare not tell you. Unless, perhaps"—his voice faltered—"you could receive it under the seal of confession? But no. How could you do that? Here in the green woods? In the open air, beside a spring? Here is no confessional." ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... which, as you know, is a powerful lever for moving every thing else." [Footnote: Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672.] And he complains that they have spies in town and country, that they abuse the confessional, intermeddle in families, set husbands against wives, and parents against children, and all, as they say, for the greater glory of God. "I call to mind every day, Monseigneur, what you did me the honor to say to me when I took leave of you, and every day I am satisfied more and more of the great ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... 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 ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... succeeded in removing a mass of sand and exposing the building which had so long been covered up. The masonry is rude, but the walls are solid and complete. The interior was perfectly free from the modern accompaniments of Roman Catholic places of worship. There was no rood-loft, no confessional, no pictures of the Virgin and saints, nothing to indicate the unscriptural adoration of the wafer, or masses for the dead. The most diligent search was made for beads and pyxes, censers and crucifixes; not a fragment of either could be discovered. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... 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 ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... that there can be, no biography of him. His public life is 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 ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... seemed that some little time ago, the Vicars-General had sent a deputation to the president of the chief court of justice, having heard from their priests that in one year alone six hundred women had avowed in the confessional that they had taken drugs to prevent their having children. This had been sufficient to arouse the vigilance of the police, who had set a watch on Perregaud's house, with the result that that very night ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of sins that is poured into their ears almost in a continuous stream during the eight days of the retreat. The rush upon the confessionals begins at five in the morning, and goes on with little intermission all day. The penitents huddle together like sheep in a snowstorm around each confessional, so that the foremost who is telling his sins knows that there is another immediately behind him who, whenever he stops to reflect, would like to give him a nudge m the back. The peasants, whether it be that they have never cultivated ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... with carefully worded phrases containing confessions and fervent entreaties; and these were from women who confided to the Queen of Heaven things which they dared not even say to a priest in the shadow of the confessional. Finally, one envelope, selected at random, merely contained a photograph; a young girl had sent her portrait to Our Lady of Lourdes, with this dedication: "To my good Mother." In short, they every day received the correspondence of a most powerful Queen, to whom both prayers and secrets were ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... gradually inclining to Protestantism; but now the idea came across my mind, if Lady R—had confessed as we Catholics do, this secret could not have been kept so long; and, if she withheld herself from the confessional, had her agents been Catholics, the secret would have been divulged to the priest by them, and justice would have been done to Lionel; and, having made this reflection, I felt as it were, that I ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... door of his confessional, leaving the light burning in case someone else turned up; he slipped off his stole ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... 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 ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... 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 with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... 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 Roustan's ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... comments were the order of the day outside the door, only where those who were careless or not preparing for their duties were congregated. Inside, a large crowd of women and rough-fisted men gathered around the door of the temporary confessional, and it was near noon before the priest ascended the temporary altar to offer up the "victim of peace" for the assembled sons of toil. Upon his reverence asking if there was anybody to answer or serve Mass, several presented themselves; but he accepted the services of Paul, because he had been accustomed ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... tell 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

... of the confessional is as sacred for the physician as for the priest," said Doctor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... unlocked the door of a confessional with a click which sounded in the silence, and entered it; a woman followed, disappeared within the curtain of the same, emerging again in about five minutes, followed by the priest, who locked up his door ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... the young Erasmus, and the difficulty he had to escape from the clutches of its inmates—never feeling safe till the Pope had intervened—show us that by their wealth and by the engine of their malice, the confessional (which they had usurped from the regular clergy), they were as formidable as they were useless. It became necessary that this antiquated system of social drainage ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... relief, Anthony Dexter was scourged anew. A thousand demons leaped from the silence to mock him; the earth rolled beneath his feet. The impulse of confession was strong upon him, even in the face of Thorpe's scorn. He wondered why only one church saw the need of the confessional, why he could not go, even to Thorpe, and share the burden that oppressed his ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... 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 ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... 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 ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... world for me, in not being what I ought to be, it is the thought that I am not the only one that knows it. At all events, this feeling that the worst is known, even if one takes, as I am doing now, a planet for a confessional, gives one a luxurious sense—a sense of combined safety and irresponsibility which would not be exchanged for a world. Every book should have I-places in it—breathing-holes—places where one's soul can come up to the surface and look out through the ice ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... oath. They solemnly swear not to reveal the confidences of their patients; or, more properly their innocent confidences. They are not bound like priests in the confessional; if a patient tells the doctor he has poisoned his mother or is about to poison his father, the doctor is not bound to ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... on the bench and the priest in the confessional follow the thoughts and feelings of the minds they have to deal with, not by virtue of any special power of divination, but simply by judging their fellow-men's way of thinking and feeling to ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... them to me; tell them to my uncle. In us you will find two devoted advisers. Though in the confessional my uncle is a priest, he never is one in a drawing-room. We will hear you; we will try to find a solution of the problems you may lay before us; and if you are the dupe or the victim of some misapprehension, perhaps we can clear ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac

... 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

... Francesca had never ceased to frequent that church. At its confessional and at its altars she had been a constant attendant. Other women, her friends and imitators, had followed her example; bound by a tender friendship, bent on the same objects, united by the same love of Jesus and of Mary, often and often they had been there together, those noble women who had ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... doubtful whether Clara would accompany her, but she promised that she would consider the matter; and the vicar on leaving felt satisfied with the way he had made. As yet, however, he had not got so far as to set up a confessional box in his church. He intended, in the first instance, to employ the vestry for that purpose. He had his doubts whether Mr Lennard might not withdraw the support he was now affording him; still, he had made considerable progress. His first step ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston

... century and the beginning of the present one for cultivated people to keep diaries, in which the incidents of each day were jotted down, accompanied by the expression of private opinions and feelings. Women, especially, found this diary a pleasant sort of confessional, a confidante to whose pages they could entrust their most secret thoughts without fear of rebuke or betrayal. Sarah Grimke's diary, covering over five hundred pages of closely written manuscript, though not begun until 1821, gives many ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... San Trinita on the way back we collided with an Italian wagon and had to stop for repairs. A number of Italians gathered round, one of whom I discovered to be a priest, conscribed to serve with the Medical Corps. I bantered this man in a friendly way about secret drinking and the confessional and women and paradise, causing uproarious delight among the bystanders. And the priest took it all in ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton

... 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

... had been really hurt. Now that she need not puzzle over the man's motives, she would perhaps cease to think of him. But she must be kind, just for a minute or two—to make up for putting him in the confessional, and to prove the gratitude she ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... extensive class the 'tristes obsc[oe]ni,' of whom the Angelos and Tartuffes[126] are representatives—succeeded to the vacant office of directing confessor to the nuns of Louviers; and at once embraced the opportunities of the confessional. Without repeating all the disgusting scenes that followed, as given by Michelet, it is only necessary to add that the miserable nun became the mistress and helpless creature of her seducer. 'He employed her as a magical charm to gain over the rest of the nuns. A holy ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... said the confessional voice, rather muffled in tone. "But I—I just got led into it. Oh, Jinny, I'm ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... square chapels. There are other things, of which I have but a con- fused memory: a great fortified keep; a queer little primitive chapel, hollowed out of the rock, beneath these later structures, and recommended to the visitor's attention as the confessional of Saint Tro- phimus, who shares with so many worthies the glory of being the first apostle of the Gauls. Then there is a strange, small church, of the dimmest antiquity, standing at a distance from the other buildings. I remember that after we had let ourselves down a good many steepish ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... warned by his physician 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 he lay peacefully passing away, surrounded by his devoted priests; the Sisters ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... distinction between baptism as practised in the Christian Church, and as practised by John, and by Jesus in His early ministry. In the church, baptism has come to be regarded as a dedicatory rite by some, and by others an initial and confessional rite. But in the first use of it, by John and Jesus, it was a purifying rite. It was a confession too, but of sin, and the need of cleansing, not, as later, of faith in a person, or a creed, although it did imply acceptance of a man's ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... Mass in a monastery of his Order, I felt a longing to know the state of his soul." [21] Three times the Saint rose from her seat, three times she sat down again, but at last she went to see him in a confessional, not to ask for any light for herself, but to give him what light she could, for she wished to induce him to surrender himself more perfectly to God, and this she accomplished by telling him how she had fared since their last meeting. ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... to mention one among numberless facts, which might be brought to prove these assertions: The Beggars of our capital carry on an increasing and very lucrative trade, with confessional and communion testimonials, which they sell to people who daringly transgress the holy ecclesiastical laws, by neglecting to confess and receive the holy sacrament of the Lord's Supper at Easter. Some ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford

... 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 garden of the Community of San Ambrogio ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley

... had received this secret under the seal of the confessional," said the abbe, "you certainly would not urge ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... education. But he said that the English idea that compulsory education would reduce bastardy and intemperance was an error—it has not that effect. He said there was more seduction in the Protestant than in the Catholic cantons, because the confessional protected the girls. I wonder why it doesn't protect married women ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 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

... 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 ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... carillon of the bells was to waken to the most delightful sense of life and happiness; where nuns, actual nuns, walked the streets, and every figure in the Place de Meir, and every devotee at church, kneeling and draped in black, or entering the confessional (actually the confessional!), was a delightful subject for the new sketchbook. Had Clive drawn as much everywhere as at Antwerp, Messrs. Soap and Isaac might have made a little income by ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and is less distinguished for its doctrines than for its absence of them. It claims that the Church neither possesses nor needs doctrines. Therefore, it destroys the line of demarcation between the various confessions and that confessional Latitudinarianism, which is the direct offspring of the destructive principles of the Rationalism and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... replied the abbe, stroking his chin, "we are not now in the confessional; I am not obliged to make myself your judge. From the world's point of view, I admit that ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... connived at oppression. She might have opposed the orgies of militarism. Instead she has voted every increase in the army and navy. She has bartered her dignity and spiritual independence to secure confessional privileges, and to get her share in the spoils ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... of the Bible or some commentary of a Church Father, it was easy for Luther to forget parts of the program which he was to carry out. Whenever this happened, was it not his duty to endeavor to repair the damage? Were not penances imposed on him in the confessional for every default? Luther is said to have been led into still deeper gloom by his study of the doctrine of predestination. True, but even this study did not lead Luther off into fatalism. It terrified him, because he studied that profound doctrine without ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... religious people, who implicitly followed the teachings of the reverend fathers, once their confidence had been secured, the curate was seldom to be gainsaid in his desires. By means of the secret influence in the confessional and the more open political power wielded by him, the fairest was his to command, and the favored one and her people looked upon the choice more as an honor than otherwise, for besides the social standing that it gave her there was the proud prospect of becoming the mother of children ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... 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 appetite ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... ecstatically, "they should as soon make a priest tell confessional secrets, as force me, honest Andrea Luziani, to betray a man who has given me good cigars! Let them run back to Gaeta and hunt in every hole and corner! Carmelo may rest comfortably in the Montemaggiore without the shadow of a gendarme to disturb him! Ah, signor!" for I had advanced to bid ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... a nook within this solemn Pass, But were an apt confessional for one Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, That Life is but a tale of morning grass Wither'd at eve. From scenes of art which chase That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... confessional chair.) I know the man: Jacobo, leave us. [Exit Jacobo. My son, we are alone; now thou may'st profit By holy rite, and on thy bended knees Pour out thy soul to me in deep contrition. Hast thou perform'd the penance I enjoin'd For the sad ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... 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 ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... a denunciation, by an angry and an able man, of some of the most pressing practical evils of the Roman Catholic system. The celibacy of the priesthood, the mysteries of the confessional, the usurpations of priestly direction in the economy of families, in the control of women, and in the education of children—these are the objects against which the historian of France now directs the arrows of his indignation, and which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... More earnest words were never written. It is the entire unveiling of a human heart, the tearing off of the fig-leaf covering of its sin. The voice which speaks to us from these old pages seems not so much that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to self gratification, careless of the world's ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... sounds, and then the voice that had uttered its confession in that deep confessional of a gloomy soul said, and there was almost woman's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... into quiet speech again, as in a confessional—sorely needing some comfort of human sympathy after her ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... Monsieur Bonnet's hand and said, with tears in her voice, "I am your penitent from this day forth, monsieur; I shall go to-morrow to the confessional." ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... 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 the persons, or that they provide ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... Important as this is, it is possible to see why the mystics failed to produce a real revolt from the church, and it is certain that they were far more than the Reformers fundamentally, even typically Catholic. [Sidenote: Mysticism] It is true that mysticism is at heart always one, neither national nor confessional. But Catholicism offered so favorable a field for this development that mysticism may be considered as the efflorescence of Catholic piety par excellence. Hardly any other expression of godliness as an individual, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... the first victims were unearthed were most 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 ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... agree are part of the Catholic faith. In the words of Dr. Dollinger, "we can say each to the other as baptized, we are on either side, brothers and sisters in Christ. In the great garden of the Lord, let us shake hands over these confessional hedges, and let us break them down, so as to be able to embrace one another altogether. These hedges are doctrinal divisions about which either we or you are in error. If you are in the wrong, we do not hold you morally culpable; for your education, ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple

... 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 ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... influences. Certain it is that the socialistic opinions, never very deeply rooted, and at most but a reaction, disappeared, and there came a religious sentiment like that of his friends. He was drawn to the little class meeting, which seemed to him so simple a confessional that all his former notions of "liberty, fraternity, and equality" were satisfied by it. I believe he became a "probationer," but his creed was never quite settled enough for him to accept ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... that knows how to employ it gently, kindly, charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack the quality of self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which Catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas Paine and charge him with irreverence. This is all unfortunate, because it makes it difficult for ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain

... into the details of the transaction, weigh the causes which led up to it, consider the conditions surrounding it, realize the temptations or provocations that precipitated it, you step into your confessional: "Lord, my nature and heart are not different from this sinner's, and but for accidents and good fortune which were none of my providing, I should stand accountant to-day as he does!" You bring the whited ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... observed to be half dressed in female attire, a glaring absurdity which the author has once before seen in the Spanish convent-church of Burgos. In the Matanzas church alluded to, boys and girls of nine and ten years were seen at the confessional. Could absurdity be carried to a greater height? These with negro women form nearly all the audiences to be met with in the Cuban churches, unless upon festal occasions. The men manifest their indifference by their absence, and white women are scarcely ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... 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 Justin, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... 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 ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... say so in all humility, I have been gifted with a certain power of spiritual vision, but because I have practised as a solicitor. A solicitor has to advise families. He has to think of the future and know the past. His office is the real modern confessional. Among other things he has to make people's wills for them. He has to shew them how to provide for their daughters after their deaths. Has it occurred to you, Lubin, that if you live three hundred years, your ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... confidence absolutely reverses his former statements. What can we do with him? There seems to be no appeal we can make. He swears by the Madonna! He raises his eyes to Heaven, and when he finally makes his near- true statement, he is filled with such confessional fervor that to reward him seems to be the only logical course left. He is certainly a child of nature, but of a nature so quixotic that ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... 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 of man; his failures; ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... that one sometimes espied black cassocks stealthily crossing that mysterious shop, where all the aromatic herbs set a perfume of incense. A kind of cloistral quietude pervaded the place; the devotees who came in spoke in low voices, as if in a confessional, slipped their purchases into their bags furtively, and went off with downcast eyes. Unfortunately, some very horrid rumours had got abroad—slander invented by the wine-shop keeper opposite, said ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... 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. An attempt of this sort made a year or two after, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... 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 also ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... clothes, and she could put on her very newest frock. But our little stray Madelon, who knew of none of all these things, could find nothing better to do at last than to creep into a dark corner, between a side chapel and a confessional, crouch down, and begin to sob with all ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... 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

... and waited. I saw the acolytes come and go, and priests move back and forth before the altar; I smelt the grateful incense as it rose when mass was said; I watched the people gather in little clusters at the different shrines, or seek the confessional, or kneel to receive the blessed sacrament. Many who came were familiar—among them Mademoiselle Lucie Lotbiniere. Lucie prayed long before a shrine of the Virgin, and when she rose at last her face bore signs of weeping. Also I noticed her suddenly start as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... only by the windows, whose jambs are enriched with empty niches; on the north the small windows are placed very high up, the twisted vaulting shafts only come down a short way to a string course some way below the windows, leaving a great expanse of cliff-like wall. At the bottom are the confessional doors, so small that they add greatly to the scale, and above them tall narrow niches and their canopies. But the nave piers are the most astonishing part of the whole building. Not more than three feet thick, they rise up to a height of nearly ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... archbishop if he had only said in joke, "I should like to put on a mitre for a handkerchief in order to have my head warmer." Of all the benefices offered to him, he chose only a simple canon's stall to keep the good profits of the confessional. But one day the courageous canon found himself weak in the back, seeing that he was all sixty-eight years old, and had held many confessionals. Then thinking over all his good works, he thought it about time to cease his apostolic labours, the more so, as he possessed ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... threats notwithstanding, I must continue to live as I always did: joyful, free within certain limits and careless of puritan standards. If the rest of the royal ladies, and the women of the service, want to mope and look sour, that's their affair. Let them wear out their lives between confessional, knitting socks for orphan children, Kaffe-klatsches, spying and tale-bearing and prayer-meetings,—it isn't my style. I'm young, I'm pretty, I'm full of red blood, life means something to me. I want to live ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... me—fashionable friends, confidences, meddling in family affairs, dining out, letters from ladies who need consolation.... I don't mean anything wrong; pray don't misunderstand me. I merely mean to say that I hate their meddling in family affairs. Their confessional is a kind of marriage bureau; they have always got some plan on for marrying this person to that, and I must say I hate all that sort of thing.... If I were a priest I would disdain to ... but perhaps I am wrong to speak like that. Yes, it is very wrong of me, ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore



Words linked to "Confessional" :   cubicle, booth, stall, kiosk



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