Let us read the lives of the saints; let us consider the penances which they performed, and blush to be so effeminate and so fearful of mortifying our flesh.
True penance consists in regretting without ceasing the faults of the past, and in firmly resolving to never again commit that which is so deplorable.
I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.
There is no virtue in penance and fasting which waste the body; they are only fanatical and monkish.
To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves.
Penance does not require hair shirts today; our neighbors are hair shirts.
I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.
My only crime was being a man and living in the world of men, and you don't have to do special penance for that. The crime and the penance, in that case, coincide perfectly. They are identical.
No penance serves to renew them, no massive transfusions of trust. Why not even revenge can undo them, so twisted these vows and so crushed.
The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give.