Penance Quotations

He who confesses magic or sorcery shall do penance for the time of murder, and shall be treated in the same manner as he who convicts himself of this sin.

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.

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.

Chaos is the penance for leisure.

Penance does not require hair shirts today; our neighbors are hair shirts.

There is no virtue in penance and fasting which waste the body; they are only fanatical and monkish.

Golf - a young man's vice and an old man's penance.

Everyone has a need to do penance. It's a basic need, like washing. It's about harmony, an absolutely essential inner balance. It's the balance we call morality.

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.

And the only thing to do with a sin is to confess, do penance and then, after some kind of decent interval, ask for forgiveness.

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.

The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.

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.

To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves.

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give.

We have very little, so we have nothing to be preoccupied with. The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have, the more free you are.

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.

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.