Penance

Penance or penitence is repentance of sins as well as the proper name of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox Christian Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation/Confession. It also plays a part in Lutheran non-sacramental confession. Penance and repentance, similar in their derivation and original sense, have come to symbolize conflicting views of the essence of repentance, arising from the controversy as to the respective merits of "faith" and "good works".

Quotes

 * Only the penitent man will pass.
 * A clue in the Grail Diary kept by Henry Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).


 * The law can never save us; and he is nearest to the forgiveness of the gospel who, with a contrite heart, discerns most clearly and feels most profoundly that perfection of the Divine statute which impeaches and condemns him.
 * William Adams, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 448.


 * Christian penitence is something more than a thought or an emotion or a tear; it is action.
 * William Adams, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 448.


 * The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.
 * Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798; 1817), part V, st. 25.


 * Know what your sin is and confess it; but do not imagine that you have approved yourself a penitent by confessing sin in the abstract.
 * Theodore L. Cuyler, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 449.


 * We hear the wail of the remorseful winds In their strange penance. And this wretched orb Knows not the taste of rest; a maniac world, Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes.
 * Alexander Smith, Unrest and Childhood.


 * Prostrate, dear Jesus, at Thy feet, A guilty rebel lies; And upwards, to Thy mercy-seat, Presumes to lift his eyes.
 * Samuel Stennett, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 448.


 * A pleasant virtue, extreme penance to an extreme course; Also pleasant, when God is delivering me. Pleasant, the carousal that hinders not mental exertion; Also pleasant, to drink together about horns.
 * Taliesin, Aduvyneu Taliesin as translated by W. F. Skene (1858).


 * 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.
 * Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men (1946).


 * One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.
 * Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time.