Penance Quotes

“When it was over, she gathered him in her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life.
That she had wanted to be dead all those years while her brother had been alive. That had been her sin.
And this was her penance.
Wanting to live when everyone else seemed dead.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“Holy Crap,' Carolli said. 'You shot Jesus. That's gonna take a lot of Hail Marys.”
― Janet Evanovich, Seven Up

“To properly do penance one must express contrition for one’s sins and perform acts to repair the damage caused by those transgressions. It is only when those acts are complete that the slate can truly be wiped clean and amnesty gives way to a new beginning.”
― Emily Thorne

“In the end there is nothing to be done but to state clearly what has been done, without shame or regret, and say: Here I am, and this is what I am. Now deal with me as you see fit. That is your right. Mine is to stand by the act, and pay the price.

You do what you must do, and pay for it. So in the end all things are simple.”
― Ellis Peters, Brother Cadfael's Penance

“His laws once broken, His justice and the very nature of those laws bring the immutable retribution; but if we turn penitently to Him, He enables us to bear our punishment with a meek and docile heart, ‘for His mercy endureth forever.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell

“The vast world rainless, one may bid adieu
To charity and penance.”
― Tiruvalluvar, Kural

“I hope I am not for the killing, Anselmo was thinking. I think that after the war there will have to be some great penance done for the killing. If we no longer have religion after the war then I think there must be some form of civic penance organized that all may be cleansed from the killing or else we will never have a true and human basis for living. The killing is necessary, I know, but still the doing of it is very bad for a man and I think that, after all this is over and we have won the war, there must be a penance of some kind for the cleansing of us all.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“You put a hard question on the virtue of discipline. What you say is true: I do value it—and I think that you do too—more than for its earthly fruit, proficiency. I think that one can give only a metaphysical ground for this evaluation; but the variety of metaphysics which gave an answer to your question has been very great, the metaphysics themselves very disparate: the bhagavad gita, Ecclesiastes, the Stoa, the beginning of the Laws, Hugo of St Victor, St Thomas, John of the Cross, Spinoza. This very great disparity suggests that the fact that discipline is good for the soul is more fundamental than any of the grounds given for its goodness. I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small but precious measure of freedom from the accidents of incarnation, and charity, and that detachment which preserves the world which it renounces. I believe that through discipline we can learn to preserve what is essential to our happiness in more and more adverse circumstances, and to abandon with simplicity what would else have seemed to us indispensable; that we come a little to see the world without the gross distortion of personal desire, and in seeing it so, accept more easily our earthly privation and its earthly horror—But because I believe that the reward of discipline is greater than its immediate objective, I would not have you think that discipline without objective is possible: in its nature discipline involves the subjection of the soul to some perhaps minor end; and that end must be real, if the discipline is not to be factitious. Therefore I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war, and personal hardship, and even the need for subsistence, ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude, for only through them can we attain to the least detachment; and only so can we know peace.”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer

“In all outward aspects he remained patient and mild now, not caring even to speak against heretics; he knew that he was likely to die soon enough, but the prospect of death was not an unwelcome one (...). More retained his hair shirt as he dwelled in his chamber, and is reported to have whipped himself for penitence; he fasted on the appointed days, sang hymns and prayed both day and night.”
― Ackroyd Peter

“There's a price for absolution on this planet, and it's called penance.”
― Spider Robinson, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

“My penance for barely being present in the world, not the world between the pages of books, or the layered atmosphere of my own mind, but the world that is real to others”
― Patti Smith, M Train

“It seems to me that although they have a respectable sales pitch, this business of a priest having the power to let bygones be bygones and grant us absolution from our scandals is all just one gigantic scam to con loads of money off a haunted and gullible public.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“No penance could be more terrible than this. Her very heart was dead.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“You men that be known from these others by your Christian profession. Take heed, you bear in mind the piety you owe unto your country and unto your fellow countrymen, whose slaughter by the treachery of the Payneham shall be unto your disgrace everlasting. Unless you press hardily forward to defend them. Fight therefore for your country, and if it be that death overtake you, suffer it willingly for your country’s sake. For death itself is victory, and a healing unto the soul. In as much as he that shall have died for his brethren offers himself as a living sacrifice unto God, nor is it doubtful that herein he follows in the footsteps of Christ, who distained not to lay down his own soul for his breatharian. Who therefore amongst you shall be slain in this battle, unto him shall that death be as full penance and absolution of all his sins, if so be he receive it willingly on this way.”
― Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain

“The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an easy and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee. We are more distinctly conscious that rude penances are out of the question for gentlemen in an enlightened age, and that mortal sin is not incompatible with an appetite for muffins.”
― George Eliot, Adam Bede

“Gnan (knowledge) is a light. If you do penance after attaining that light, then you will attain liberation (moksha). And with this agnan tapa (penance in the absence of Self-Knowledge) you will acquire the body. The reward of mental penance is worldly in nature. One will receive the fruit for enduring the heat of the penance.”
― Dada Bhagwan, Simple & Effective Science for Self Realization

“Be cautious in this Kaliyug (current time era). Endure the penance that naturally presents itself to you; do not create penance that you are not faced with.”
― Dada Bhagwan, Simple & Effective Science for Self Realization

“Renounce (tyaag) if it is in your prakruti (inherent nature). Do penance (tapa) if it is in your prakruti. Chant (japa) if it is in your prakruti. But except for the attainment of the Self, everything else is a waste.”
― Dada Bhagwan, Simple & Effective Science for Self Realization

“If there are vishayas (objects of sense pleasure) in the mind, they are all vishayas of the pudgal (Complex of intake and output; body complex). But when the inner intent does not spoil, it is called penance (tapa).”
― Dada Bhagwan, Simple & Effective Science for Self Realization

“Whatever consolation you accept, that much penance will be deficient.”
― Dada Bhagwan, Simple & Effective Science for Self Realization

“Divide’ a non-likable number with penance, then the answer will be ‘zero’.”
― Dada Bhagwan, Simple & Effective Science for Self Realization

“Indian life is not without conflicts, and without indian life, there is no moksha (ultimate liberation). On the extreme limits of these conflicts lies Moksha (liberation).”
― Dada Bhagwan, Simple & Effective Science for Self Realization

“The result of external penance and renunciation is worldly life, meaning that one acquires material pleasures and gradually one even attains the path to liberation. However, there is no liberation without Knowledge of the Self (Atma Gnan).”
― Dada Bhagwan

“I was raised a Roman Catholic, but it was the kind of domesticated Catholicism that focused mostly on the length of your skirt rather than, say, the depth of your penitential observance”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Imagination is ruler of darkness, twisting and racking one’s mind until it succumbs to the will of the master.”
― H.C. Townes

“He would accept: Ethan deserved whatever he asked for. Rob would lose his virginity in exchange for a lack of a criminal record. It wasn't the way he'd imagined it would happen with a hypothetical prime boy in college, but there was no way around it. Ethan had every right to hate him and it was time to pay”
― K.A. Merikan, Not Like Other Boys

“Some mistakes require a price before freedom

-The Penance (sequel to 'The Catalyst', coming soon)”
― Selin Senol-Akin

“He’d known from the moment he started making it that it was more than just a special gift for his granddaughter. He accepted that it was a penance for failing to get one for Naomi, a subconscious motive buried in so shallow a grave that he could see the bones below with little effort.”
― Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata

“...pues se puede sentir pena por una casa o por un lugar.
Y más por una casa y un lugar que tanto significaron para mí en un tiempo y que aún seguían significándolo como comprobé al regresar a ellos después de años sin verlos.”
― Julio Llamazares, Vagalume

“How is a call to change named shame,
named penance, named chastisement?

How does one say

what if

without reproach?”
― Claudia Rankine, Just Us: An American Conversation