Religious Behaviour And Experience

"When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, "Repent," he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance."

"When the scourge Inexorable, and the torturing hour Calls us to penance."

"The intellect of one who sins is not destroyed (as some of you think), just as the physical size of the moon does not diminish, but only its light. Through repentance a man regains his true splendor, just as the moon after the period of waning clothes itself once more in its full light."

"They cling to deceit;"

"The godly grief of repentance and the concern of inwardness must above all not be confused with impatience. Experience teaches that to repent at once is not always even the right time to repent, because in this moment of haste, when the engaged thoughts and various passions are still busily in motion or at least tensed in the relaxation, repentance can so easily be mistaken about what really should be repented, can so easily confuse itself with the opposite: with momentary remorse, that is, with impatience; with a painful, tormentingly worldly grief, that is, with impatience. But impatience, however long it continues to rage, however darkened the mind becomes, never becomes repentance; its weeping, however convulsed with sobs, never becomes the weeping of repentance; its tears are as devoid of beneficent fruitfulness as clouds without ran, as a spasmodic shower. But if a person incurred some greater guilt but also improved and year by year steadily made progress in the good, it is certain that year after year, with greater inwardness-all in proportion to his progress in the greater inwardness-he will repent of that guilt from which he year after year distances himself in the temporal sense. It is indeed true that guilt must stand vividly before a person if he is truly to repent, but momentary repentance is very dubious and is not to be hoped for at all simply because it perhaps is not the deep inwardness of concern that sets forth the guilt so vividly, but only a momentary feeling. Then regret is selfish, sensuous, sensuously powerful in the moment, inflamed in expression, impatient in the most contradictory overstatements-and for this very reason it is not repentance."

"The manic lover does not love his beloved as much as God loves the repentant soul."

"It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending."

"Repentance makes virtues almost of the very vices of the penitent sinner."

"REPENTANCE, n. The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment. It is usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not inconsistent with continuity of sin."

"If someone who is wicked repents, that person’s former wickedness will not bring condemnation."

"O ye powers that search The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts, If I have done amiss, impute it not! The best may err, but you are good."

"The 'I', the 'self' of the child of God, is born in the midst of the ruins of repented idolatry."

"Cave ne quidquam incipias, quod post pœniteat."

"Der Wahn ist kurtz, die Reu ist lang."

"Chacun s'égare, et le moins imprudent, Est celui-là qui plus tôt se repent."

"Self-loathing is a natural and a necessary consequence of those intellectual views of self that are implied in repentance."

"He [Cato] used to say that in all his life he never repented but of three things. The first was that he had trusted a woman with a secret; the second that he had gone by sea when he might have gone by land; and the third, that he had passed one day without having a will by him."

"Repentance ... implies a conviction, that God is wholly right, and the sinner wholly wrong, and a thorough and hearty abandonment of all excuses and apologies for sin. It implies an entire and universal acquittal of God from every shade and degree of blame, a thorough taking of the entire blame of sin to self. It implies a deep and thorough abasement of self in the dust, a crying out of soul against self, and a most sincere and universal, intellectual, and hearty exaltation of God."

"Woman, amends may never come too late."

"O that we would therefore, while we are on this side of the grave, make our peace with God! Tomorrow may be our dying day; let this be our repenting day."

"Oh, the air is sultry and pregnant with lightning. And therefore we call to our deluded brothers: Repent, repent, the Kingdom of the Lord is at hand!"

"Capitalism is presumably the first case of a blaming, rather than a repenting cult. ... An enormous feeling of guilt not itself knowing how to repent, grasps at the cult, not in order to repent for this guilt, but to make it universal, to hammer it into consciousness and finally and above all to include God himself in this guilt."

"Sin. Sin, Sin. You're all sinners. You're all doomed to perdition. You're all goin' to the painful, stinkin', scaldin', everlastin' tortures of a fiery hell, created by God for sinners, unless, unless, unless you repent."

"To sigh, yet not recede; to grieve, yet not repent!"

"The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom, is—to die."

"The indulgence of self-forgiving is far less vicious than the blindness of self-righteousness which is not aware of aught in the self that needs forgiving."

"This is what the LORD says: "If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve me; if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them.""

"Μετανοεῖτε, ἤγγικεν γὰρ ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν."

"Repentance is as absolute a condition of the covenant of grace as faith; and as necessary to be performed as that … not only a sorrow for sins past, but (what is a natural consequence of such sorrow, if it be real) a turning from them into a new and contrary life. … Repentance is an hearty sorrow for our past misdeeds, AND a sincere resolution and endeavour, to the utmost of our power, to conform all our actions to the law of God. So that repentance does not consist in one single act of sorrow, (though that being the first and leading act gives denomination to the whole,) but in "doing works meet for repentance" in a sincere obedience to the law of Christ, the remainder of our lives."

"Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons."

"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins."

"They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

"Sinners and those who do not confess due to shame deliver their soul unto death. They suffer in a similar fashion to those who are ill, who do not run to the doctors because of shame."

"The beauty of repentance is that it transforms shame into wisdom, sin into experience."

"Of my past wanderings the sole fruit is shame, And deep repentance, of the knowledge born That all we value in this world is naught."

"What then? what rests? Try what repentance can: what can it not? Yet what can it when one cannot repent? O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul, that struggling to be free Art more engag'd!"

"And wet his grave with my repentant tears."

"When reason’s voice, Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked The nations; and mankind perceive that vice Is discord, war and misery; that virtue Is peace and happiness and harmony; When man’s maturer nature shall disdain The playthings of its childhood; -kingly glare Will lose its power to dazzle, its authority Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood’s trade Shall be as hateful and unprofitable As that of truth is now."

"Abba Moses asked Abba Silvanus, "Can a man lay a new foundation every day?" The old man said, "If he works hard, he can lay a new foundation at every moment.""

"Amid the roses, fierce Repentance rears Her snaky crest; a quick-returning pang Shoots through the conscious heart."

"He comes never late who comes repentant."

"D'uomo è il fallir, ma dal malvagio il buono Scerne il dolor del fallo."

"I do not buy repentance at so heavy a cost as a thousand drachmæ."

"When iron scourge, and tort'ring hour The bad affright, afflict the best."

"Slow me down, Lord! Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time. Give me, amidst the confusion of my day, the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of singing streams that live in my memory. Teach me the art of taking minute vacations … of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to read a few lines from a good book. Remind me each day of the fable of the hare and the tortoise, that I may know that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than measuring its speed. Let me look upward into the branches of the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well. Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life's enduring values that I may grow toward the stars of my greater destiny."

"O God, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small."

"I asked God for strength, that I might achieve I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey … I asked for health, that I might do greater things I was given infirmity, that I might do better things … I asked for riches, that I might be happy I was given poverty, that I might be wise … I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God … I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life I was given life that I might enjoy all things … I got nothing that I asked for—but everything I had hoped for Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am, among all men, most richly blessed."

"I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean [i.e., comport] ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation."

"May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be ever at your back May the Good Lord keep you in the hollow of His hand. May your heart be as warm as your hearthstone. And when you come to die may the wail of the poor be the only sorrow you'll leave behind. May God bless you always."

"God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed; Give me courage to change things which must be changed; And the wisdom to distinguish one from the other."