53 Confession Quotes To Reflect

In life, moments of confession hold a unique power to foster self-awareness, sincerity, and connection. Whether it's a heartfelt admission of love, an acknowledgment of personal flaws, or sharing a long-held secret, the act of confessing can be both liberating and transformative. In this curated collection, we've gathered 53 of the most poignant and reflective confession quotes to inspire introspection and honesty. Join us as we explore these timeless words of wisdom that touch upon the essence of what it means to be human.

1. “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.” - George Washington

2. “Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.” - Fulton J. Sheen

3. “But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius.” - Truman Capote

4. “I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb - and I'm not blonde either.” - Dolly Parton

5. “We need repentance. You see, repentance is not only going to a priest and confessing. We must free ourselves from the obsession of thoughts. We fall many times during our life, and it is absolutely necessary to reveal everything [in Confession] to a priest who is a witness to our repentance.Repentance is the renewal of life. This means we must free ourselves from all our negative traits and turn toward absolute good. No sin is unforgivable except the sin of unrepentance.” - Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

6. “And I didn't choose it, Kat. I chose you.” - Ally Carter

7. “Wait for that wisest of all counselores, Time.” - Pericles

8. “The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness and sanctification center, where flawed people place their faith in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he designed.” - Paul David Tripp

9. “Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!” - Edgar Allan Poe

10. “I waited for him to say something more, but he was quiet."Was there something you wanted?" I asked.He didn't answer right away, but I could feel him struggling, so I waited."If I asked you something, would you tell me the truth?"It was my turn to hesitate. "I don't know everything," I hedged."You would know this. When we were walking... me and Jeb... he was telling me some things. Things he thought, but I don't know if he's right."Melanie was suddenly very in my head.Jamie's whisper was hard to hear, quieter than my breathing. "Uncle Jeb thinks that Melanie might still be alive. Inside there with you, I mean." Melanie sighed.I said nothing to either of them."I didn't know that could happen. Does that happen?" His voice broke and I could hear that he was fighting tears. He was not a boy to cry, and here I'd grieved him this deeply twice in one day. A pain pierced through the general region of my chest."Does it, Wanda?""Why won't you answer me?" Jamie was really crying now but trying to muffle the sound.I crawled off the bed, squeezing into the hard space between the mattress and the mat, and threw my arm over his shaking chest. I leaned my head against his hair and felt his tears, warm on my neck."Is Melanie still alive, Wanda? Please?"He was probably a tool. The old man could have sent him just for this, Jeb was smart enough to see how easily Jamie broke through my defenses.Jamie's body shook beside me. Melanie cried. She battered ineffectually at my control.But I couldn't blame this on Melanie if it turned out to be a huge mistake. I knew who was speaking now."She promised she would come back, didn't she?" I murmured. "Would Melanie break a promise to you?"Jamie slid his arms around my waist and clung to me for a long time. After a few minutes, he whispered. "Love you, Mel.""She loves you, too. She's so happy that you're here and safe."He was silent long enough for the tears on my skin to dry, leaving a fine, salty dust behind.” - Stephenie Meyer

11. “Never do anything that you can't admit doing, because if you are that ashamed of whatever it is, it's probably wrong.” - Ashly Lorenzana

12. “Why can't you say it?" I hardened my voice. "Because I'm telling you, you never have. I'd have remembered."He stared at me with disbelief. [...]"Love you? Of course I love you. Baby, I fucking worship you.” - Josh Lanyon

13. “I made myself platinum, but I was born a dirty blonde.” - Claudia Shear

14. “You have made us to be free,But we crave the cheap comforts of our chains. You have made us to serve others,But we have eyes only for ourselves. You have made us to love,But we are inflamed with lust. You provide, that we may be generous,But we greedily hoard as if your well will run dry. You forgive time and again,But we hold fast to the sins of others. You offer light for our path,But we insist on making our own way. You are the God who saves.Lord, save us from ourselves. In your great mercy, restore and heal us, and grant us your peace.” - Ecclesia Catholica

15. “I like to dissect girls. Did you know I'm utterly insane?” - Bret Easton Ellis

16. “Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence.” - Dorothy Dix

17. “Confession is an act of violence against the unoffending.” - Tom Stoppard

18. “I am asking you to marry me because I love you,” he said, “because I cannot imagine living my life without you. I want to see your face in the morning, and then at night, and a hundred times in between. I want to grow old with you, I want to laugh with you, and I want to sigh to my friends about how managing you are, all the while secretly knowing I am the luckiest man in town.”“What?” she demanded.He shrugged. “A man’s got to keep up appearances. I’ll be universally detested if everyone realizes how perfect you are.” - Julia Quinn

19. “No one has expressed what is needed better than Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the London-based al-Arabiya news channel. One of the best-known and most respected Arab journalists working today, he wrote the following, in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (September 6, 2004), after a series of violent incidents involving Muslim extremist groups from Chechnya to Saudi Arabia to Iraq: "Self-cure starts with self-realization and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture... The mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life. Then came the neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry... We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women. We cannot redeem our extremist youth, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to reinvent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.” - Thomas L. Friedman

20. “Yours was the hand that threw him. You meant for him to die.”His chains chinked softly. “I seldom fling children from towers to improve their health. Yes, I meant for him to die.” - George R.R. Martin

21. “The last confession he heard was from a young hysterical girl who seemed to him to be making up a chain of small sins so that she could imagine herself full of remorse.” - Morley Callaghan

22. “A man does not have to feel less than human to realize his sin; oppositely, he has to realize that he gets no special vindication for his sin.” - Criss Jami

23. “Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.” - George Orwell

24. “Every day my conscience makes confession relying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence.” - St. Augustine of Hippo

25. “They sell courage of a sort in the taverns. And another sort, though not for sale, a man can find in the confessional. Try the alehouses and the churches, Hugh. In either a man can be quiet and think.” - Ellis Peters

26. “I love you.”I stared stupidly at him. Was he joking again, reciting another line from my story? I didn’t remember writing this.He leaned in and kissed me. I didn’t respond for a few seconds. My mind lagged behind what my body was feeling.“Say it,” he whispered against my lips. “I know this is hard for you. Tell me.”“I love you.” Hearing my own words, I gasped at the rush of emotion.He put his hands on either side of my jaw and took my mouth with his.” - Jennifer Echols

27. “Hey, Ethan.""Yeah?""Remember the Twinkie on the bus? The one I gave you in second grade, the day we met?""The one you found on the floor and gave me without telling me? Nice."He grinned and shot the ball. "It never really fell on the floor. I made that part up.” - Kami Garcia

28. “Before I could reply, he had picked me up, literally swept me off my feet, and kissed me. And afterwards, when I tried to speak, he silenced me in much the same manner. It was a shock (but not at all distasteful) to be so caught up. Later - when he at last set me down - he handled me more gently. He took of my glasses and told me that he loved me.” - Jennifer Paynter

29. “Dauntless,' he says. 'I was born for Abnegation. I was planning on leaving Dauntless, and becoming factionless. But then I met her, and...I felt like maybe I could make something more of my decision.' Her. For a moment, it's like I'm looking at a different person, sitting in Tobias's skin, one whose life is not as simple as I thought. He wanted to leave Dauntless, but he stayed because of me. He never told me that.” - Veronica Roth

30. “Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution...Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

31. “In confession occurs the breakthrough of the Cross. The root of all sin is pride, superbia. I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God. Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride...In the deep mental and physical pain of humiliation before a brother - which means, before God - we experience the Cross of Jesus as our rescue and salvation. The old man dies, but it is God who has conquered him. Now we share in the resurrection of Christ and eternal life.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

32. “Christ became our Brother in order to help us. Through him our brother has become Christ for us in the power and authority of the commission Christ has given him. Our brother stands before us the sign of the truth and the grace of God. He has been given to us to help us. He hears the confession of our sins in Christ's stead and he forgives our sins in Christ's name. He keeps the secret of our confession as God keeps it. When I go to my brother to confess, I am going to God.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

33. “You’re just going to have your fiancé as your chaperone, and he isn’t allowed to touch. And you, Mrs. Gavarreen will remain untouchable, until the moment you say, I do.” - Lindsay Delagair

34. “I feel like, I was going somehow with my life, holding myself together and then these blasts happened, and then suddenly I was paralyzed. I was not able to move, or to even hold myself intact. As if like I was fallen into this unconscious state, of eternal sleep. When I was asleep, somebody came and disassembled me into thousands of pieces and then hurriedly put me back together in a second, losing some of my pieces on the ground, or placing some of them incorrectly – you know, that kind of feeling” “How do you feel?” She added. Apparently, she was asking me back everything.“I’m still not able to sleep on her side of the bed” I faked a smile.” - Bhavya Kaushik

35. “—And you completely blow me away and rip my world up and everything else, and then you go back to ignoring me.” “I blew you away?” I squeak out before I can stop myself. He stares at me steadily. “You blew everything away.” - Lauren Oliver

36. “It's easier to say, "I don't remember" when you're wrong.” - Anthony Liccione

37. “She tried to think of what to say to make it all better again, or at least the way it was before she'd made her confession, though she didn't regret having confessed. Perhaps that was what had been wrong with her all along. Now that the lie wasn't between them anymore, maybe she could love him again.” - Cheryl Strayed

38. “He was my comfort. He was my solace. Nearly everything I had faced in my young life, I had gotten through because of him, because he was always there for me, with soft words and a tender heart.-Kiera Allen” - S.C. Stephens

39. “I too was pinched off from a piece of clay, I too modeled by omnipotence and flankedby things too wonderful for me” - Bryana Johnson

40. “If there was anything I learned from John the Baptist, it was that the sooner you confess a mistake, the quicker you can get on to making new and better mistakes.” - Christopher Moore

41. “...telling doesn't help me - it helps you. As Wilde says, It is the confession, not the priest, that gives absolution...” - John Geddes

42. “...you merely look at me and I want to confess, but don't - I've buried my heart under the floor boards, but you always dig it up...” - John Geddes

43. “I love you. You’re mine. I’ll kill any bastard who tries to take you from me.” - Samantha Young

44. “Pero si la elección que tengo que tomar, se reduce a elegir entre tú o yo, te escojo a ti. Siempre te he escogido.” - Becca Fitzpatrick

45. “Cristianno Gabbana jamás pedía disculpas y, sin embargo, allí estaba, haciéndolo. En aquel momento parecía tan débil, tan perdido, que mis ojos le miraron con ternura. Me sentía una privilegiada porque me dejase ver aquella parte de él.” - Alessandra Neymar

46. “I love you,” she said, speaking clearly so that there might be no confusion. “I love you utterly and completely. I love your elegant hands and the way you smile with only one side of your mouth — when you smile at all — and I love how grave your eyes are. I love that you let me invade your house with nearly my entire family and yours, and never even turned a hair. I love that you made love to me when I asked you, purely for politeness’ sake, and I love that you got mad at me later and made me make love to you. I love that you let Her Grace and her puppies construct a nest out of your shirts in your dressing room. I love that you’ve spent years selflessly saving people in St. Giles — although I want you to stop right now. I love that you killed a man for me, even if I’m still mad at you about it. I love that you saved my letters before we even knew each other well, and I love the curt, overly serious letters you wrote to me in return.”She looked at him very seriously. “I love you, Godric St. John, and now I’m breaking my word. I will not leave you. You may either come with me to Laurelwood or I’ll stay here with you in your musty old house in London and drive you mad with all my talking and relatives and… and exotic sexual positions until you break down and love me back, for I’m warning you that I’m not giving up until you love me and we’re a happy family with dozens of children.”She paused at that point because she’d run out of breath and looked at him.His face had gone still and for a moment her heart sank and she had to fortify herself for a battle.But then his mouth quirked like that and he said, “Exotic sexual positions?”And she knew even before he said anything else that it was all going to be fine—more than fine. It was going to be wonderful.” - Elizabeth Hoyt

47. “I’d think about you and how I didn’t want us to end. It’s complicated…’Max still held her, his thumbs stroking the spot on her wrists where her pulse was thundering away. ‘Uncomplicate it then. Did you miss me?’‘Of course I did! I’ve missed you so much, I hurt from it.’Then, and only then, did Max release her but it was only so Neve could wind her arms around his neck because they were kissing. She couldn’t say who leaned in first, but all of a sudden there was the familiar but shocking touch of lips on lips.” - Sarra Manning

48. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Jess,” he said as a sob shuddered through him. “Because I am a damned fool. Fuck! Ihave everything I want right in front of me, I love you so damned much I can’t think straight, and then it’s like…I don’tknow, like I’m so afraid of losing you, that I keep pushing you away so maybe I’ll stop caring as much and then it won’t hurt as bad if I do lose you. It’s so fucking twisted even I don’t understand it.” - M.L. Rhodes

49. “The weapons of divine justice are blunted by the confession and sorrow of the offender.” - Dante

50. “It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

51. “You’re beautiful, Finnie, but by the gods you have never been more beautiful than you are right now, spread before me, wrapped in my wool and filled with me” - Kristen Ashley

52. “Since it is likely that, being men, they would sin every day, St. Paul consoles his hearers by saying ‘renew yourselves’ from day to day. This is what we do with houses: we keep constantly repairing them as they wear old. You should do the same thing to yourself. Have you sinned today? Have you made your soul old? Do not despair, do not despond, but renew your soul by repentance, and tears, and Confession, and by doing good things. And never cease doing this.” - John Chrysostom

53. “You speak as if you envied him.""And I do envy him, Emma. In one respect he is the object of my envy."Emma could say no more. They seemed to be within half a sentence of Harriet, and her immediate feeling was to avert the subject, if possible. She made her plan; she would speak of something totally different—the children in Brunswick Square; and she only waited for breath to begin, when Mr. Knightley startled her, by saying,"You will not ask me what is the point of envy.—You are determined, I see, to have no curiosity.—You are wise—but I cannot be wise. Emma, I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment.""Oh! then, don't speak it, don't speak it," she eagerly cried. "Take a little time, consider, do not commit yourself.""Thank you," said he, in an accent of deep mortification, and not another syllable followed.Emma could not bear to give him pain. He was wishing to confide in her—perhaps to consult her;—cost her what it would, she would listen. She might assist his resolution, or reconcile him to it; she might give just praise to Harriet, or, by representing to him his own independence, relieve him from that state of indecision, which must be more intolerable than any alternative to such a mind as his.—They had reached the house."You are going in, I suppose?" said he."No,"—replied Emma—quite confirmed by the depressed manner in which he still spoke—"I should like to take another turn. Mr. Perry is not gone." And, after proceeding a few steps, she added—"I stopped you ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you pain.—But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation—as a friend, indeed, you may command me.—I will hear whatever you like. I will tell you exactly what I think.""As a friend!"—repeated Mr. Knightley.—"Emma, that I fear is a word—No, I have no wish—Stay, yes, why should I hesitate?—I have gone too far already for concealment.—Emma, I accept your offer—Extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend.—Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?"He stopped in his earnestness to look the question, and the expression of his eyes overpowered her."My dearest Emma," said he, "for dearest you will always be, whatever the event of this hour's conversation, my dearest, most beloved Emma—tell me at once. Say 'No,' if it is to be said."—She could really say nothing.—"You are silent," he cried, with great animation; "absolutely silent! at present I ask no more."Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most prominent feeling."I cannot make speeches, Emma:" he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing.—"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.—You hear nothing but truth from me.—I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.—Bear with the truths I would tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have been a very indifferent lover.—But you understand me.—Yes, you see, you understand my feelings—and will return them if you can. At present, I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.” - Jane Austen