66 Confession Quotes To Reflect

Confessions have a way of bringing out our deepest emotions, offering clarity, and sometimes even healing. Whether whispered in privacy or spoken aloud, these admissions resonate with the raw and honest parts of our human experience. In this post, we've carefully selected a compilation of 66 profound confession quotes to help you reflect on the power of unveiling truths. Each quote is an invitation to explore the depths of honesty and vulnerability, providing insights that might inspire your own moments of self-disclosure. Get ready to embark on a journey through words that capture the essence of what it means to confess.

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. “You go to someone and you think, 'I'll tell him this.' But why? The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that's why you feel awful later--you've relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it's not better, it's worse---the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.” - Philip Roth

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. “People who talk about their dreams are actually trying to tell you things about themselves they’d never admit in normal conversation.” - Chuck Klosterman

10. “A true confession: I believe in a soluble fish.” - Charles Simic

11. “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

12. “In one long glorious acknowledgment of failure, he laid himself bare before God.” - John Grisham

13. “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

14. “It is a bad indication when, in any period, men will so exalt their confessions that they force the Scriptures to a secondary importance, illustrated in one era, when as Tulloch remarks: 'Scripture as a witness, disappeared behind the Augsburg Confession" ...No decrees of councils; no ordinances of synods; no "standard" of doctrines; no creed or confession, is to be urged as authority in forming the opinions of men. They may be valuable for some purposes, but not for this; they may be referred to as interesting parts of history, but not to form the faith of Christians; they may be used in the church to express its belief, not to form it.” - L.S. Chafer

15. “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

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

17. “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

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

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

20. “I'm crazy, Zed.' There, I'd admitted it.'Uh-huh. And I'm crazy too -about you.” - Joss Stirling

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

22. “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

23. “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

24. “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

25. “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

26. “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

27. “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

28. “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

29. “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

30. “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

31. “I love you, Louise Downe McCord. You drive me absolutely crazy sometimes, and this is one of those times, but I love you.” - Maggie Osborne

32. “I think I fell in love with you that amazing night on the kitchen floor. Or maybe it was the evening you stepped up and set my arm." Testing things, he reached for her hand, and, to his joy, she glared, but she let him take it. "Or maybe the night I knew I loved you was when I kissed you under the mistletoe on Christmas Eve. It's hard to say because I look at you now and it seems to me there's never been a time when I didn't love you.” - Maggie Osborne

33. “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

34. “You know... confessing to avoid prosecution is a time-honored strategy.I don't want to be honored with time. Honor me with "slap-on-the-wrist," or maybe even "scot free.” - Howard Tayler

35. “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

36. “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

37. “I can't bring myself to trust you. But even if you were to betray me, and even if you were to become my enemy... would it be okay for me to love? Could you... let me love you?” - Ryohgo Narita

38. “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

39. “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

40. “I was baptized one foggy afternoon about four o'clock. I couldn't think of any names I particularly wanted, so I kept my old name. I was alone with the fat priest; it was all very quickly and formally done, while someone at a children's service muttered in another chapel. Then we shook hands and I went off to a salmon tea, and the dog which had been sick again on the mat. Before that I had made a general confession to another priest: it was like a life photographed as it came to mind, without any order, full of gaps, giving at best a general impression. I couldn't help feeling all the way to the newspaper office, past the Post Office, the Moroccan café, the ancient whore, that I had got somewhere new by way of memories I hadn't known I possessed. I had taken up the thread of life from very far back, from as far back as innocence.” - Graham Greene

41. “—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

42. “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

43. “She rubs my back and sighs."Jesus Abby, I'm so sorry. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're still hung up on him. Big time.” - Annie Brewer

44. “We will never be cleansed until we confess we are dirty. And we will never be able to wash the feet of those who have hurt us until we allow Jesus, the one we have hurt, to wash ours.” - Max Lucado

45. “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

46. “You alone in Europe are not ancient oh Christianity The most modern European is you Pope Pius X And you whom the windows observe shame keeps youFrom entering a church and confessing this morning You read the prospectuses the catalogues the billboards that sing aloud That's the poetry this morning and for the prose there are the newspapersThere are the 25 centime serials full of murder mysteries Portraits of great men and a thousand different headlines("Zone")” - Guillaume Apollinaire

47. “God's Word teaches a very hard, disturbing truth. Those who neglect the poor and the oppressed are really not God's people at all—no matter how frequently they practice their religious rituals nor how orthodox are their creeds and confessions.” - Ronald J. Sider

48. “Confession is a difficult Discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin. We cannot bear to reveal our failures and shortcomings to others. We imagine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heaven. Therefore, we hide ourselves from one another and live in veiled lies and hypocrisy.But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinners, we are freed to hear the unconditional call of God's love and to confess our needs openly before our brothers and sisters. We know we are not alone in our sin. The fear and pride that cling to us like barnacles cling to others also. We are sinners together. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied, but transformed.” - Richard J. Foster

49. “The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.” - Saint Augustine of Hippo

50. “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

51. “Además, confesar un hecho es dejar de ser el actor para ser el testigo, para ser alguien que lo mira y lo narra y que ya no lo ejecutó.” - Jorge Luis Borges

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

53. “...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

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

55. “So what do you have to confess now?"I don't know why I'm saying any of this, except that is the truth. "I'm confessing that I don't know if I'm ready for this.""What is 'this'?""Being open. Being hurt. Liking. Not being liked. Seeing the flicker on. Seeing the flicker off. Leaping. Falling. Crashing.” - David Levithan

56. “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

57. “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

58. “You didn’t want to put in the work to make us happen.”It was true. I had been so captivated by Duncan, so enamored, so infatuated, that I let his life drown mine for two years. I went along, and when I got tired of it, tired of it just being easy and comfortable and convenient but not love, I ended it. And that was why I had the man in my lobby looking at me like there were still places for us to go. I had let him believe that he was my whole world, let him be everything, and then one day just stopped loving him and walked away. It was something I did, something I had always done—poured on the charm, made myself into the ideal partner, lover, friend, indispensable and irreplaceable, and then, when I got bored or tired or tapped out, instead of fighting, I just quit. It was wildly unfair, and the only people I didn’t do it with were my family. Even my friends complained that I was always around and then just gone. Nathan Qells” - Mary Calmes

59. “The devastation of his actions, his meanness, felt like bags of rancid trash heaped around him.” - Karen Kingsbury

60. “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

61. “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

62. “At the heart of God is the desire to give and to forgive. Because of this, he set into motion the entire redemptive process that culminated in the cross and was confirmed in the resurrection. The usual notion of what Jesus did on the cross was something like this: people were so bad and so mean and God was so angry with them that he could not forgive them unless somebody big enough took the rap for the whole lot of them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God’s great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it. This is why Jesus refused the customary painkiller when it was offered him. He wanted to be completely alert for this greatest work of redemption. In a deep and mysterious way he was preparing to take on the collective sin of the human race. Since Jesus lives in the eternal now, this work was not just for those around him, but he took in all the violence, all the fear, all the sin of all the past, all the present, and all the future. This was his highest and most holy work, the work that makes confession and the forgiveness of sins possible…Some seem to think that when Jesus shouted “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” it was a moment of weakness (Mark 15:34). Not at all. This was his moment of greatest triumph. Jesus, who had walked in constant communion with the Father, now became so totally identified with humankind that he was the actual embodiment of sin. As Paul writes, “he made him to be sin who knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus succeeded in taking into himself all of the dark powers of this present evil age and defeated every one of them by the light of his presence. He accomplished such a total identification with the sin of the race that he experienced the abandonment of God. Only in that way could he redeem sin. It was indeed his moment of greatest triumph. Having accomplished this greatest of all his works, Jesus then took refreshment. “It is finished,” he announced. That is, this great work of redemption was completed. He could feel the last dregs of the misery of humankind flow through him and into the care of the Father. The last twinges of evil, hostility, anger, and fear drained out of him, and he was able to turn again into the light of God’s presence. “It is finished.” The task is complete. Soon after, he was free to give up his spirit to the father. …Without the cross the Discipline of confession would be only psychologically therapeutic. But it is so much more. It involves and objective change in our relationship with God and a subjective change in us. It is a means of healing and transforming the inner spirit.” - Richard J. Foster

63. “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

64. “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

65. “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

66. “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