“When I confessed my sins, I labored to remember the time when and the place where I committed them.”

“When I lump all my sins together and confess them en masse, I neglect to feel the pain or embarrassment or shame that should be elicited in me.”

“When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places. That’s the way I remember them, heading for an exit.”

“When I come before these men I do not have to explain that we are all sinners. They have committed every sin there is. All I have to tell them is that I, too, am a sinner.”

“I have committed many sins in my life. But stealing money from the government, from the people, is not one of them.”

“To confess your sins to God is not to tell God anything God doesn't already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“I don't see why I should bow my head when I could hold it high, or place it in the hands of my enemies when I can defeat them.”

“Some there are who are much more ashamed of confessing a sin than of committing it.”

“I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
When they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
My treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
My life when they murder by means of my
Hands, my death when they live me.”

“For it still seemed to me “that it is not we who sin, but some other nature sinned in us.” And it gratified my pride to be beyond blame, and when I did anything wrong not to have to confess that I had done wrong. … I loved to excuse my soul and to accuse something else inside me (I knew not what) but which was not I. But, assuredly, it was I, and it was my impiety that had divided me against myself. That sin then was all the more incurable because I did not deem myself a sinner.”