The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give.
The Fathers of the Church can well afford to preach the gospel of Christ. It contains nothing dangerous to the regime of authority and wealth; it stands for self-denial and self-abnegation, for penance and regret, and is absolutely inert in the face of every [in]dignity, every outrage imposed upon mankind.
Chaos is the penance for leisure.
Obedience is a penance of reason, and, on that account, a sacrifice more acceptable than all corporal penances and mortifications.
Golf - a young man's vice and an old man's penance.
Penance does not require hair shirts today; our neighbors are hair shirts.
It makes that a virtue which is not a virtue, and that a crime which is not a crime. Religion consists in a round of observances that have no relation whatever to natural goodness, but which rather exclude it by being a substitute for it. Penances and pilgrimages take the place of justice and mercy, benevolence and charity. Such a religion, so far from being a purifier, is the great corrupter of morals.
To do penance is to bewail the evil we have done, and to do no evil to bewail.
The surest, easiest, shortest way is the Eucharist
If you have the courage to imitate Mary Magdalene in her sins, have the courage to imitate her penance!
God prefers your health, and your obedience, to your penance.
We have very little, so we have nothing to be preoccupied with. The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have, the more free you are.
The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.
Living well has something to do with the spirituality of wholeheartedness, of seeing life more as a grace than as a penance, as time to be lived with eager expectation of its goodness, not in dread of its challenges.
And the only thing to do with a sin is to confess, do penance and then, after some kind of decent interval, ask for forgiveness.
I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.
Tapas is not a penance, it's a mental training to develop will power
No penance serves to renew them, no massive transfusions of trust. Why not even revenge can undo them, so twisted these vows and so crushed.
Solitude, I reflected, is the one deep necessity of the human spirit to which adequate recognition is never given in our codes. It is looked upon as a discipline or penance, but hardly ever as the indispensable, pleasant ingredient it is to ordinary life, and from this want of recognition come half our domestic troubles.
The best penance is to have patience with the sorrows God permits. A very good penance is to dedicate oneself to fulfill the duties of everyday with exactitude and to study and work with all our strength.
