A Quote by Stephen Dunn

A true inner world is often revealed by style and sensibility as much as by what appears to be confession.

Stephen Dunn

Quote Topics

Appears Confession Inner Inner World Much Often Revealed Sensibility Style True World

Quote Author

Stephen Dunn
American - Poet
Born: 1939

Confession heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon of sin, all hope consists in confession; in confession there is a chance for mercy.

Isidore of Seville

I begin with confession not in order to feel miserable, rather to call to mind a reality I often ignore. When I acknowledge where I stand before a perfect God, it restores the true state of the universe. Confession simply establishes the proper ground rules of creatures relating to their creator.

Philip Yancey

As Carl Jung once said, 'When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.' When our boys become adults, we become their inner situation. We become inner voices they often hear in their work, relationships and spiritual practice.

Michael Gurian

True virtue never appears so lovely as when it is most oppressed; and the divine excellency of real Christianity is never exhibited with such advantage as when under the greatest trials; then it is that true faith appears much more precious than gold, and upon this account is "found to praise and honour and glory.

Jonathan Edwards

... it is because sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of confession.

George Eliot

You devise ways to tell a story that complies with your sensibility. Style and method are really extensions of your present sensibility.

Aleksandar Hemon

True gospel authority, the authority to heal and renew things and people, is not finally found in a hierarchical office, a theological argument, a perfect law, or a rational explanation. The Crucified revealed to the world that the real power that changes people and the world is an inner authority that comes from people who have lost, let go, and are re-found on a new level.

Richard Rohr

The act of writing can be a form of release - a confession performs the same action: putting your inner life on the page or into the hands of a trusted person releases tensions and sheds light on what often seems hidden until spoken - or written.

Connie Nielsen

What appears in newspapers is often new but seldom true.

Patrick Kavanagh

A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession. A true man finds so much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks. The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces.

Mary Antin

John's baptism...was a radical act of individual commitment to belong to the true people of God, based on personal confession and repentance... This is one of the main reasons that I do not believe in baptizing infants, who cannot make this personal commitment or confession or repentance. John's baptism was an assault on the very assumptions that give rise to much infant baptism.

John Piper

There was a saying that a man's true character was revealed in defeat. I thought it was also revealed in victory.

Alison Goodman

Look out sinners because if you do not go to confession, confession will come to you. The Catholic Church in northern England has launched a mobile confession unit called the Mercy Bus.

Peter Sagal

Your success and usefulness in the world is going to be measured by your confession and by the tenacity with which you "hold fast" that confession under all circumstances.