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.
Penance does not require hair shirts today; our neighbors are hair shirts.
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.
Golf - a young man's vice and an old man's penance.
If you have the courage to imitate Mary Magdalene in her sins, have the courage to imitate her 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.
To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves.
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.
Tapas is not a penance, it's a mental training to develop will power
Obedience is a penance of reason, and, on that account, a sacrifice more acceptable than all corporal penances and mortifications.
The safest and most suitable form of penance seems to be that which causes pain in the flesh but does not penetrate to the bones, that is, which causes suffering but not sickness.
The surest, easiest, shortest way is the Eucharist
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.
God prefers your health, and your obedience, to your penance.
No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure
The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.
He who confesses magic or sorcery shall do penance for the time of murder, and shall be treated in the same manner as he who convicts himself of this sin.
When it was over, she gathered him in her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life. That she had wanted to be dead all those years while her brother had been alive. That had been her sin. And this was her penance. Wanting to live when everyone else seemed dead.
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.