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Absolution Quotes

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Absolution Quotes

“Guilt is not an intrinsically helpful emotion for future decision-making. And often the spiral of guilt and shame can lead criminals to remain criminals. This idea was so intriguing to me, for personal reasons that should arlready be clear, that I later took it on for my undergraduate senior thesis. My paper, which I turned in six weeks early and for which I received an A, was titled "Remorse and Absolution: Peas in a Pod or Dangerous Bunkmates?”

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Book:Blood Sugar
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“You are reformed, you may be a better man, but you are not a different man. How can you convince yourself of such a thing when you are so conversant with the theology of your faith? From one end of this life to the other, you carry with you all that you have done. Absolution grants you forgiveness for it, but does not expunge the past. The man you were still lives within you, repressed by the man you have struggled to become.”

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Book:Brother Odd
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“I was tempted to tell the whole truth. But in moments when a confession was about to seep out, I stopped myself, because I knew it would never work like that. Admitting to killing the other three would only make the case that I killed Jason even stronger. So there was no point in trying to make that imaginary bargain with the world. Please, punish me for what I have done. And believe I did not do the thing you think I did. It was not an option.”

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Book:Blood Sugar
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“Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional -- to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. 'The detective story,' observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, 'is a tragedy with a happy ending.' A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presence of death.”

CrimeDetectivesMysteriesDetective StoriesAbsolutionInvestigations
Book:The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
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“I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.”

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Book:Letters to a Young Contrarian
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“Absolution is the washing away of sin. The promise of rebirth. And the chance to escape the transgressions of those who came before us. The best among us will learn from the mistakes of the past, while the rest seem doomed to repeat them. And then there are those who operate on the fringes of society, unburdened by the confines of morality and conscience. A ruthless breed of monsters whose deadliest weapon is their ability to hide in plain sight. If the people I've come to bring justice to cannot be bound by the quest for absolution, then neither will I.”

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Author:Emily Thorne
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“Omul este fiinta care aspira catre Arta prin vis. Unica si ultima lui implinire este aceea de a i se permite sa traiasca in launtrul propriului sau vis. (...) Insa exista si foarte multi oameni care nu-si pot gasi pacea niciodata. Visul lor personal este tulbure, plin de teroare, de resentiment fata de ceilalti ori fata de ei insisi. A-i face sa traiasca intr-o asemenea realitate ar echivala, pentru ei, cu o condamnare la pedepsele infernului. Un infern pe care fiecare il duce cu sine oriunde se invarte. Prin Arta, ei pot fi salvati de infern, dar nu vor cunoaste niciodata adevarul. De aceea trebuie lasati sa traiasca in interiorul lumii. Lumea insasi a fost intotdeauna si a ramas o fictiune a Artei, aparuta ca sa-i salveze intr-un fel pe condamnatii la infernul personal. Din cand in cand, prin moarte, acestia se recufunda in ei insisi, iar Arta, rabdatoare, ii aduce inapoi.”

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Book:Hesperus
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“It is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real presence, confession, absolution, - there is something sensible to grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.”

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Author:Lord Byron
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“There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses. Both the strong and the weak grasp at this alibi. The latter hide their malevolence under the virtue of obedience: they acted dishonorably because they had to obey orders. The strong, too, claim absolution by proclaiming themselves the chosen instrument of a higher power -- God, history, fate, nation, or humanity.”

HandsHumanityOrderStrongNationsPowerfulResponsibilityVirtueFateHigherWeakClaimsInstrumentsChosenObedienceImpulseLatterInclinationCravingHigher PowerQuestionableProclaimingAbsolutionMalevolence
Book:Bruce Lee: Artist of Life
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“I tell you, guilt dwells nowhere but in the eyes of the accuser. This men know even as they deny it, which is why they so often make murder their absolution. The truth of crime lies not with the victim but with the witness.”

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Book:The Thousandfold Thought: The Prince of Nothing, Book Three (The Prince of Nothing)
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“What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory; and found it more convenient to indulge his depraved appetites, and pay an exorbitant price for absolution, than listen to the suggestions of reason, and work out his own salvation: in a word, was not the separation of religion from morality the work of the priests...?”

MenReasonFoundChurchDarkPayAtheismMoralitySalvationPropertyWork OutPositive AtheismSeparationSubstancePriestsAppetiteSuggestionsTormentIndulgeConvenientSecuredDepravedPurgatoryAbsolution
Book:The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman
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“Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession.”

IfsGivingWholeFoundListeningMassSaintHarmPerceiveShoreConfessionSailStrictBentCeremonyCablesSailorDecorationIncenseAbsolution
Book:Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin
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“...we are saved by Christ alone who raises us from the dead - from the absolution of our death. We come before him at the judgement with no handwriting whatsoever against us. It's simply cheating to say you believe that and then renege on it by postulating some list of extra-rotten crimes for which Christ has to send you to hell. He, the universal Redeemer, is the only judge; as far as he's concerned, the only mandatory sentence is to life and life abundant.”

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Author:Robert Farrar Capon
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“I'm a lapsed Quaker. I don't go to meetings any more. But I'm very drawn to Catholicism - all that glitter. I'd love to be a Catholic. I think it would be fantastic - faith, forgiveness, absolution, extreme unction - all these wonderful words. I don't think anyone who was ever born a Catholic hasn't died a Catholic, no matter how lapsed they are.”

ThinkingMatterWould BeBornWonderfulDiedCatholicMeetingsExtremesFantasticCatholicismGlitterQuakerAbsolution
Author:Kate Atkinson
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“For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.”

MenJusticeExcuseEloquenceCondemnationAbsolution
Book:The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...
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