Confession

Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.

W. H. Auden (1907-1973) English-born poet and man of letters.

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

Saint Augustine (354-430) Theologian.

The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) British essayist.

We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French writer.

The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.

Montaigne (1533-1592) French philosopher and essayist.

Confess you were wrong yesterday; it will show you are wise today.

Proverb

He that jokes confesses.

Italian proverb

It is not the criminal things that are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and the shameful.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Swiss political philosopher and essayist.

Let the trumpet of the day of judgment sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand before the Sovereign Judge, and cry with a loud voice, This is my work, there were my thoughts, and thus was I. I have freely told both the good and the bad, have hid nothing wicked, added nothing good.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Swiss political philosopher and essayist.

To confess a fault freely is the next thing to being innocent of it.

Publilius Syrus (1st Centry BC-?) Roman writer and poet.