This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years." - Henry Ward Beecher
"When a child can be brought to tears, not from fear of punishment, but from repentance for his offense, he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from grief at one’s own conduct, be sure there is an angel nestling in the bosom." - Horace Mann
"None but the guilty know the withering pains of repentance." - Hosea Ballou
"True repentance also involves reform." - Hosea Ballou
"From listening comes wisdom; from speaking, repentance." - Italian Proverbs
"Late repentance is seldom true." - John Clarke
"[Repentance] The golden key that opens the palace of eternity." - John Milton
"Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance, its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the later to a soul changed for the better." - Joseph Joubert
"Anger begins in folly, and ends in repentance." - Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL
"Collective sinning is a dire reality, but collective repentance is usually too diluted to be curative." - Ralph Washington Sockman
"True repentance is to cease from sin." - Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL
"Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none." - Thomas Carlyle
"Worldly and sensual pleasures lie, for the most part, are short, false, and deceitful. Like drunkenness, they revenge the jolly madness of one hour with the sad repentance of many." - Thomas Fuller
"A wounded conscience is often inflicted as a punishment for lack of true repentance; great is the difference betwixt a man’s being frightened at and humbled for his sins." - Thomas Fuller
"Anger begins with Folly, and ends with Repentance." - Thomas Fuller
"The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy." - William Hazlitt
"True repentance involves a change of heart and not just a change of behavior" - Ezra Taft Benson
"The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. It is not the same thing as rebirth; it is transformation, creation… Repentance is an absolute, spiritual decision made in truthfulness. Its motivations are remorse for the past and responsibility for the future." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future. " - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
"Before We end our pilgrimage, 'tis fit that we Should leave corruption, and foul sin, behind us, But with wash'd feet and hands, the heathens dar' not Enter their profane temples; and for me To hope my passage to eternity Can be made easy, till I have shook off The burthen of my sins in free confession, Aided with sorrow, and repentance for them, Is against reason." - Philip Massinger
"Warmth melts, while cold freezes. A drop of ice in a warm place spreads and covers a larger space, whereas a drop of water in a cold place freezes and becomes limited. Repentance has the effect of spreading a drop in a warm sphere, causing the heart to expand and become universal, while the hardening of the heart brings limitation." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
"Just as oil is stowed within the olive, so is repentance stowed within the sin!" - Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch, aka Maggid of Mezeritch
"For the non-believers, however, repentance is more of a burden. Having suffered little pain or remorse at the time of the sin, they are obliged to suffer when they repent in order to balance the pleasure of the sin." - Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
"If you are a person of faith, you will find it easier to repent. True repentance must balance the sin. You have to endure pain and suffering in equal measure to the enjoyment derived from the sin." - Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
"Since you believe in God, you will never be able to have complete enjoyment from any sin because any wrong you do will be with mixed feelings and in the full knowledge that it will end bitterly. You know the bitter punishment for each sin, so that if you succumb to temptation you are filled with regrets even as you sin. It is therefore much easier for you to repent because you do not have to endure unbearable pangs of repentance since the pleasure from your sin was never very great." - Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
"Without repentance those who have crated peace through their power imagine that they have created pure peace: and suffer from the delusion that the enemies of their peace are God" - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"Without repentance those who have created peace through their power imagine that they have created pure peace: and suffer from the delusion that the enemies of their peace are God" - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"A find, a fire, a heaven, a hell, where pleasure, pain, and sad repentance dwell." - Richard Barnfield
"Love is a fiend, a fire, a heaven, a hell where pleasure, pain, and sad repentance dwell ." - Richard Barnfield
"Let the numerous isles rejoice with trembling, For He is high and exalted and acknowledged as One In the height of the firmament. The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice. The clouds acclaim Thee beyond every other power, In every mouth is thy unity uttered, And by the people of God is Thy praise proclaimed. And who is like to Thy people Israel, The one nation on earth, To give thanks to Thee upstanding, O God inhabiting the heights, And to proclaim Thee as One? The Lord reigneth, let the nations quake. He sitteth among the Cherubim, let the earth tremble. The scattered shalt Thou assemble and the sighing redeem, To Thy holy house Thou shalt lead them with rejoicing, And from earth’s four corners gather the exiles." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"Who shall reason of Thy greatness? For Thou hast encompassed the sphere of Jupiter with a seventh sphere, And therein revolveth Saturn. And his body is greater than that of the earth ninety-one times by the measure of him, And he completeth his revolution in thirty years of his course, And stirreth up wars, And spoliation and captivity and famine, For such is his appointed task; And devastateth the lands, And rooteth up kingdoms According to the will of Him "Who hath appointed him to His service, Even such strange service."" - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"Original concupiscence is that which makes an easy little entrance for lusting, and renders the adult lustful." - Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL
"As long as you have feet, run after work, before you are bound with that bond which cannot be loosed again once it is put on. As long as you have hands, stretch them out to Heaven in prayer, before your arms fall from their joints, and though you desire to draw them up, you will not be able. As long as you have fingers, cross yourself in prayer, before death comes loosening the comely strength of their sinews. As long as you have eyes, fill them with tears before that hour when dust will cover your black clothes and your eyes will be fixed in one direction in an unseeing gaze and you will not know it. Yes, fill your eyes with tears as long as your heart is controlled by the power of discernment and before your soul is shaken by her departure from it and the heart is left like a house deserted by its owner." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
"In love did God bring the world into existence; in love is God going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of the one who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
"It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck only at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Original concupiscence is that which makes an easy little entrance for lusting, and renders the adult lustful." - Ambrose, aka Saint Ambrose, fully Aurelius Ambrosius NULL
"Pray in all simplicity. The publican and the prodigal son were reconciled to God with a single utterance … In your prayers there is no need for high-flown words, for it is the simple and unsophisticated babblings of children that have more often won the heart of the Father in heaven. Try not to talk excessively in your prayers… One word from the publican suffered to placate God, and a single utterance saved the thief." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites
"Repentance lifts a man up. Mourning knocks at heaven's gate. Holy humility opens it." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites
"Time is a jewel more worth than a world. Time is not yours to dispose of as you please; it is a glorious talent that men must be accountable for as well as any other talent." - Thomas Brooks
"Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path .. A thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do .. To find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him." - Thomas Carlyle
"My Eternal Man set in repose, The Female from his darkness rose; And she found me beneath a Tree, Mandrake, and in her Veil hid me. Serpent Reasonings us entice Of good and evil, virtue and vice, Doubt self-jealous, Watery folly; Struggling thro’ Earth’s melancholy; Naked in Air, in shame and fear; Blind in Fire, with shield and spear; Two-horn’d Reasoning, cloven fiction, In doubt, which is self-contradiction, A dark Hermaphrodite we stood— Rational truth, root of evil and good. Round me flew the Flaming Sword; Round her snowy Whirlwinds roar’d, Freezing her Veil, the Mundane Shell. I rent the Veil where the Dead dwell: When weary Man enters his Cave, He meets his Saviour in the grave. Some find a Female Garment there, And some a Male, woven with care; Lest the Sexual Garments sweet Should grow a devouring Winding-sheet. dies! Alas! the Living and Dead! One is slain! and One is fled! Vain-glory hatcht and nurst, By double Spectres, self-accurst. My Son! my Son! thou treatest me But as I have instructed thee. the shadows of the Moon, Climbing thro’ Night’s highest noon; Time’s Ocean falling, drown’d; In Agèd Ignorance profound, Holy and cold, I clipp’d the wings Of all sublunary things, And in depths of my dungeons Closed the Father and the Sons. But when once I did descry The Immortal Man that cannot die, Thro’ evening shades I haste away To close the labours of my day. The Door of Death I open found, And the Worm weaving in the ground: Thou’rt my Mother, from the womb; Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the tomb; Weaving to dreams the Sexual strife, And weeping over the Web of Life." - William Blake