Bernard of Clairvaux Quotes

Mistakes you can learn from; sins stay with you forever.

Remorse is impotent; it will repeat its faults. Repentance only is a true force; it puts an end to everything.

Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here's the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person - and he would not need it.

I repent daily my sins, my faults, and my shortcomings.

There's forgiveness if you ask forgiveness, you truly repent, and you do make an honest effort not to do that anymore.

I can't pretend that I did one really awful thing - I took a bite out of the apple but now I'm never going to sin again.

Repentance for past crimes is just and easy; but sin-no-more's a task too hard for mortals

I am making amends and seeking forgiveness. My only hope is that some good can come out of my situation.

Brethren, it is easier to declaim against a thousand sins of others, than to mortify one sin in ourselves.

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.

I did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes. You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn't until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don't have a problem going to sleep at night.

I want to apologize to all of the people I have let down because of my behavior which has reflected badly on my family, friends, co-workers, business associates and others.

Our sins are more easily remembered than our good deeds.

I think guilt is directional. You should get rid of it, but the way to get rid of it is not to get rid of the guilt feelings. It is to get rid of the wrong that you did that caused the guilt feelings.

In whatever I may be thought to have been unnatural, unwise and indelicate, it is now my most fervent desire it may have a suitable impression on you - and on me, a penitent for every wrong thought and step.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

Repentance means you change your mind so deeply that it changes you.

Every true, eternal problem is an equally true, eternal fault; every answer an atonement, every realisation an improvement.

I only seek in my old age to perfect that which I had not before thoroughly learned in my youth, because my sins were a hindrance to me.

That's what troubles me: I should like to suffer more for the expiation of my sins.

I've done things that weren't good, you know, but I made up for my mistakes.

True atonement isn't the periodic shaving of karmic stubble via confessional; it requires deep, truthful change. It means doing the hardest thing of all: not making the same stupid mistake again.

As long as one lives he will have need of repentance.

I don't regret any of my transgressions, because I believe I paid for them a million times over.

Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.