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absolve
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  • "Every head bowed and every eye closed," said Graham, offering a traditional invitation to repentance, a declaration of faith, and absolution.†   (source)
  • I absolve you.†   (source)
  • "But it doesn't absolve you."†   (source)
  • Even so, Silas knew, absolution required sacrifice.†   (source)
  • Mum, luckily, was holding a casserole dish, which absolved her of the same anxiety.†   (source)
  • I was absolved.†   (source)
  • He said this as if I was to absolve him of the necessity of doing so, with a smile or a joke.†   (source)
  • Here she was, offering a possibility of absolution.†   (source)
  • This doesn't absolve me of blame--there's plenty of blame to go around.†   (source)
  • I never bothered to notice before how thoroughly I've relied on Anatole to justify and absolve me here.†   (source)
  • Absolution for screwing up and building the city here?†   (source)
  • This policy allows operators to set their wages according to local labor markets — and it absolves the McDonald's Corporation of any formal responsibility for roughly three-quarters of the company's workforce.†   (source)
  • Like the scapegoat of the Bible, place society's ills on them, then "stone them" in absolution.†   (source)
  • If you are asking me for forgiveness, or absolution—†   (source)
  • Before falling asleep, I'm hit with another wave of sadness over the courtyard scene, but I feel absolved, too, as if his tirade was an act of mercy.†   (source)
  • That was almost ten years ago, but I figured the urge to absolve might still be there.†   (source)
  • Despite the tangle of clues, Florentino Ariza soon rejected the possibility that the oldest had been the perpetrator of the assault, and with as much dispatch he also absolved the youngest, who was the most beautiful and the boldest of the three.†   (source)
  • Afterward he picks himself up out of the street and, after making sure the door is completely closed, shakes his fist at it, dusts himself off and says, "Oh well, I tried," and in this way absolves his conscience.†   (source)
  • History will absolve me!†   (source)
  • She may have gone for absolution and forgiveness, or she may have gone for the express purpose of committing matricide.†   (source)
  • Know this, however: while your clan may absolve themselves of their dishonor, you, Vermund, shall always remain Vargrimstn, even unto your dying day.†   (source)
  • 'Excuse me,' Alex said again, words that were no longer polite discourse, but a plea for absolution.†   (source)
  • Although I want absolution dearly, I am unable to face confession.†   (source)
  • Absolution.†   (source)
  • Your word on this will condemn us or absolve us.†   (source)
  • "And does she get that chance?" she asks Josh while I desperately focus on the poster of literary terms on the wall and wait for absolution.†   (source)
  • But God has given you another chance to be absolved.†   (source)
  • 'Do you really think that you can absolve yourself of guilt by pretending to be someone else?†   (source)
  • For Barbara, who, like so many, came to fervent Pentecostalism from a life broken by poverty and neglect, the church provided both moral orderliness and an absolution for past failures that finally allowed her peace about all that had gone wrong over the years.†   (source)
  • I stand there, still clutching the phone to my ear, taking in Bryn's last words, wondering if there might've been a shred of absolution in her hostility.†   (source)
  • And he knew that she was really saying she didn't love him, that she didn't want to be with him, but by putting it on his shoulders she was absolving herself of any guilt in her admission.†   (source)
  • This…is the place where you might grant God absolution.†   (source)
  • One soul, for salvation, for peace, for across-the-board absolution.†   (source)
  • He would trap the drunken Prefontaine and the sleazeball detective and force them to tell their lies to the one person who could absolve him.†   (source)
  • That these United Colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.†   (source)
  • If your mother seeks me out to give her absolution like a Papist, then she has made a long and uncomfortable journey to no end.†   (source)
  • "I'm not someone's absolution.†   (source)
  • The president leans back in his chair and softly taps a pencil against his teeth as Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles reads a lengthy statement that absolves the State Department from any blame concerning the Bay of Pigs.†   (source)
  • His wife, the Senora Gonzales, was a small, attractive woman, not as beautiful as she assumed, but enjoying the reputation of a beauty by means of a violent nervous energy and an odd manner of loose, warm, cynical self-assertiveness that seemed to promise anything and to absolve anyone.†   (source)
  • GEORGE: Absolve, Domine, animas omnium fidelium defunctorum ab omni vinculo delictorum.†   (source)
  • And I seek no absolution.†   (source)
  • Who had been the perpetrator, I wondered, now that Morris Fink was absolved of the crime?†   (source)
  • Know you absolve me, don't you, Kid?†   (source)
  • He had the kind of mind that is relieved by putting things into the words: the phrase was an apology for Mary; it absolved her from criticism.†   (source)
  • I absolve you from this responsibility
  • The priest absolved him and told him to say ten Hail Mary's
  • The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.   (source)
  • The committee absolved her of any wrong doing.
    absolved = found blameless
  • Do as you like, Pari had said into the receiver, thinking, But it won't absolve you, not coming.†   (source)
  • Any more than attending will absolve me.†   (source)
  • The only way to find salvation is to admit your guilt and seek absolution through Jesus.†   (source)
  • I walk away from her, guilt on my hands, absolving myself: I'm a good person.†   (source)
  • The Monk covered that equipment by signature; his statement absolves the Agency.†   (source)
  • He had sworn a vow and would not break it, though the High Septon himself offered to absolve him.†   (source)
  • We're accountable for what we do, and no confessional absolution can change that.†   (source)
  • He returned to the tree where he committed his mortal sin to find some absolution for his crime.†   (source)
  • Men drunks are more excusable, more easily absolved, but why?†   (source)
  • I won't let him absolve his guilt at my expense.†   (source)
  • This sinner has confessed her sins and begged for absolution and forgiveness.†   (source)
  • He paused, then added, "It seems history has absolved you of your sins."†   (source)
  • If it was Bergeron, he gave absolution with the point of a very sharp instrument.†   (source)
  • I hope that you have time to absolve us of our sins.†   (source)
  • Even the concept of Christ dying for our sins is arguably not exclusively Christian; the self-sacrifice of a young man to absolve the sins of his people appears in the earliest tradition of the Quetzalcoatl.†   (source)
  • History will absolve me.†   (source)
  • Not that it absolves me, but I was a young man, Mr. Markos, eager to take on the world, full of dreams, modest and vague as they may have been, and I pictured my youth ebbing away, my prospects increasingly truncated.†   (source)
  • Some stood a little way back from him, as if this absolved them of the handshake dilemma, while others hoisted the knees of their trousers and crouched down almost at his feet.†   (source)
  • History will absolve me!†   (source)
  • I realized then that whoever had said kaddish for Mommy-the Jewish prayer of mourning, the declaration of death, the ritual that absolves them of responsibility for the child's fate-had done the right thing, because Mommy was truly gone from their world.†   (source)
  • "If you are asking me for forgiveness, or absolution—" She has forgotten that absolution is a Catholic concept, not a Jewish one.†   (source)
  • It was as if he wanted me to forgive him, to absolve him from some crime; but what had he done to me?†   (source)
  • Antagonists at Arms (And an Absolution†   (source)
  • Sometimes he falls asleep and I don't have the heart to wake him up so I go to Communion the next day without penance or absolution.†   (source)
  • You're absolved.†   (source)
  • The priests tell us all the time that God's mercy is infinite but how can any priest give absolution to someone like me who delivers telegrams and winds up in a state of excitement on a green sofa with a girl dying of the galloping consumption.†   (source)
  • My stepfather's final admonition to me went unheeded as I absolved myself of all responsibility and stayed out of the house as much as possible, thus avoiding the emotional impact of watching Mommy suffer.†   (source)
  • You are utterly absolved, you old fox.†   (source)
  • I bestow absolution.†   (source)
  • But Timur is wildly sociable, his faults forever absolved by good humor, a determined friendliness, and a beguiling air of innocence that endears him to people he meets.†   (source)
  • To them, we offer up our bodies in hope of revelation into the mysteries of this life and in hope of absolution for our transgressions.†   (source)
  • You want me to absolve you of blame.†   (source)
  • I walked from each one to the next, performing marriages, absolving sinners of their sins, naming newborn children.†   (source)
  • I am asked to court only so that I may witness this attack with my own eyes and thereby absolve the queen of any blame.†   (source)
  • You're just playing; you're absolving the guilt you already have for wanting me out of your hair for good."†   (source)
  • I thought I'd feel guilty, like I betrayed her, but what I feel--particularly in light of Charlie's sympathetic nodding--is more like absolution.†   (source)
  • And perhaps at the other end of the world there is a place where the screaming can't be heard, and I may find it in my heart to grant God absolution!"†   (source)
  • I fear, mostly, I would find in it the absolution that people on both sides of my family have found, for generations.†   (source)
  • Could Peter grant him absolution, even if Lewis still wasn't entirely sure he could return the favor?†   (source)
  • He had grabbed one of my hands and he clutched it tightly, as if some holy power was going to pass through it and absolve him of his sins.†   (source)
  • I want only absolution.†   (source)
  • The snow absolves Vienna of its sins.†   (source)
  • Inside were papers identifying this tragic suicide, this overwrought woman so burdened with grief she took her own life while seeking absolution in the eyes of God.†   (source)
  • After the service he absolved their sins and left them with some turnips, a sack of beans, and two of his precious oranges.†   (source)
  • I am with the Ministry of Finance, of course, and having admitted that, I absolve myself of complicity for being clear about my status.†   (source)
  • If you died with a venial sin on your soul you could not enter heaven until the sin was absolved by prayers or rosaries or masses from your family on earth.†   (source)
  • It seemed to her the young Englishman was speaking; from him had originated this concern for her, this belief in her essential innocence, this absolution from guilt.†   (source)
  • If you were clean confessed, and had done penance and been absolved—†   (source)
  • Rome alone can absolve those who break Christ's indenture.†   (source)
  • He died alone and without the priest's last absolution for all of his sins.†   (source)
  • He felt an immense envy of all those people who had confessed to him and been absolved.†   (source)
  • A Catholic might have died in the rooms without the last absolution of the church.†   (source)
  • Guenever cried: "But if you really were absolved this time!"†   (source)
  • And I did renounce it, and was absolved.†   (source)
  • Quickly were her sins confessed and quickly absolved.†   (source)
  • His eyes closed, his lips and tongue stumbled over the absolution, failed to finish … he sprang awake again.†   (source)
  • The man himself had eaten no breakfast, though he had gone to the table and demanded absolution for the food and for the necessity of eating it.†   (source)
  • I said, "Just because you have been a faithful wife is no sign that there is no sin in your heart, and just because your Me is hard is no sign that the Lord's grace is absolving you.†   (source)
  • He had just heard that it was becoming a rule in Peru for priests to exact two measures of meal for a fairly good absolution, and five measures, for a really effective one.†   (source)
  • He felt anger filling his eyes, he felt pressure on his swollen lids, while he was turning slowly to his mother; then he saw her squat little figure before him, stiff and defenseless, with a kind of desperate pride, offering to take any blow he wished to deliver, absolving him in advance—and he knew that it had been the bravest gesture she had ever attempted.†   (source)
  • It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again.†   (source)
  • I am going to give you absolution.†   (source)
  • Once we are there, if your father is not reconciled, we will get Bishop F—— to absolve you from your promise, and you can return to Riom.†   (source)
  • "Perhaps," said Cara, "you could slip in while he is sleeping, say the words of absolution over him; he would never know."†   (source)
  • His blood given to buy my life, My bipod giveja to pay for Efts My death for His death, Knights, Absolve all those you have ex^ communicated.†   (source)
  • And Father Vincent will come to see you, so that you can make confession, and be absolved, and amend your life.†   (source)
  • And when, staring at the face, he walked steadily toward it with his hand still raised, very likely he walked toward it in the furious and dreamlike exaltation of a martyr who has already been absolved, into the descending chair which Joe swung at his head, and into nothingness.†   (source)
  • Absolve them.†   (source)
  • And I can't absolve myself.'†   (source)
  • …forgot that he ever had a wife, up there in the pulpit with his hands flying around him and the dogma he was supposed to preach all full of galloping cavalry and defeat and glory just as when he tried to tell them on the street about the galloping horses, it in turn would get all mixed up with absolution and choirs of martial seraphim, until it was natural that the old men and women should believe that what he preached in God's own house on God's own day verged on actual sacrilege.†   (source)
  • These people went out of the stable clean; he was the only one left who hadn't repented, confessed, and been absolved.†   (source)
  • Absolve them.†   (source)
  • In three days, he told himself, I shall be in Las Casas: I shall have confessed and been absolved, and the thought of the child on the rubbish-heap came automatically back to him with painful love.†   (source)
  • The priest hurriedly whispered the words of conditional absolution, in case, for one second before it crossed the border, the spirit had repented, but it was more likely that it had gone over still seeking its knife, bent on vicarious violence.†   (source)
  • There was a legend believed by many criminals that dead eyes held the picture of what they had last seen - a Christian could believe that the soul did the same, held absolution and peace at the final moment, after a lifetime of the most hideous crime: or sometimes pious men died suddenly in brothels unabsolved and what had seemed a good life went out with the permanent stamp on it of impurity.†   (source)
  • Nay, more if you all agree, later you are absolved from the promise.†   (source)
  • He burrowed deep, deep, in the hope of my absolution, which would have been of no good to him.†   (source)
  • Bishop O'Neill sang solemn high mass and the cardinal gave the final absolutions.†   (source)
  • It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.†   (source)
  • "No—I absolve you of that," he agreed.†   (source)
  • My good cousin, absolve yourself from that!†   (source)
  • It is I that absolve you from an engagement which is impossible in our present misery.†   (source)
  • She's coming from confession, Of every sin absolved; for I, Behind her chair, was listening nigh.†   (source)
  • She confessed to him, and he absolved her from her sins.†   (source)
  • Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage[167] of the world.†   (source)
  • Clennam again assured him that he absolved it of the responsibility.†   (source)
  • The elder absolved, reconciled, exhorted, imposed penance, blessed, and dismissed them.†   (source)
  • But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself.†   (source)
  • I absolved her sin on the spot and was turning to go, but I was forced to turn back.†   (source)
  • "Richelieu" "In fact," said Aramis, "it is an absolution according to rule."†   (source)
  • Why didn't you send to absolve me from my promise, when you wished I wouldn't keep it?†   (source)
  • Confess; you know I have the right of giving absolution.†   (source)
  • To the mutineers those battles, and especially Trafalgar, were a plenary absolution and a grand one: For all that goes to make up scenic naval display, heroic magnificence in arms, those battles, especially Trafalgar, stand unmatched in human annals.†   (source)
  • If need be, she now decided, she could resign from the factory and get a place somewhere else—a change which would absolve Clyde from any responsibility in regard to her.†   (source)
  • He "had" me indeed, and in a cleft stick; for who would ever absolve me, who would consent that I should go unhung, if, by the faintest tremor of an overture, I were the first to introduce into our perfect intercourse an element so dire?†   (source)
  • A restless feeling of guilt would always be present with him: he would confess and repent and be absolved, confess and repent again and be absolved again, fruitlessly.†   (source)
  • Why, it was just his Lordship himself who started the outcry about the window, by proving that it represented Gilbert the Bad, a Lord of Guermantes and a direct descendant of Genevieve de Brabant, who was a daughter of the House of Guermantes, receiving absolution from Saint Hilaire.†   (source)
  • His assertion seemed to absolve her from all blame or responsibility and she had a thrill of delight in thinking of herself in a new way.†   (source)
  • Whether she charged herself with these faults or absolved herself from them, made no difference in the sum-total of her failure.†   (source)
  • But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin.†   (source)
  • But if he can conceive of her, then in some sort she exists, he thinks, and advancing down the path with his eyes upon sky and branches he rapidly endows them with womanhood; sees with amazement how grave they become; how majestically, as the breeze stirs them, they dispense with a dark flutter of the leaves charity, comprehension, absolution, and then, flinging themselves suddenly aloft, confound the piety of their aspect with a wild carouse.†   (source)
  • "And yet," said I, smiling, "I cannot quite hold myself absolved from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records."†   (source)
  • …him the sense of the earth, the wish to return, and giving him for substitute a general peace, as if (so he thinks as he advances down the forest ride) all this fever of living were simplicity itself; and myriads of things merged in one thing; and this figure, made of sky and branches as it is, had risen from the troubled sea (he is elderly, past fifty now) as a shape might be sucked up out of the waves to shower down from her magnificent hands compassion, comprehension, absolution.†   (source)
  • Why did you not, even after you had fallen the first or the second or the third or the fourth or the hundredth time, repent of your evil ways and turn to God who only waited for your repentance to absolve you of your sins?†   (source)
  • Think as he would—and however much spiritually he desired to absolve him, was he not actually guilty?†   (source)
  • The mediocre intellects, Plato's second class, use the remnants of romantic chivalry diluted with Victorian sentiment—and we who consider ourselves the intellectuals cover it up by pretending that it's another side of us, has nothing to do with our shining brains; we pretend that the fact that we realize it is really absolving us from being a prey to it.†   (source)
  • He was no more confident of the manner in which he ought to conduct himself in the street, or indeed in life generally, than he was in a drawing-room; and he might be seen greeting passers-by, carriages, and anything that occurred with a malicious smile which absolved his subsequent behaviour of all impropriety, since it proved, if it should turn out unsuited to the occasion, that he was well aware of that, and that if he had assumed a smile, the jest was a secret of his own.†   (source)
  • …along the jaws, priest-like in the lips that were long and bloodless and faintly smiling; and Stephen, remembering swiftly how he had told Cranly of all the tumults and unrest and longings in his soul, day after day and night by night, only to be answered by his friend's listening silence, would have told himself that it was the face of a guilty priest who heard confessions of those whom he had not power to absolve but that he felt again in memory the gaze of its dark womanish eyes.†   (source)
  • His original determination to have as little to do with her as possible, was now complicated by the fact that he was confronted by a predicament that spelled real danger to himself, unless by some argument or assertion he could absolve himself of any responsibility in connection with this—a possibility which, in view of the fact that Roberta still worked for him, that he had written her some notes, and that any least word from her would precipitate an inquiry which would prove fatal to…†   (source)
  • And another week in which, moved by Clyde's seeming contrition, and all the confusing and extenuating circumstances of his story, and having wrestled most earnestly with every moral aspect of it, the Reverend McMillan once more before his cell door—but only to say that however liberal or charitable his interpretation of the facts, as at last Clyde had truthfully pictured them, still he could not feel that either primarily or secondarily could he be absolved from guilt for her death.†   (source)
  • Blinded by his tears and by the light of God's mercifulness he bent his head and heard the grave words of absolution spoken and saw the priest's hand raised above him in token of forgiveness.†   (source)
  • Often when he had confessed his doubts and scruples—some momentary inattention at prayer, a movement of trivial anger in his soul, or a subtle wilfulness in speech or act—he was bidden by his confessor to name some sin of his past life before absolution was given him.†   (source)
  • 'If any caprice of temper should induce him to cast aside this golden opportunity before he has brought it to perfection, I consider myself absolved from extending any assistance to his mother and sister.†   (source)
  • What fluctuations there were in her busy thoughts and feelings, while Mr. Irwine was pronouncing the solemn "Absolution" in her deaf ears, and through all the tones of petition that followed!†   (source)
  • She read me what she had written; and it was direct and clear, and evidently intended to absolve me from any suspicion of profiting by the receipt of the money.†   (source)
  • Catherine made this reflexion, and six months earlier she would have felt bound to give him warning; but now she deemed herself absolved.†   (source)
  • By acting in this way, I shield you from complicity, I absolve you of all responsibility, since I myself make it impossible for you to see what you aren't meant to see.†   (source)
  • I confessed, that I might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins.†   (source)
  • "If he had not," muttered the youth between his compressed teeth, "I would have absolved him for ever from his spiritual care of your conscience!"†   (source)
  • "Well, Helen?" said I, putting my hand into hers: she chafed my fingers gently to warm them, and went on — "If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."†   (source)
  • Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving themselves from the sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than ready and willing to cut his throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one and indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur's house had been first sequestrated, and then confiscated.†   (source)
  • 'Seventy times seven times didst thou gapingly contort thy visage — seventy times seven did I take counsel with my soul — Lo, this is human weakness: this also may be absolved!†   (source)
  • But, I believe the time has come when it would be mistaken faith and delicacy to conceal it any longer, and when your appeal absolves me from his injunction.'†   (source)
  • Agafea Mihalovna, speaking of the man just dead, had said: "Well, thank God, he took the sacrament and received absolution; God grant each one of us such a death."†   (source)
  • Rosier turned away and, now that his talk with her had been interrupted, felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken.†   (source)
  • Bear this well in mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made better.†   (source)
  • "Amen!" answered the Jester; "a broadcloth penitent should have a sackcloth confessor, and your frock may absolve my motley doublet into the bargain."†   (source)
  • And I give you absolution beforehand.†   (source)
  • Thus the government is more and more absolved from the necessity of subjecting its policy and its rights to the sanction of another power.†   (source)
  • I've thought before of asking him to absolve me from my promise, but I've not had the courage to determine on it."†   (source)
  • But, Elizabeth-Jane, all this amounts to a new courtship of me by him; I was absolved from all vows by the return of the other woman.†   (source)
  • And remember, moreover, that it is often he who comes off victorious from the strife, absolved of all crime in the eyes of the world.†   (source)
  • Hopeless of the future, I wished but this — that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness.†   (source)
  • "You, Middleton!" returned his wife looking up into his flushed face, while a bright blush suffused her own sweet countenance; "you may receive my vows, but surely you can have no power to absolve me from their observance!"†   (source)
  • I tell you, my dear, I cannot absolve myself from the promises I make to these helpless creatures.†   (source)
  • Katya in just the same way, besides all her care about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to persuade the sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament and receiving absolution.†   (source)
  • Marriage were an enduring crime on the part of a Templar; but what lesser folly I may practise, I shall speedily be absolved from at the next Preceptory of our Order.†   (source)
  • She rose from her seat, and looking straight at Tom, said,— "I want you to absolve me from my promise about Philip Wakem.†   (source)
  • He was so charming that her sense of his being ill had hitherto had a sort of comfort in it; the state of his health had seemed not a limitation, but a kind of intellectual advantage; it absolved him from all professional and official emotions and left him the luxury of being exclusively personal.†   (source)
  • During this period she was less considerate; she had an idea—a rather vague one, but it was agreeable to her sense of injury—that now she was absolved from penance, and might do what she chose.†   (source)
  • …the glass door were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house — from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me — to that sky expanded before me, — a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth…†   (source)
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