Forgiveness
- All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness ... the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.--Dalai Lama
- And when a man injures and oppresses you and deals unjustly with you, you should deal kindly with him and forgive him. This you will strike at the root of hatred and enmity and he who is your enemy will become your friend.--The Koran
- As long as you don't forgive, who and whatever it is will occupy rent-free space in your mind.--Isabelle Holland (The Long Search)
- Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.--Ephesians 4:32 (NIV)
- Decide to forgive: For resentment is negative; resentment is poisoning; resentment diminishes and devours the self.--Robert Muller
- Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.--J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)
- Einstein's E=mc2 is an extraordinary concept. So radical: matter and energy are two phases of the same sort of general stuff. There's only one other idea that radical: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.--Kurt Vonnegut (in Will the Circle Be Unbroken? by Terkel)
- The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another.--Joseph Roux (Meditations of a Parish Priest)
- For the practicing Christian or practicing Moslem, for the practicing agnostic or practicing atheist, the practice of forgiveness is one way to break free of a past which wants to trap us. Forgiveness ... can bring freedom.--Martin Wroe ("Thought for the Day," January 7, 2017)
- Forgive, forget. Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours. Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.--Phillips Brooks
- Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.--Ausonius
- Forgiveness can be the WD40 that oils the creaking hinges of our friendships and, sometimes, keeps the doors from falling off altogether.--Martin Wroe ("Thought for the Day," January 7, 2017)
- Forgiveness is about setting us free for the future. It’s about neutralizing the toxins of shame, it’s about liberating us from the paralysis of guilt so we can move on.--Br. Mark Brown
- Forgiveness is an inner correction that lightens the heart. It is for our peace of mind first. Being at peace, we will now have peace to give to others, and this is the most permanent and valuable gift we can possibly give.--Gerald Jampolsky
- Forgiveness is as mysterious as love or compassion, it won’t be forced and isn’t compulsory. Even for those who choose forgiveness, it’s not a momentary decision but a resolution to weave this new thread into the ragged fabric of our everyday relationships. Less of an act and more of an attitude.--Martin Wroe ("Thought for the Day," January 7, 2017)
- Forgiveness is giving up the right to retaliate. Forgiveness is the willingness to have something happen the way it happened. It's not true that you can't forgive something; it's a matter of the will, and you always have the choice. Forgiveness is never dependent on what the other person does or does not do; it is always under our control. Forgiveness is giving up the insistence on being understood....--Pixie Koestline Hammond (For Everything There Is a Season)
- Forgiveness is loyalty to the truth of who you are. To truly forgive someone is to recognize who they are, to admit and affirm who they are, and to know that their best selves will be brought out only in the presence of an accepting and believing person. Forgiveness is basically the act of believing in another person and not allowing that person to be destroyed by self hatred. Forgiveness involves helping people uncover their self-worth, which is usually crusted over by their own self-hatred. This is a way of forgiving people that does not make you look good but makes them look good. That's the way God forgives us. In the act of forgiveness, God gives us back our dignity and self-worth. God is loyal to the truth that we are. God affirms that we are good persons who have sinned. God asserts that we are not bad.--Richard Roh
- Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean.--Dag Hammarskjold
- Forgiveness is not a momentary impulse achieved, or a chosen denial of reality. Forgiveness is often not reconciliation. Forgiveness is the hard way to freedom.--Tara Samples ("Are Christians Supposed to Forgive Abusers")
- Forgiveness is the economy of the heart... Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.--Hannah More ("Christianity a Practical Principle" Practical Piety)
- Forgiveness is the final form of love.--Reinhold Niebuhr
- Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the one that crushed it.--Anonymous
- Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life.--George Macdonald
- Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hate. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.--William Arthur Ward (Your Achievement Ezine - Issue No. 154)
- Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.--Hannah Arendt
- Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all of us love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour -- unceasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.--Henri Nouwen
- Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.--Isaac Friedmann
- Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past.—Lama Surya Das
- Forgiveness means letting go of the past.--Gerald Jampolsky
- Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering — remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you dont want to repeat what happened.--Desmond Tutu
- The forgiving state of mind is a magnetic power for attracting good.--Catherine Ponder
- Forgiving those who hurt us is the key to personal peace.--G. Weatherly
- Guilt, regret, resentment, sadness and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past and not enough presence.--Eckhart Tolle
- He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven, for everyone has need to be forgiven.--George Herbert
- Here is a mental treatment guaranteed to cure every ill that flesh is heir to: sit for half an hour every night and mentally forgive everyone against whom you have any ill will or antipathy.--Charles Fillmore
- "I can forgive, but I cannot forget" is only another way of saying, "I will not forgive." Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note--torn in two and burned up so that it never can be shown against one.--Henry Ward Beecher
- I can have peace of mind only when I forgive rather than judge.--Gerald Jampolsky
- If I ever seem to take you for granted, forgive me.--Helen Fitzwalter-Read
- If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?--Dolores Huerta
- If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive.--Bahagavad Gita
- Injuries too well remembered cannot heal.--Benjamin R. Barber (Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy)
- It is easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit to forgive them for having witnessed your own.--Jessamyn West
- It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.--Saint Francis of Assisi
- It is useless to meet revenge with revenge. It will heal nothing.--J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King)
- Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always makes you less than you are.--Malcolm Forbes
- The law an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.--Mohatmas Gandhi
- Life is an adventure in forgiveness.--Norman Cousins
- Little vicious minds abound with anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the pleasure of forgiving their enemies.--Philip Chesterfield
- Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party come prepared to be forgiven.--Charles Williams
- The more a man knows, the more he forgives.--Catherine the Great
- The more we know the better we forgive. Whoever feels deeply, feels for all who live.--Madame de Stael
- Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.--E. H. Chapin
- Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you: love, prayer, and forgiveness.--H. Jackson Brown (?) (Life's Little Instruction Calendar, 1999)
- Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business.--Robin Casarjian
- Nothing brings families together faster than forgiveness. That should make it Step No. 1, but most of us find forgiving hard. We associate it with weakness and losing when, actually, the reverse is true. When you forgive, you gain strength and come out a winner. You break free of control by the other person's actions.--Dr. Joyce Brothers ("Reconnect With Your Family" Parade Magazine 11/4/2001)
- One forgives to the degree that one loves.--Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything every night before you go to bed.--Bernard Baruch
- Only forgiveness can stem such pain in us. This kind of pain … can be healed only by the wounded, not the offender, because it is the wounded who is maintaining it. --Joan Chittister (The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully)
- Only the brave know how to forgive.... A coward never ... it's not in his nature.-Laurence Sterne (Sermons)
- Remember, you don't forgive someone for his or her sake - you forgive them for your sake.--Stephanie Sarkis
- Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.--Malachy McCourt
- Resentment is one burden that is incompatible with your success. Always be the first to forgive; and forgive yourself first always.--Dan Zadra
- Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness.--David Augsburger
- Strength of character means the ability to overcome resentment against others, to hide hurt feelings, and to forgive quickly.--Lawrence G. Lovasik (The Hidden Power of Kindness)
- There is a hard law... When an injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.--Alan Paton
- There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.--Josh Billings
- There's no operation where you can have your anger cut out. But if you work on yourself, as you get better, you'll be more capable of seeing others as flawed human beings. That makes it easier to forgive.--Robin Quivers
- There's no point in burying the hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.--Sydney Harris
- To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.--Confucius
- To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.--William H. Walton
- To err is human, to forgive, divine.--Alexander Pope
- To forget a wrong is the best revenge.--Italian proverb
- To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.--Robert Muller
- To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, "You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you've done, and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend."--Frederic Buechner (Wishful Thinking)
- To understand is to forgive, even oneself.--Alexander Chase
- True forgiveness is not an action after the fact, it is an attitude with which you enter each moment.--David Ridge
- The ultimate purpose of human life is to love in the face of hatred, to forgive in the place of pain, to live in the face of death.--John Shelby Spong (Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World)
- We achieve inner health only through forgiveness--the forgiveness not only of others but also of ourselves.--Joshua Loth Leibman
- We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness is, the greater is our love.--Paul Tillich
- We must be willing to forgive without limit even as God forgives; otherwise we cannot be forgiven.--Nels F. S. Ferre
- We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.--Martin Luther King, Jr.
- We would not have to forgive people if we didn't judge them in the first place.--Barry Neil Kaufman
- The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.--Mahatma Gandhi
- What Easter teaches is this: Even in the midst of the kingdom you’re living in, it’s possible to actually pledge loyalty to a different one. By feeding the hungry, forgiving your enemies, and providing shelter for the homeless, you can actually choose to live in the kingdom Jesus established.--Brandon Ambrosino ("Jesus’ radical politics")
- When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at al, but our hate is turning our days and nights into a hellish turmoil.--Dale Carnegie
- When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.--Catherine Ponder
- When you tame and domesticate the divine it loses its danger and it's power to forgive you, make you happy, or its power to challenge you, and call you towards new growth.--John O'Donohue (Speaking of Faith interview, Feb. 28, 2008)
- You are never so strong as when you forgive.--Kimberly Converse
- You don't have to accept the invitation to get angry. Instead, practice forgiveness, empathy and encouragement.--Dan Fallon ("Getting Along in Families" CIGNA Well-Being Winter/Spring 2000)
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