Quotations: Forgiveness

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.
Scott Adams

Forgiveness is love in its most noble form.
Anon

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
Hannah Arendt

Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.
Roberto Assagioli

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W. H. Auden

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.
Francis Maitland Balfour

No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.
Honore de Balzac

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace.
Bible

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
Josh Billings

Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of its immense benefits to the one who forgives.
Lawana Blackwell

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
Paul Boese

In answer to your inquiry, I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.
William Booth

Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.
Cherie Carter-Scott

He who forgives readily only invites offense.
Pierre Corneille

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
Norman Cousins

Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.
Marlene Dietrich

God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

You don't have to accept the invitation to get angry. Instead, practice forgiveness, empathy and encouragement.
Dan Fallon

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.
Isaac Friedmann

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi

We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck... But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.
Ellen Goodman

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 made clean again.
Dag Hammarskjold

I do not bring forgiveness with me, nor forgetfulness. The only ones who can forgive are dead; the living have no right to forget.
Chaim Herzog

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.
Grace Hopper

Reversing your treatment of the man you have wronged is better than asking his forgiveness.
Elbert Hubbard

I know it will give great offense to the clergy, but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them.
Thomas Jefferson

Many people hold onto a grudge because it offers the illusion of power and a perverse feeling of security. But in fact, we are held hostage by our anger. It is never too late to forgive. But you can forgive too soon. I am especially wary of what I call saintly forgiveness. Premature forgiveness is common among people who avoid conflict. They're afraid of their own anger and the anger of others. But their forgiveness is false. Their anger goes underground. I define forgiving as letting someone back into your heart. This returns us to a loving state -- and not merely within the relationship -- we feel good about ourselves and the world. True forgiveness isn't easy, but it transforms us significantly. To forgive is to love and to feel worthy of love. In that sense, it is always worthwhile.
Robert Karen

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
Stuart's Law

We achieve inner health only through forgiveness - the forgiveness not only of others but also of ourselves.
Joshua Loth Liebman

Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life.
Joan Lunden

Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life.
George MacDonald

Sometimes the measure of friendship isn't your ability to not harm but your capacity to forgive the things done to you and ask forgiveness for your own mistakes.
Randy K. Milholland

Forgiveness is one of the many horrible side effects of loving someone.
Randy K. Milholland

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true, or beautiful, or good, makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint; therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
Reinhold Niebuhr

Her love and tenderness gave me the faith in love that enabled me to face my dead at last and write this play-write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones.
Eugene O'Neill

Forgiveness is the healing of wounds caused by another. You choose to let go of a past wrong and no longer be hurt by it. Forgiveness is a strong move to make, like turning your shoulders sideways to walk quickly on a crowded sidewalk. It's your move.
Real Live Preacher

True forgiveness is not an action after the fact, it is an attitude with which you enter each moment.
David Ridge

I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
Adlai E. Stevenson

I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
Adlai Stevenson

Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Without forgiveness, there's no future.
Desmond Tutu

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Mark Twain

What do you call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, magnanimity, forgiveness? Different results of the one master impulse: the necessity of securing one's self-approval.
Mark Twain

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov

Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.
William Arthur Ward

What power has love but forgiveness? In other words by its intervention what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise?
William Carlos Williams