quotations about forgiveness
Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.
FRED ROGERS
The World According to Mister Rogers
Forgiveness is like money. We want to get it, not give it.
JENTEZEN FRANKLIN
Love Like You've Never Been Hurt
Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times (or seventy times seven)."
JESUS
Matthew 18:21
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
JESUS
Luke 6:37
If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.
JESUS
Luke 17:3
He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
1957
Forgiveness is like a magic slate -- it gives us a fresh start.
ROBERT C. KAUSEN
We've Got to Start Meeting Like This!
"Forgive and forget" goes the expression, and for our idealized magnanimous selves, that was all you needed. But for our actual selves the relationship between those two actions wasn't so straightforward. In most cases we had to forget a little bit before we could forgive; when we no longer experienced the pain as fresh, the insult was easier to forgive, which in turn made it less memorable, and so on.
TED CHIANG
"The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling", Subterranean Press Magazine
Forgiveness is healing ... especially forgiving yourself.
ALYSON NOËL
Evermore
There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The offender never pardons.
GEORGE HERBERT
Jacula Prudentum
Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note, torn in two and burned up, so that it never can be shown against the man.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.
SIMONE WEIL
"Void and Compensation", Gravity and Grace
The willingness to forgive is a sign of spiritual and emotional maturity. It is one of the great virtues to which we all should aspire. Imagine a world filled with individuals willing both to apologize and to accept an apology. Is there any problem that could not be solved among people who possessed the humility and largeness of spirit and soul to do either -- or both -- when needed?
GORDON B. HINCKLEY
Standing for Something
Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
1957
He who forgives readily only invites offense.
PIERRE CORNEILLE
Cinna
For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Fairyland Series
There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living
When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God's light shines upon you.
JON KRAKAUER
Into the Wild
True and genuine forgiveness, that which our Lord commands, buries all offenses beyond all hope of resurrection in the deep bosom of the ocean, and knows them again no more forever. Indeed, a friendship cemented by forgiveness is like iron welded--stronger at the point of juncture than elsewhere; or like a broken bone repaired--it will break anywhere else sooner than at the place of former fracture.
R. H. BENNETT
"The Law of Forgiveness", Homiletic Review, Volume 55