Quotations about Forgiveness

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive.  Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.  ~Henry Ward Beecher


Forgiving is rediscovering the shining path of peace that at first you thought others took away when they betrayed you.  ~Dodinsky,


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


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


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


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


To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.  ~Lewis B. Smedes, "Forgiveness - The Power to Change the Past," Christianity Today, 7 January 1983  (Thanks, Donna)


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


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


If you can't forgive and forget, pick one.  ~Robert Brault,


You can make up a quarrel, but it will always show where it was patched.  ~Edgar Watson Howe, Country Town Sayings, 1911


It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.  ~William Blake, Jerusalem


Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.  ~Isaac Friedmann


[A]ll forgiveness is a gift to yourself. ~A Course in Miracles


Forgive all who have offended you, not for them, but for yourself.  ~Harriet Nelson


He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.  ~George Herbert


There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.  ~Sydney Harris


Nobody forgets where he buried the hatchet.  ~Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard, Abe Martin's Broadcast, 1930


Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.  ~Robert Brault,


Yes, this is what good is:  to forgive evil.  There is no other good.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


The man who forgives is far stronger than the man who fights.  ~Nathan Croall


Life is an adventure in forgiveness.  ~Norman Cousins


What we forgive too freely doesn't stay forgiven.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


It's far easier to forgive an enemy after you've got even with him.  ~Olin Miller


Forgiving is love's toughest work, and love's biggest risk.  If you twist it into something it was never meant to be, it can make you a doormat or an insufferable manipulator.  Forgiving seems almost unnatural.  Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do.  But forgiving is love's power to break nature's rule.  ~Lewis B. Smedes


There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.  ~Josh Billings


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


One thing you will probably remember well is any time you forgive and forget.  ~Franklin P. Jones


Forgive.  It doesn't erase their crime but why should you do the time.  Let go of resentment.  ~Dodinsky,


Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury.  ~E.H. Chapin


Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.  ~Oscar Wilde