Quotes About Forgiveness

1. Darkness cannot drive out darkness only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

3. Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. – John F. Kennedy

4. Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them. – Bruce Lee

5. Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much. – Oscar Wilde

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

7. Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you: love, prayer, and forgiveness. – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

8. You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well. – Lewis B. Smedes

9. When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future. – Bernard Meltzer

10. 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

11. Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave. – Indira Gandhi

12. He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself for every man has need to be forgiven. – Thomas Fuller

13. People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what’s bitter and move on. – Bill Cosby

14. Forgiveness is the final form of love. – Reinhold Niebuhr

15. Forgiveness is the economy of the heart… forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits. – Hannah More

16. When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. – Emo Philips

17. How does one know if she has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him. You tend to have nothing left to say about it all. – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

18. To err is human to forgive, divine. – Alexander Pope

19. To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. – Lewis B. Smedes

20. Forgotten is forgiven. – F. Scott Fitzgerald

21. A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable and always unacceptable. – Robert Fripp

22. Forgiveness means letting go of the past. – Gerald Jampolsky

23. The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius. – Oscar Wilde

24. Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again. – Saint Augustine

25. There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love. – Bryant H. McGill

26. If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn. – Friedrich Nietzsche

27. The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world. – Marianne Williamson

28. 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

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

30. One forgives to the degree that one loves. – Francois de La Rochefoucauld

31. To be social is to be forgiving. – Robert Frost

32. The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods. – Elbert Hubbard

33. Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness. – Billy Graham

34. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. – Suzanne Somers

35. Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on. – Les Brown

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

37. When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues. – Honore de Balzac

38. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. – William Blake

39. Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure. – Jane Austen

40. It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited. – Lewis B. Smedes

41. It’s said in Hollywood that you should always forgive your enemies – because you never know when you’ll have to work with them. – Lana Turner

42. Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. – Garrison Keillor

43. There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness. – Josh Billings

44. Without forgiveness, there’s no future. – Desmond Tutu

45. Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on. – Alice Duer Miller

46. Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it. – Mason Cooley

47. Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another. – Jean Paul

48. Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom. – Hannah Arendt

49. God will forgive me. It’s his job. – Heinrich Heine

50. Forgive, son men are men they needs must err. – Euripides

51. How unhappy is he who cannot forgive himself. – Publilius Syrus

52. Forgive many things in others nothing in yourself. – Ausonius

53. My desire is to be a forgiving, non-judgmental person. – Janine Turner

54. The ability to forgive is one of man’s greatest achievements. – Bryant H. McGill

55. Life is an adventure in forgiveness. – Norman Cousins

56. It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. – Grace Hopper

57. 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

58. It is very east to forgive others their mistakes it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own. – Jessamyn West

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

60. To understand is to forgive, even oneself. – Alexander Chase

61. It’s far easier to forgive an enemy after you’ve got even with him. – Olin Miller

62. I shall be an autocrat, that’s my trade and the good Lord will forgive me, that’s his. – Catherine the Great

63. 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

64. 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

65. Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness. – Marianne Williamson

66. If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness. – Nelson Mandela

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

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

69. Forgiveness is God’s command. – Martin Luther

70. Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness, those are life-altering lessons. – Jessica Lange

71. When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge. – Gerald Jampolsky

72. Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness anger concealed often hardens into revenge. – Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

73. The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. – Honore de Balzac

74. Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense. – Joyce Meyer

75. God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness. – Henry Ward Beecher

76. Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions. – Gerald Jampolsky

77. Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning. – Desmond Tutu

78. The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. – William Blake

79. Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge. – Scott Adams

80. Every year during their High Holy Days, the Jewish community reminds us all of our need for repentance and forgiveness. – Billy Graham

81. Here is the amazing thing about Easter the Resurrection Sunday for Christians is this, that Christ in the dying moments on the cross gives us the greatest illustration of forgiveness possible. – T. D. Jakes

82. For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed? – Bell Hooks

83. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. – Corrie Ten Boom

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

85. I deepen my experience of God through prayer, meditation, and forgiveness. – Marianne Williamson

86. You’ve just got to have a sense of respect for the person you have children with. Anger doesn’t help anybody. Ultimately you have to say forgiveness is important, and honoring what you had together is important. But it’s easy to say and harder to do. – Nicole Kidman

87. If only I wasn’t an atheist, I could get away with anything. You’d just ask for forgiveness and then you’d be forgiven. It sounds much better than having to live with guilt. – Keira Knightley

88. In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call on him to come. – Madeleine L’Engle

89. Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you’ve closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart. – Desmond Tutu

90. The first step in forgiveness is the willingness to forgive. – Marianne Williamson

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

92. Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC’s military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge. – Desmond Tutu

93. Forgiveness is about empowering yourself, rather than empowering your past. – T. D. Jakes

94. I have to ask Allah’s forgiveness and not get angry, because they come to me out of love, and it’s not fitting that I should turn to them in hatred. – Abdul Qadeer Khan

95. We think that forgiveness is weakness, but it’s absolutely not it takes a very strong person to forgive. – T. D. Jakes

96. 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

97. I realized that it’s all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba. – Carlos Santana

98. I did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes. You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn’t until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don’t have a problem going to sleep at night. – Mark Wahlberg

99. The fact is there is forgiveness for those who seek God. And I believe in the power of redemption. – Rick Perry

100. I think the first step is to understand that forgiveness does not exonerate the perpetrator. Forgiveness liberates the victim. It’s a gift you give yourself. – T. D. Jakes

101. Soon I realized that if beauty equalled forgiveness, I was never going to be forgiven. – Kevyn Aucoin

102. We cannot embrace God’s forgiveness if we are so busy clinging to past wounds and nursing old grudges. – T. D. Jakes

103. Forgiveness to the injured does belong but they ne’er pardon who have done wrong. – John Dryden

104. God’s forgiveness allows us to be honest with ourselves. We recognize our imperfections, admit our failures, and plead to God for clemency. – Jonathan Sacks

105. If Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be, and He did die on a cross at a point of time in history, then, for all history past and all history future it is relevant because that is the very focal point for forgiveness and redemption. – Josh McDowell

106. We win by tenderness. We conquer by forgiveness. – Frederick William Robertson

107. The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it. – Simon Wiesenthal

108. It is always the case that when the Christian looks back, he is looking at the forgiveness of sins. – Karl Barth

109. I find forgiveness to be really healthy. – Ben Affleck

110. My desire is to stand up and brush myself off when I make mistakes and ask for forgiveness. – Janine Turner

111. Forgiveness really is so misunderstood, as well as the power it can release in an individual. – Jennifer O’Neill

112. I think it’s important to remember that Christianity was based in love and tolerance and forgiveness and acceptance. – Kristin Chenoweth

113. I think we learn the most from imperfect relationships – things like forgiveness and compassion. – Andrea Thompson

114. On a level of simple personal survival, understanding and forgiveness are crucial… whether in an intimate personal relationship or on a global level. – Edward Albert

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