Forgiveness Quotes

Sometimes what a person needs most is to be forgiven.

~ Jennifer Mcmahon

We don't forgive people because they deserve it. We forgive them becausethey need it--because we need it. I'm sure you felt much better after forgiving your son.

~ Bree Despain

Three months ago, if you asked me, I would have told you that if you really loved someone, you’d let them go. But now I look at you, and I dreamed about Maggie, and I see that I’ve been wrong. If you really love someone, Allie, I think you have to take them back.

~ Jodi Picoult

In this life, when you deny someone an apology,you will remember it at time you beg forgiveness.

~ Toba Beta

I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

... In love, everyone does things that hurt the other person, so there really is no Right and Wrong. You just have to decide what you're willing to forgive

~ Yvonne Wood

A mistake made with good in your heart is still a mistake, but it is one for which you must forgive yourself.

~ Linda Sue Park

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Do not be concerned with the faults of other persons. Do not see others' faults with a hateful mind. There is an old saying that if you stop seeing others' faults, then naturally seniors and venerated and juniors are revered. Do not imitate others' faults; just cultivate virtue. Buddha prohibited unwholesome actions, but did not tell us to hate those who practice unwholesome actions.

~ Dōgen

Letting ourselves be forgiven is one of the most difficult healings we will undertake. And one of the most fruitful. (79)

~ Stephen Levine

Buried beneath disappointment and fear, anger and pride, I just might find it in my heart to forgive.

~ Emily Giffin

Forgiveness is not a one off decision; it is a journey and a process that takes time, determination, and persistence. Forgiveness is not forgetting; it is simply denying your pain the right to control your life.

~ Corallie Buchanan

…she eventually forgave him, because she understood him.

~ Whitney Otto

You cannot forgive just once, forgiveness is a daily practice.

~ Sonia Rumzi

There are many ways that I have hurt and harmed others, have betrayed or abandoned them, caused them suffering, knowingly or unknowingly, out of my pain, fear, anger, and confusion. Let yourself remember and visualize the ways you have hurt others. See the pain you have caused out of your own fear and confusion. Feel your own sorrow and regret. Sense that finally you can release this burden and ask for forgiveness. Take as much time as you need to picture each memory that still burdens your heart. And then as each person comes to mind, gently say:I ask for your forgiveness, I ask for your forgiveness.

~ Jack Kornfield

We forgive so long as we love.

~ François De La Rochefoucauld

I loved and adored you, but I drained you like a thirsty man at a spring. I loved what you could give me - your admiration, your acceptance, your love, your forgiveness. I forgot to love you for yourself.

~ Jennifer Ashley

Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)

~ Stephen Levine

He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.

~ Richard Yates

But why is it so hard to forgive?' Mrs. Conners asked.'Pride,' Dad said. 'This person has already wronged you in some way, and now you are the one who has to swallow your pride, give something up, in order to forgive him.

~ Bree Despain

Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who 'forgives' you--out of love--takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.The price you must pay for your own liberation through another's sacrifice is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences to yourself.

~ Dag Hammarskjöld

Apologizing does not always mean you're wrong and the other person is right. It just means you value your relationship more than your ego.

~ Mark Matthews

He sounded absolutely miserable. “Are you ever going to speak to me?

~ Maggie Stiefvater

There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding. ... If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.

~ Marilynne Robinson

The forgiving state of mind is a magnetic power for attracting good.

~ Catherine Ponder

But perhaps this is all to the good. Perhaps it’s best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself, to put at risk everything that’s dear to you. Who reminds you of the distances we have to bridge to begin to know anything about one another. Who reminds you that what seems to be—even about yourself—may not be. That like him, you need to be forgiven.

~ Sue Miller

Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint the anger that rises inside us.Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on

~ Homer

We learn our lessons; we get hurt; we want revenge. Then we realize that actually, happiness and forgiving people is the best revenge.

~ Madonna

I wasted a lot of time being angry, time I can't get back. And now I see you, so angry about what happened to your marriage, and I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.

~ Jonathan Tropper

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency, to forgive them is cruelty.

~ Maximilien De Robespierre

Forgivenesss: It's a miracle drug. It's God's miracle drug.

~ Gayle Forman

It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done.

~ Mitch Albom

A strong gives forgiveness but weak gives permission.

~ Santosh Kalwar

Forgiveness is the final form of love.

~ Reinhold Niebuhr

[D]on’t cling to your self-righteous suffering, let it go. . . . Nothing is too good to be true, let yourself be forgiven. To the degree you insist that you must suffer, you insist on the suffering of others as well. (90)

~ Stephen Levine

If, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much talked of immortality.

~ José Saramago

I only suggest to you: Will you dwell on killing this man? You wish for revenge? If you do, he has already killed you by slow poison. So, let it go. Why waste your time? His life will see to his death.

~ Lloyd Alexander

...God's grace and forgiveness, while free to the recipient, are always costly for the giver.... From the earliest parts of the Bible, it was understood that God could not forgive without sacrifice. No one who is seriously wronged can just forgive the perpetrator.... But when you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bear it yourself. All forgiveness, then, is costly.

~ Timothy J. Keller

Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive.

~ Salman Rushdie

Of all things we mortals are called upon to do, the most difficult is forgiveness; in order to truly do it, you will probably have to behave as if you already have forgiven for quite a while before you have actually done so.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley