| I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. |
Booker T. Washington |
| Only the truly forgiven are truly forgiving. |
C.S. Lewis |
| To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. |
C.S. Lewis |
| We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practise it. |
C.S. Lewis |
| Hate is a cancer that spreads one cell at a time. |
Dave Pelzer |
| Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury. |
E. H. Chapin |
| He who cannot forgive another breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself. |
George Herbert |
| If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears. |
Glenn Clark |
| The only remedy for the inevitability of history is forgiveness; otherwise, we remain trapped in the "predicament of irreversibility." |
Hannah Arendt |
| Hating people is like burning down your house to get rid of a rat. |
Harry Emerson Fosdick |
| There is something so indescribably sweet and satisfying in the knowledge that a husband or wife has forgiven the other freely, and from the heart. |
Henrik Ibsen |
| Forgiveness is not the same as pardon, you may forgive one who wronged you and still insist on a just punishment for that wrong. |
Lewis Smedes |
| The first and often the only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness... When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us. |
Lewis Smedes |
| Vengeance is a passion to get even. It is a hot desire to give back as much pain as someone gave you. . . . The problem with revenge is that it never get what it wants; it never evens the score. Fairness never comes. The chain reaction set off by every act of vengeance always takes its unhindered course. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain. Both are stuck on the escalator as long as parity is demanded, and the escalator never stops, never lets anyone off. |
Lewis Smedes |
| When you forgive someone, you slice away the wrong from the person who did it. You disengage that person from his hurtful act. You recreate him. At one moment you identify him ineradicably as the person who did you wrong. The next moment you change that identity. He is remade in your memory. You think of him now not as the person who hurt you, but a person who needs you. You feel him now not as the person who alienated you, but as the person who belongs to you. Once you branded him as a person powerful in evil, but now you see him weak in his needs. You recreated your past by recreating the person whose wrong made your past painful. |
Lewis Smedes |
| That old law 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. |
Martin Luther King |
| Forgiveness is not just an occasional act: it is a permanent attitude. |
Martin Luther King Jr. |
| Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. |
Martin Luther King Jr. |
| The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. |
Mohandas K. Gandhi |
| If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive. |
Mother Theresa |
| We must make our homes centres of compassion and forgive endlessly. |
Mother Theresa |
| Forgiveness - underserved, unearned - can cut the cords and let the oppressive burden of guilt roll away. Forgiveness breaks the cycle of blame and loosen the stranglehold of guilt. |
Philip Yancey |
| Forgiveness is an act of faith. By forgiving another, I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am. By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness of God to work out. I leave in God's hands the scales that must balance justice and mercy. |
Philip Yancey |
| Forgiveness may be unfair - it is, by definition - but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution. |
Philip Yancey |
| God took a great risk by announcing forgiveness in advance, and the scandal of grace involves a transfer of that risk to us. |
Philip Yancey |
Life is like a game of chess, in which there are an infinite number of complex moves possible. The choice is open, but the move contains within itself all future moves. One is free to choose, but what follows is the result of one's choice. From the consequences of one's action there is never any escape.