
“Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”
"Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars"
Poetry
“Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”
“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”
Variant: Who was it who said that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past?
Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.”
Pittacus, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 1: The Seven Sages
Source: TV interview by Menashe Raz, Oded Shachar and Maya Bengal, on Channel 1, October 16, 2005.
“There is hope in forgiveness”
Source: A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God
“Forgiveness is better than revenge.”
As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius in Life of Pittacus, i. 76, citing Heraclitus as his source.
Pittacus made this remark to justify his release of his captured enemy Alcaeus.
According to William Shepard Walsh, in Handy-book of Literary Curiosities (1892), p. 392, Epictetus, quoting from the same source, gives the phrase thus: "Forgiveness is better than punishment; for the one is proof of a gentle, the other of a savage, nature."