Quotes for forgiveness
page 5

“The Lord does not forgive excuses, He forgives sin.”

Rick Joyner (1949) Evangelical minister

“Forgiveness is the best part of valor… Discretion is easy. It's finding the courage to forgive yourself and others that is hard. [Acheron]”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Courage, Parting

“According to Dickens, the first rule of human nature is self-preservation and when I forgive him for writing a character as pathetic as Oliver Twist, I'll thank him for the advice.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Nature

“Forgiveness is healing—everything is energy—thoughts create—we are all connected—what you resist persists—true love never dies—the soul’s immortality is the only true immortality”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Source: Everlasting

Love, Soul

“Wherever we go we do harm, forgiving
ourselves as wheels do cement for wearing
each other out. We set this house
on fire, forgetting that we live within.

(from "To a Meadowlark," for M. L. Smoker)”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

Housing, Forgetting

“Forgive everyone for your own sins and be sure to tell them you love them which you do.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Love

“MAN: Kick him-he'll forgive you. Flatter him-he may or may not see through you. But ignore him and he'll hate you”

Idries Shah (1924–1996) writer and Sufi teacher

Hate

“We are not mad. We are human. We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Source: Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs

Love, Madness

“You meet people who are in pain in life and love and you forgive them for behaving the way they do.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Love, Life, Pain, People

“You must forgive me, for I struggled only for you.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

“He put a dark place in me and I can't forgive him for that. But it's a part of me now and how can I regret what I am - though it often makes me sad.”

Valerie Martin (1948) American writer

Sadness, Parting

“One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it.”

Nick Hornby book Juliet, Naked

Source: Juliet, Naked

Love, People, Religion, Art

“The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

Love, Truth, World, Appearance

“Chris:I forgive you.
Annie: For killing my children and my sweet husband?
Chris: For being so wonderful a guy would choose hell over heaven just to be around you.”

Richard Matheson book What Dreams May Come

Source: What Dreams May Come

Children, Guy, Hell

“Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love - a powerful, wonderful thing.
And a ridiculous thing, too.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Love, Hope, Thinking

“Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently
we have had our difficulties and there are many things
I want to ask you.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“I thought I'd stumbled on Sleeping Beauty and her ugly sister,' said another voice, 'waiting for the kiss of true love to wake them from their slumbers. Forgive me if I didn't oblige.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Kings of Clonmel

Love, Beauty, Kiss, Sister

“The Christian gospel is a summons to peace, calling for justice beyond anger, mercy beyond justice, forgiveness beyond mercy, love beyond forgiveness.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Love, Peace, Justice, Anger

“We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck... But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.”

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Attributed

Love, People, Parting

“It’s better to die than to live in the knowledge that you’ve done something that needs forgiveness.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book Blood of Elves

Source: Blood of Elves

Knowledge

“Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To know all is to forgive all.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Source: How to Win Friends & Influence People

People, Understanding

“There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Women

“They hurt you. You hurt 'em back. Or maybe it is the other way around. Whatever. Someday you might find a way to forgive each other. But it won't be like it used to 'cause that pain never really goes away.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future for You

Pain, Way, Hurt

“Walk with care in dark places, and do not put your faith in anyone who promises you the forgiveness of the Lord or a certain place in Paradise.”

Clive Barker book Mister B. Gone

Source: Mister B. Gone

Faith

“Is it easy? Usually not. But you don't forgive people for their benefit. You do it for your benefit.”

Andrew Matthews (1948) British writer

People

“But that's how life is. You never know how it's going to turn out, and you can't plan for everything. You just have to do your best dealing with things as they come and hope people forgive you when you make a mistake.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Unfair Godmother

Life, People, Hope

“My pet, the world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business" - Rhett Butler”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

People, World, Business

“Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader…”

Owen Wister (1860–1938) American writer

Source: The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains

“Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you've lost.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: One Last Thing Before I Go

“you said you were going to kill rukia with your own hands… you make me sick… show me your bankai and I will crush it… I will make me beg for forgiveness on you knees… I will never let you say those words to Rukia again…
~Ichigo Kurosaki”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

“In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

Family

“Love grows from the rich foam of forgiveness, mongrels make good dogs, and the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things.”

Wally Lamb book I Know This Much Is True

Source: I Know This Much Is True

Love, God, Dogs

“I have tried to write Paradise
Do not move
Let the wind speak.
that is paradise.
Let the Gods forgive what I
have made
Let those I love try to forgive
what I have made.”

Ezra Pound The Cantos

Canto CXX (the concluding Canto of the 1975 edition of The Cantos')
The Cantos

Love, God

“I don't forgive him," I said.
"Hell, no, you don't. And why should you? So he can feel better? Get on with his life? And what's he done to help you get on with yours?”

Kelley Armstrong book Frostbitten

Source: Frostbitten

Life, Feeling, Hell, Help

“Sadness at being caught, at the incontrovertibe knowledge that she will never forgive you.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Sadness, Knowledge

“Scots have long memories, and they're not the most forgiving of people.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

People, Memory

“To err is human, to forgive divine. (Acheron)
I don’t ask for your forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. I only ask for a chance to show you now that I’m not the fool I was once. (Styxx)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Second Chances

Fools, Chance

“My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Women, Men, World, Peace

“People who truly love us can be divided into two categories: those who understand us, and those who forgive us our worst sins. Rarely do you find someone capable of both.”

Jonathan Carroll (1949) novelist, short story writer

Love, People, Understanding

“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Act II; sometimes paraphrased as: The customs of your tribe are not laws of nature.
1890s, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)
Variant: Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
Context: THEODOTUS: Caesar: you are a stranger here, and not conversant with our laws. The kings and queens of Egypt may not marry except with their own royal blood. Ptolemy and Cleopatra are born king and consort just as they are born brother and sister.
BRITANNUS (shocked): Caesar: this is not proper.
THEODOTUS (outraged): How!
CAESAR (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

Law, Nature

“A mother's hardest to forgive.
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you
Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.”

Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978) writer and poet

Life, Understanding

“We always find it difficult to forgive our heroes for being human.”

Frances Hardinge (1973) British children's writer

Source: Well Witched

“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 (1974) American author

Source: Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage

Love, Spring

“You know the incredible thing about hearts is their unbelievable capacity for forgiveness. You’d be amazed what people will overlook when they love someone. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

Love, People, Heart

“Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Revenge

“Absorbing the fact that sometimes, people do cut you slack and forgive you and want you anyway.

Sometimes they do. And when they do, even if it's not a happy ending, it is delicious”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Treasure Map of Boys: Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon—and me, Ruby Oliver

Happiness, People

“It made me wonder how many times we forgive just because we don't want to lose someone, even if they don't deserve our forgiveness.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

Time

“To understand all is to forgive all.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Understanding

“Forgiveness is a powerful thing.”

Elin Hilderbrand (1969) American writer

Source: The Castaways

“At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

War, Beauty

“If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive. If you want to see the heroic, look at those who can love in return for hatred.”

Krishna Dharma (1955) British Hindu scholar and author

Love

“We are supposed to forgive everyone; everyone includes ourselves.”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

“Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else—cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments—as long as the paperwork’s filled out properly. And in on time.”

Connie Willis Bellwether

Source: Bellwether (1996), Chapter 4 “Rapids”, Section 1 (p. 140)

Time

“If you are going to forgive a person, Liz decides, it is best to do it sooner rather than later. Later, Liz knows from experience, could be sooner than you thought.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Personality

“I still love you. I will always love you, and that is all that matters. I will forgive you anything, and I will forgive you this.”

Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer

Source: Lost in Time

Love

“Love accepts. Forgiveness comes in time.”

Lisa Unger book Die for You

Source: Die for You

Love, Time

“He had only to touch me to turn my tears into sighs and my anger to desire. How accomodating love is; it forgives everything.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

Love, Tear, Anger

“Dogs are here to remind us life really is a simple thing. You eat, sleep, take walks, and pee when you must. That's about all there is. They are quick to forgive trespasses and assume strangers will be kind.”

Jonathan Carroll book The Marriage of Sticks

Source: The Marriage of Sticks

Life, Dogs, Sleep

“When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines upon you.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Love, God, Light

“One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times.... He is beyond human forgiveness.”

Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1919–1995) Atheist activist

Quoted without citation by Ted Dracos, UnGodly: The Passions, Torments, and Murder of Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair (2003), on her son William's rejection of atheism and conversion to Christianity and new calling as a traveling evangelist.
Attributed

Time, Parting

“When combined, the small individual contributors of caring, friendship, forgiveness, and love, each of us different from our next-door neighbors, can form a phalanx, an army, with great capability.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Page 186
Post-Presidency, Our Endangered Values (2005)

Love, Friendship

“In asking forgiveness of women for our mythologizing of their bodies, for being unreal about them, we can only appeal to their own sexuality, which is different but not basically different, perhaps, from our own. For women, too, there seems to be that tangle of supplication and possessiveness, that descent toward infantile undifferentiation, that omnipotent helplessness, that merger with the cosmic mother-warmth, that flushed pulse- quickened leap into overestimation, projection, general mix-up.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“The Female Body,” Michigan Quarterly Review (1990)

Women

“In 1736 I lost one of my Sons, a fine Boy of 4 Years old, by the Smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by Inoculation. This I mention for the Sake of Parents who omit that Operation on the Supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a Child died under it; my Example showing that the Regret may be the same either way, and that therefore the safer should be chosen.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

On Immunization, Part III, p. 83.
The Autobiography (1818)

Way, Boy, Parent

“Oh wearisome Condition of Humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound:
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound:
What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws?
Passion and reason, self-division cause.
Is it the mark, or Majesty of Power
To make offences that it may forgive?”

Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke (1554–1628) English politician

Chorus Sacerdotum.
Mustapha (1609)

Law, Nature, Passion

“What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one’s self became reluctance to assert one’s self, became forgiveness, love of one’s enemies. Misery became a distinction”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 31-32

Love, Fear

“I started this book to forgive my parents and ended it by becoming a parent. Understanding backward liberated me to live forward.”

Andrew Solomon (1963) American journalist

Source: Far from the Tree, Ch. 12 Father, p. 677.

Books, Understanding, Parent

“We have survived bitter divisions in our society. Reconciliation requires us to put aside our differences and forgive the injuries done to us just as justice is essential to that equation. Those who have done wrong and broken the law must be punished. There can be no setting to rights or settling of accounts without that element. Until that is done there will be no finality to our collective nightmare. Until we all accept that simple fact the sense of hurt and betrayal continue.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Our Country at the Crossroads - 2001 Parkinson Memorial Lecture Series, 15 August 2001 http://www.usp.ac.fj/journ/docs/news/wansolnews/wansol1508013.html.

Justice, Law, Sense, Betrayal

“Since I love him so much, I can easily forgive him for loving himself.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXIII : First weeks of Matrimony; Helen to Arthur

Love

“'Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for that "proof" of his!' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly. 'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed. But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an asylum not only did not surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. 'Exactly, exactly!' he cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered. 'That's exactly the place for him! I said to him myself that morning at breakfast: "If you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may be clever but it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad."' Berlioz's eyes bulged. At breakfast… to Kant?”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Book One in 'Never Talk to Strangers', MG, here Woland, Berlioz and Ivan are talking about Kant's views on existence of God
The Master and Margarita (1967)

People, Thinking, Madness

“Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that "We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

No. 206
Apophthegms (1624)

Reading

“The face forgives the mirror, the worm forgives the plough, the question begs the answer, can you forgive me somehow?”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

"All the World is Green", Blood Money (2002).

Question

“My punishment is far heavier, I forgive you, and set you free.”

Alp Arslan

Attributed in: R. Scott Peoples (2007) Crusade of Kings. p. 13

“I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend;
Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me:
Lo! we are One; forgiving all Evil; Not seeking recompense!”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 1, plate 4, lines 18-28 The Words of Jesus to the Giant Albion

God, Evil

“Heraclitus says that Pittacus, when he had got Alcæus into his power, released him, saying, "Forgiveness is better than revenge."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Pittacus, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 1: The Seven Sages

Revenge

“Spanish for, I want to send a very affectionate greeting to the Mexican public, which I don't forget that every day I make more efforts to like and if I don't like so it is a disgrace but the public is benign and forgives all my mistakes, true that they forgive me?”

Sara García (1895–1980) Mexican actress

Quiero enviar al publico de México un saludo muy cariñoso, que yo no los olvido que yo cada día hago mas esfuerzos por gustar que si no gusto pues ya fue una desgracia pero el publico es benigno y me perdona todos mis errores, verdad que me los perdona?
Sara Garcia

Effort, Forgetting

“One guy said, "I'm from Saudi Arabia and I'm proud of my country." Well, good for you, but forgive me for asking why. If you live in Saudi Arabia, what on Earth have you got to be proud of? If you couldn't dig money straight out of the ground, you'd all be starving. The only thing your country has to offer the world is oil. Well, it's not the only thing, but we don't need any sand, and we're all up to here with Jihad, thanks very much.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Hello Saudi Arabia" (2 May 2012) https://youtube.com/watch?v=RnLTHHpKl60 <br class="br">2012

Money, World, Guy, Country

“At the helm of freshly-baked, forgive me, independent governments there will appear executives tested and appointed by us. Chaos will generate more chaos. Where this would prove impossible, power will be grabbed by plain old degenerates. Or political prostitutes, dear Vladimir Ilyich. Or simply nothings.”

Yurii Andrukhovych book The Moscoviad

The Moscoviad
Source: The Moscoviad. Yuri Andrukhovych. Spuyten Duyvil, New York City. ISBN1933132523, p. 176

Appearance

“But that was only the beginning of her mortification. Harold had proved her wrong. He had seen that she was a shifty, shallow hypocrite. She had not dared to be alone with him since her exposure. She had never looked at him and had hardly spoken. He seemed cheerful, but what was he thinking? He would never forgive her.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Albergo Empedocle
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

Thinking

“Reconciliation and forgiveness is inextricably linked to the identity and unity we develop as a nation.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Opening address, Fiji Week celebrations, 7 October 2005.

“Novelist Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park as a screenplay option for the Steven Spielberg flick. I am ambiguous about Crichton’s body of work, as it includes dubious anti-scientific elements. But I can’t be too upset about a fellow who includes me in the acknowledgements of his bestselling novel. I ended up doing some preliminary studies of Tyrannosaurus and Deinonychus for the movie(s). These were significantly altered by Spielberg and Stan Winston and his effects team for copyright purposes. In the film, some of my skeletals show up posted on Sam Neill's (ak. a. Dr. Grant's) trailer wall. I was accidentally responsible for the avian term 'raptor' being improperly applied to dromaeosaurs. In another Hunteria paper and PDW, I synonymized Deinonychus with Velociraptor, which Crichton picked up on and shortened into the convenient handle 'raptor'. The movie was okay, but I will never forgive them for presenting Brachiosaurus as such a heavy limbed clunker. I had nothing to do with that. I thought it was too bad the potentially omnivorous brachiosaurs – which were unlikely to have been as placid as cattle – missed the opportunity to snarf up the bratty kids when they were up in the tree.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Autobiography, part IV http://gspauldino.com/part4.html, gspauldino.com

Tree, Study

“My aversion to them…springs from the perniciousness of that sect to society—I hate Papists, as a man, not as a Protestant. If Papists were only enemies to the religion of other men, I should overlook their errors. As they are foes to liberty, I cannot forgive them.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Memoirs from the Declaration of the War with Spain (1746)

Men, Hate, Religion, Error

“I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love. I sell you no phony forgiveness, I'm a desperate man—but too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate. So I approach it through division. So I denounce and I defend and I hate and I love.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Epilogue.
Invisible Man (1952)

Love, Life, Pain, Hate

“I went skydiving, I went rocky mountain climbling, I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Blue Manchu.
And I loved deeper, and I spoke sweeter, and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying.
And he said "Someday, I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying."”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Live Like You Were Dying
Song lyrics, Live Like You Were Dying (2004)

Love, Hope, Mountain, Chance

“The pope has been up against an intransigent church bureaucracy. Vatican officials have proved unwilling to cooperate with the commission; nor has it been furnished with enough resources. But above all, there has been cultural resistance within the church over abuse. The clerical caste is one shaped by obedience and a deep fear of sullying the reputation of the church. The relationship of bishop and priest is a paternal one; if the priest errs, the bishop may focus on forgiveness of the miscreant rather than punishment of an abuser, while his greatest focus is on avoiding publicity. But the church is now reaping what it sowed: like long-festering sores, the suppressed scandals are erupting everywhere.”

Catherine Pepinster (1959)

Pope Francis has utterly failed to tackle the church’s abuse scandal https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/pope-francis-catholic-church-abuse-scandal-failed (26 July 2018), The Guardian.

Fear

“You and yours at the Circle, you're gonna save all the souls. You're gonna get everyone in one place, you're gonna teach them all the same things. There can only be one morality, one set of rules. Imagine! Now all humans will have the eyes of God. You know this passage? 'All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of God.' Something like that. You know your Bible? Now we're all God. Every one of us will soon be able to see, and cast judgment upon, every other. We'll see what He sees. We'll articulate His judgment. We'll channel His wrath and deliver His forgiveness. On a constant and global level. All religion has been waiting for this, when every human is a direct and immediate messenger of God's will. Do you see what I'm saying?”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Man, to Mae and Francis; pp. 398-399
The Circle (2013)

God, Religion, Soul, Imagination

“Sandalwood perfumes even the axe that hurls it down! The more we rub sandalwood against a stone, the more its fragrance spreads. Burn it, and it wafts its glory through the entire neighbourhood. Such is the enchanting beauty of forgiveness in life.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Life, Beauty

“There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom. Friendship loves a free Air, and will not be penned up in streight and narrow Enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is, ’twill easily forgive, and forget too, upon small Acknowledgments.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

107
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

Love, Friendship, Freedom, Forgetting

“If, when Christ was on his way to Calvary, some brave soul had rescued him from the pious mob, he would not only have been damned for his pains, but would have rendered impossible the salvation of any human being. The Christian world has been trying for nearly two thousand years to explain the atonement, and every effort has ended in an admission that it cannot be understood, and a declaration that it must be believed. Has the promise and hope of forgiveness ever prevented the commission of a sin? Can men be made better by being taught that sin gives happiness here; that to live a virtuous life is to bear a cross; that men can repent between the last sin and the last breath; and that repentance washes every stain of the soul away?”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Some Reasons Why (1881)

Life, Men, Pain, Happiness

“Come back! come back!" he cried in grief
"Across this stormy water;
And I'll forgive your Highland chief,
My daughter! O my daughter!”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Stanza 13
Lord Ullin's Daughter

Water, Daughters

“Beware of knowing your virtues; you may lose them. Beware of knowing your vices; you may forgive them.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#166
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

“Cats do not give us too many chances. Abuse a cat's trust twice and you could be history, for cats are much less forgiving than dogs and will often lose their trust in you should you behave badly. A dog gives you infinite slack; not so a cat.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002), Ch. 2

Dogs, History, Cats, Chance

“In Erlangen, for instance, in January 1946 he spoke of meeting a German Jew who had lost everything — parents, brothers, and sisters too. 'I could not help myself', said Niemöller, 'I had to tell him, "Dear brother, fellow man, Jew, before you say anything, I say to you: I acknowledge my guilt and beg you to forgive me and my people for this sin."' Niemöller's stance was by no means entirely welcome to the 1,200 students to whom he was preaching. They shouted and jeered as he preached that Germany must accept responsibility for the five or six million murdered Jews. Students in Marburg and Göttingen similarly heckled him. But Niemöller insisted that "We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries. No doubt others made mistakes too, but the wave of crime started here and here it reached its highest peak. The guilt exists, there is no doubt about that — even if there were no other guilt than that of the six million clay urns containing the ashes of incinerated Jews from all over Europe. And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done."”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Sermons in Erlangen, Marburg, Göttingen and Frankfurt (January 1946), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 177

People, World, Parent, Sister

“The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry"—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual, honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914) Union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient

The Passing of the Armies: An account of the Army of the Potomac, based upon personal reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (1915), p. 260

Death, Men, Suffering, Memory

“The reason for his anguish, the intolerable burden which had broken him at last, was the simplest thing in the world: he loved his wife. He always had, and he always would. Nothing could change that, but that was what had made his agony bite so deep, the reason he couldn't forgive himself for not somehow making things "all right" again… and the reason he'd had to turn to someone else to rebuild himself when the collapse came. It had been cowardly of him, in many ways, but he simply could not have made himself dump his weakness, his collapse on her shoulders while she coped with everything God had already done to her.”

David Weber (1952) author

"Honorverse", Echoes of Honor (1998)

Love, God, World, Way

“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since, — on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation, I associate you only with the good; and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”

Charles Dickens book Great Expectations

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 44

Life, God, Feeling, Boy

“A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men… nine men out of ten are superstitious, nineteen out of twenty believe in the evil eye, and ninety-eight out of a hundred are afraid of spiders. They forgive us — oh! for many things, but not for the absence in us of their own feelings.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Aunt Alicia
Gigi (1945)

Men, Feeling, Evil

“After completing my work [his murals for the Jewish Theater in Moscow) I thought, as has been agreed, that it would be shown in public as a series of my latest things. The management will agree with me that I can find no inner peace as a painter until the 'masses' see my work etc. It turned out that the things [the murals] had been put into a 'cage', as it were, where they can be seen at the very best by (if you will forgive me for saying so) Jews at close quarters. I like the Jews a lot (there's enough 'proof' of that) but I like the Russians as well and some other nationalities, and I am used to painting serious things for many 'nationalities.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

In a letter to the management of the State Jewish Kamerny Theater, 1921, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 89
1920's

Peace, Painting

“Some faults may claim forgiveness.”
Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus.

Horace Ars Poetica

Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 347 (tr. Conington)

“They will never forgive us, that we did not accept being slain or gassed a little.”

Zvi Rex (1909)

Source: „Man wird uns nie verzeihen, daß wir uns nicht haben erschlagen oder ein bißchen vergasen lassen.“ Christoph Buchwald: Odysseus hat entweder heimzukommen oder umzukommen. Notizen zur Rezeption Walter Mehrings nach 1950, in the quarterly die horen 1982, p. 15 https://books.google.de/books?id=lgpZAAAAMAAJ&q=1948

“Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.”

Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–1880) American priest

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, P. 251.

Soul, Revenge, Strong, Appearance

Quotes for forgiveness page 5

Quotes for forgiveness
page 5