Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, P. 251.
“There is a hard law. When an injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.”
“There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”
Source: Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873), p. 235 https://books.google.com/books?id=HJUIXmDzqPcC&pg=PA235
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
"Interview to the Press" in Karachi about the execution of Bhagat Singh (23 March 1931); published in Young India (2 April 1931), reprinted in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online Vol. 51. Gandhi begins by making a statement on his failure "to bring about the commutation of the death sentence of Bhagat Singh and his friends." He is asked two questions. First: "Do you not think it impolitic to forgive a government which has been guilty of a thousand murders?" Gandhi replies: "I do not know a single instance where forgiveness has been found so wanting as to be impolitic." In a follow-up question, Gandhi is asked: "But no country has ever shown such forgiveness as India is showing to Britain?" Gandhi replies: "That does not affect my reply. What is true of individuals is true of nations. One cannot forgive too much. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
1930s
“Injury, when it is slight, upsets me; when it is strong, it calms me.”
El mal, débil, me agita; fuerte, me calma.
Voces (1943)
“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”
VI, 6
Variant: The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI
Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts
Context: In those former times we lived. Now we hardly live any more, since we have lived. They who we were are dead, for we are here. Her glances come to me, but they do not join again the two surviving voids that we are; her look does not wipe out our widowhood, nor change anything. And I, I am too imbued with clear-sighted simplicity and truth to answer "no" when it is "yes." In this moment by my side Marie is like me.
The immense mourning of human hearts appears to us. We dare not name it yet; but we dare not let it not appear in all that we say.
“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."
Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi
Context: All is madness. And there is no one who will dare to rise and say that all is not madness, and that the future does not so appear — as fatal and unchangeable as a memory.
But how many men will there be who will dare, in face of the universal deluge which will be at the end as it was in the beginning, to get up and cry "No!" who will pronounce the terrible and irrefutable issue: —
"No! The interests of the people and the interests of all their present overlords are not the same.
Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 3; Variant translation: Never do any enemy a small injury for they are like a snake which is half beaten and it will strike back the first chance it gets.
