Source: Measure for Measure
“Some rise by sin, and some by virtues fall.”
“Some faults may claim forgiveness.”
Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus.
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 347 (tr. Conington)
“The trouble with forgiveness is that some people don't want to be forgiven.”
Source: How to Make Friends with Demons
“There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.”
Source: Half of a Yellow Sun
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression. The wrongdoer may request forgiveness. He may come to himself, and, like the prodigal son, move up with some dusty road, his heart palpitating with the desire for forgiveness. But only the injured neighbor, the loving father back home can really pour out the warm waters of forgiveness.
“God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.”
Society and Solitude
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Boundless Love (co-written with Dan Auerbach and Pat McLaughlin)
Song lyrics, The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)
[The Craig-Bradley Debate: Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?, 1994, http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-bradley0.html], quoted in [William Lane Craig vs. Ray Bradley (debate review), Luke, Muehlhauser, 2011-04-27, Common Sense Atheism, http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=2523, 2011-10-21]
