"What Must We Do To Be Saved?" (1880) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38801/38801-h/38801-h.htm Section XI, "What Do You Propose?"
Context: I do not believe in forgiveness as it is preached by the church. We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each other and of ourselves. If I rob Mr. Smith and God forgives me, how does that help Smith? If I, by slander, cover some poor girl with the leprosy of some imputed crime, and she withers away like a blighted flower and afterward I get the forgiveness of God, how does that help her? If there is another world, we have got to settle with the people we have wronged in this. No bankrupt court there. Every cent must be paid.
“It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done.”
Variant: We need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done. You can't get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened.
Source: Tuesdays with Morrie
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Mitch Albom 289
American author 1958Related quotes
“All of us have done things that we’re not proud of. But we serve a big, forgiving, almighty God.”
Source: ‘You realize that you have a life inside of you’: SC state rep chose life at age 16 https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/you-realize-that-you-have-a-life-inside-of-you-sc-state-rep-chose-life-at-age-16 (8 April 2021)
Source: On lifting restrictions that you have placed in your own mind in order to achieve your goals in “Dan Hartman Manages to Turn a Career Valley into Peak” https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=943&dat=19890307&id=gGkLAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OlMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6768,567004&hl=en in Mohave Daily Miner (1989 Mar 7)
Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/16mq0g/iamarnold_ask_me_anything/c7xg9aa (2013)
2010s
Paraphrased variant: We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
Harvard address (2008)
Wir sollen immer verzeihen, dem Reuigen um seinetwillen, dem Reuelosen um unseretwillen.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 25.