Forgiveness Quotes

The liberation that forgiveness generates comes in the transition to a higher state of consciousness – not just in theory, but energetically and biologically.

- Caroline Myss

By gaining proficiency in the art of forgiveness. We can learn how to transmute out sorrows into the capacity to love, enabling us to reach out to others with a spontaneity and openness that will ass emotional richness and enjoyment to our lives.

- Reb Zalman

Forgiveness is a complex experience that changes as offended person’s spiritual feelings, emotions, thoughts, actions and self-confidence level.

- Fred Luskin

I suffered an offence, but I was not offended deep within my being.

- Anonymous

He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.

- George Herbert

To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.

- William H. Walton

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

- Thomas S. Szasz

You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.

- Lewis B. Smedes

We achieve inner health only through forgiveness - the forgiveness not only of others but also of ourselves.

- Joshua Loth Liebman

It is not "forgive and forget” as if nothing wrong had ever happened, but "forgive and go forward," building on the mistakes of the past and the energy generated by reconciliation to create a new future.

- Carolyn Osiek

Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.

- Laurence Sterne

When we judge, we are pushing people away; we are creating a wall, a barrier. When we forgive we are destroying barriers, we come closer to others.

- Jean Vanier

He who is devoid of the power to forgive, is devoid of the power to love.- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Forgiveness does not mean that we suppress anger; forgiveness means that we have asked for a miracle: the ability to see through mistakes that someone has made to the truth that lies in all of our hearts. Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness. Attack thoughts towards others are attack thoughts towards ourselves. The first step in forgiveness is the willingness to forgive.

- Marianne Williamson

Resentment is one burden that is incompatible with your success. Always be the first to forgive; and forgive yourself first always.

- Dan Zadra

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

- Jessamyn West

Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves.

- Sidney and Suzanne Simon

We cannot change the past, but we can change our attitude toward it. Uproot guilt and plant forgiveness. Tear out arrogance and seed humility. Exchange love for hate --- thereby, making the present comfortable and the future promising.

- Maya Angelou

Forgiving is one of the most difficult things for a human being to do, but I think it means looking at some slight you feel, putting yourself in the position of the other person, and wiping away any sort of resentment and antagonism you feel toward them. Then let that other person know that everything is perfectly friendly and normal between you.

- Jimmy Carter

People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what's bitter and move on

- Bill Cosby

The only way children can learn the habit of forgiveness is by seeing us, their parents, forgive others and forgive ourselves.

- Naomi Drew

To forgive is to set yourself free, to acknowledge that it does no good to hate. Hate really, really destroys both the other person and yourself.

- Ruby Bridges Hall

"Forgiveness does not equal forgetting. It is about healing the memory of the harm, not erasing it."

- Ken Hart

We all have someone or something to forgive . . . and when we learn how, we become free to increase success in every area of our life.

- Azim Khamisa

Forgiveness is primarily for our own sake, so that we no longer carry the burden of resentment. But to forgive does not mean we will allow injustice again.

- Jack Kornfield

You did what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better.

- Maya Angelou

I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self.

- Maya Angelou

Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life.

- Joan Lunden

Since nothing can be forgiven for us that is not first forgiven by and through us, there is only one species of forgiveness: self-forgiveness.

- Noel McInnis

Forgiveness has nothing to do with forgetting...A wounded person cannot--indeed, should not--think that a faded memory can provide an expiation of the past. To forgive, one must remember the past, put it into perspective, and move beyond it. Without remembrance, no wound can be transcended.

- Beverly Flanigan

Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.

- Suzanne Somers

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.

- Indira Gandhi

Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.

- Dag Hammarskjold

Forgiveness is the economy of the heart... forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.

- Hannah More

Forgiveness is the final form of love.

- Reinhold Niebuhr

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

- Mark Twain

Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life.

- George MacDonald

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

- Hannah Arendt

Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again.

- Saint Augustine

Forgiveness means letting go of the past.

- Gerald Jampolsky

He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.

- Thomas Fuller

Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another.

- Jean Paul

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

- Norman Cousins

Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you: love, prayer, and forgiveness.

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

One forgives to the degree that one loves.

- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.

- Garrison Keillor

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

- Mohandas Gandhi

There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.

- Bryant H. McGill

To understand is to forgive, even oneself.

- Alexander Chase

When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.

- Lewis B. Smedes

When you forgive, you in no way change the past - but you sure do change the future.

- Bernard Meltzer

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

- Desmond Tutu

You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.

- Lewis B. Smedes