forgiveness Quotes

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

“Tirian, with his head against Jewel’s flank, slept as soundly as if he were in his royal bed at Cair Paravel, till the sound of a gong beating awoke him and he sat up and saw that there was firelight on the far side of the stable and knew that the hour had come. ‘Kiss me, Jewel,’ he said. ‘For certainly this is our last night on earth. And if ever I offended against you in any matter great or small, forgive me now.’ ‘Dear King,’ said the Unicorn, ‘I could almost wish you had, so that I might forgive it. Farewell. We have known great joys together. If Aslan gave me my choice I would choose no other life than the life I have had and no other death than the one we go to.‘”

“I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused.”

“As you from crimes would pardoned be, Let your indulgence set me free.”

“The rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance.”

“Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

“The deed is done and taking another life cannot change it. Instead, let us forgive as God would have us do. It is not right that we hold a grudge in our hearts. The doer of the act is going to find it difficult indeed to live with himself. His only peace of mind will be when he goes to God for forgiveness.” Let us not stand in the way but instead give prayers that he may find his peace. ”

“God alone knows how much I have suffered; and He, I trust, will forgive me. If I am permitted to have my children, I intend to be a good mother, and to live in such a manner that people cannot treat me with contempt.”

“Every human being, after all, is possessed with the undeniable urge to confess his sins. Religions were built on such things. And kingdoms were conquered with the promise that all sins would be forgiven afterward.”

“Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.”

″‘Then be off home as quick as you can,’ said the Faun, ‘and – c-can you ever forgive me for what I meant to do?’ ‘Why, of course I can,’ said Lucy, shaking him heartily by the hand. ‘And I do hope you won’t get into dreadful trouble on my account.‘”

“It seems that most people need to experience a great deal of suffering before they will relinquish resistance and accept - before they will forgive.”

“I tried to do as she would wish it. The Lord will pardon me and excuse the conduct of them He sent me.”

“All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.”

“But - but the greatest way to witness is by walking that straight and narrow and also realizing that you’re going to mess up. That’s what grace is for. We’re going to fall, but we’ve got to get back up. And you’ve got to improve. And that’s what I’m all about.”

“I would say to you: Would you ever forgive me for that accident, for the death of your sister; would you ever forgive me, for I could never forgive myself!”

“Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?”

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

“Do not assess a man who has nothing, and thus falsify your pen.”

“When you’re living in the reality of the forgiveness you been extended, you just don’t get angry with others easily. I suspect our sense of entitlement to anger is directly proportional to our perception of our own relative innocence.”

“But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.”

“What if I forgave myself? What if I forgave myself even though I’d done some things I shouldn’t have? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything different from what I’d done? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if all those things I shouldn’t have done were what got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”

“Of the affairs of love ... my only advice is to be honest. That’s your most powerful tool to unlock a heart or gain forgiveness.”

“You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realize that you have forgiven completely. And then one day you will pray for his wholeness and give him over to me so that my love will burn from his life every vestige of corruption.”

“I could forgive the boy, now, if he’d committed a million sins!”

“Forgiveness is not about forgetting, Mack. It is about letting go of another person’s throat. Forgiveness does not establish relationship. It is to release you from something that will eat you alive, that will destroy your joy and your ability to love fully and openly.”

“Maybe you will never be able to forgive me, but I wanted you to know I had the best intentions-and I still love you in my own fucked-up way.”

“You smart-aleck! You have no more right to spit on his religion than you have a right to spit on my religion! Or my lack of it!”

“To understand is to forgive.”

“O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully, and I can never, never forgive you!”

“Tom opened his eyes, and looked upon his master. ‘Ye poor miserable critter!’ he said, ‘there ain’t no more ye can do! I forgive ye, with all my soul!’ and he fainted entirely away.”

“It would be quite nice if you stopped jumping down out throats, Harry, because in case you haven’t noticed, Ron and I are on your side.”

“He was a terrible person. He died a hard death. So maybe. A queen can forgive her vanquished foe. It isn’t easy, it doesn’t count if it’s easy, it’s the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet. Peace, at last. Isn’t that what the Kaddish asks for?”

“She waved at all the people on the train & later, when she saw they didn’t wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn’t remember having a better time in her life.”

“Forgive me…for everything…I have done…A─ a wiser father…may have done differently. I am not…wise.”

“All of a sudden it was hard for me to talk. I loved the preacher so much. I loved him because he loved Winn-Dixie. I loved him because he was going to forgive Winn-Dixie for being afraid. But most of all, I loved him for putting his arms around Winn-Dixie like that, like he was already trying to keep him safe.”

“Every twenty-four God has a fresh new supply of grace, of favor, of wisdom, of forgiveness.”

″ I did not even think to think what Mama needed to be forgiven for. ”

“Where have you been?” she cried. “Damn you, where have you been?” She took a few steps toward Schmendrick, but she was looking beyond him, at the unicorn. When she tried to get by, the magician stood in her way. “You don’t talk like that,” he told her, still uncertain that Molly had recognized the unicorn. “Don’t you know how to behave, woman? You don’t curtsy, either.” But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. “Where have you been?” Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shrilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn’s old dark eyes that looked down. “I am here now,” she said at last. Molly laughed with her lips flat. “And what good is it to me that you’re here now? Where where you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?” With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. “I wish you had never come. Why did you come now?” The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose. The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, “She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world.” “She would be.” Molly sniffed. “It would be the last unicorn in the world to come to Molly Grue.” She reached up then to lay her hand on the unicorn’s cheek; but both of them flinched a little, and the touch came to rest on on the swift, shivering place under the jaw. Molly said, “It’s all right. I forgive you.”

“Yes, I would become upset when you forgot to take out the garbage, but that is not a real argument. That is nothing. It passes like a leaf blown by the window. It is over and done and it is forgotten quickly.”

“Somewhere inside me is a merciful, forgiving person. Somewhere there is a girl who tries to understand what people are going through, who accepts that people do evil things and that desperation leads them to darker places than they ever imagined. I swear she exists, and she hurts for the repentant boy I see in front of me. But if I saw her, I wouldn’t recognize her.”

“Marriage, each of them realized intuitively, was about compromise and forgiveness. It was about balance, where one person complemented the other.”

″‘Lord King, slay me speedily as a great traitor: for by my silence I have destroyed your son.’ And [Drinian] told [Caspian] the story. Then Caspian caught up a battle-axe and rushed upon the Lord Drinian to kill him, and Drinian stood still as a stock for the death blow. But when the axe was raised, Caspian suddenly threw it away and cried out, ‘I have lost my queen and my son: shall I lose my friend also?’ And he fell upon the Lord Drinian’s neck and embraced him and both wept, and their friendship was not broken.”

“But when Scrubb shook hands with Jill, he said, ‘So long, Jill. Sorry I’ve been a funk and so ratty. I hope you get safe home,’ and Jill said, ‘So long, Eustace. And I’m sorry I’ve been such a pig.’ And this was the first time they had ever used Christian names, because one didn’t do it at school.”

“Prayer is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of miracles. But the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven have everything.”

“To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you.”

“Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I’m afraid even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up they were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.”

″‘Please, your Majesty,’ said Shasta to King Edmund, ‘I was no traitor, really I wasn’t. And I couldn’t help hearing your plans. But I’d never have dreamed of telling them to your enemies.’ ‘I know now that you were no traitor, boy,’ said King Edmund, laying his hand on Shasta’s head. ‘But if you would not be taken for one, another time try not to hear what’s meant for other ears. But all’s well.‘”

“Not really. I remember what I would not, and forget what I should not. Forgive me.”

“Forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear.”

“One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship.”

When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down And ask of thee forgiveness.

“You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.”

“We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.”

“I have this theory: If you forgive someone, they can’t hurt you anymore.”

“All those who were most wronged will forgive her and welcome her back into the congregation. But who will forgive me?”

“All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive.”

“Women are not meant to judge us, but to forgive us when we need forgiveness. Pardon, not punishment, is their mission.”

“Forgiveness does not mean excusing.”

“In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s, we do not accept them easily enough.”

“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

“‘There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!‘”

“But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

Dorothy said nothing. Oz had not kept the promise he made her, but he had done his best. So she forgave him. As he said, he was a good man, even if he was a bad Wizard.

“It’s never too late to start over.”

“It wasn’t your fault. In your position I would have done the same thing. I don’t blame you, and I’m glad you survived.”

“Thou shalt forgive me! cried Hester, flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside him. Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!”

“Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others.”

“I have learned to accept my responsibility and to forgive myself first, then to apologize to anyone injured by my misreckoning.”

“You can forget. Men easily forget. And I forgive. That is how women help the world. I see that now.”

“She loves you, Robert. Why should she not forgive?”

“Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?”

“When we received forgiveness instead of judgment, we, too, were made ready to forgive the brethren. What God did to us, we then owed to others.”

“Be slow to anger and quick to forgive, and you will have friends for as long as you live.”

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”

“Preventing your heart from forgiving someone you love is actually a hell of a lot harder than simply forgiving them.”

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

“If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.”

“I would like for you to be patient and forgiving of others-and when you are impatient, to be forgiving of yourself.”

“I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.”

“Forgiveness is part of the treasure you need to craft your falcon wings and return To your true realm of divine freedom.”

“You can love them, forgive them, want good things for them…but still move on without them.”

“But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, ‘I forgive you, Pa.‘”

″‘I will overlook your tardiness this one time. But do not let it happen again.’ Everybody knew the big boys would be tardy again. Mr. Corse could not punish them because they could thrash him, and that was what the meant to do.”

“Return to your parents, fall on your knees before them, and, like a sensible and dutiful lad, implore their pardon for your imprudence.”

″...since it was the first time that he had ever been late, he was not punished.”

“The first thing was their kindness. How amazingly widespread it was. They had taken responsibility for her, nursed and clothed her. Someone had given up her bed, probably Beatie; no one had complained when she was snappish and rude about Dovey’s best clothes, about the lack of sanitation; no one had condemned her unsympathetic attitude towards Gibbie.”

“I am blessed. I am prosperous. I am successful.” “I am victorious. I am talented. I am creative.” “I am wise. I am healthy. I am in shape.” “I am energetic. I am happy. I am positive.” “I am passionate. I am strong. I am confident.” “I am secure. I am beautiful. I am attractive.” “I am valuable. I am free. I am redeemed.” “I am forgiven. I am anointed. I am accepted.” “I am approved. I am prepared. I am qualified.” “I am motivated. I am focused. I am disciplined.” “I am determined. I am patient. I am kind.” “I am generous. I am excellent. I am equipped.” “I am empowered. I am well able.” “I am a child of the Most High God.”

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.”

“Time eventually convinces most of us that forgiveness is a virtue. Conveniently, cowardice and forgiveness look identical at a certain distance.”

“How can you forgive if you can’t remember to forget?”

“Let it be a settled fact: It is God’s will to heal you. You have a right to healing as well as forgiveness when you believe. God said: I am the Lord who heals you (Ex. 15:26). If God said this, and God cannot lie, He meant it. What God says is true. So, healing is yours. Healing is part of the gospel and is to be preached throughout all the world and to every creature, to the end of the world (Mark 16:15; Matt. 28:20). Being part of the gospel, the divine blessing of physical healing is for all.”

″ ‘Cuckoo,’ she said reproachfully, ‘I didn’t think you were so hardhearted. I have been so unhappy about you, and I was so pleased to hear your voice again, for I thought I had killed you, or hurt you very badly; and I didn’t mean to hurt you, cuckoo. I was sorry the moment I had done it, dreadfully sorry. Dear cuckoo, won’t you forgive me?’ ”

“Forgiveness releases to the Lord your need for them to be punished or corrected, giving it to the only One who can do this with right measures of justice and mercy.”

“I am a soul who likes the concept of forgiveness . . . until I am a hurting soul who doesn’t.”

“My ability to heal cannot be conditional on them wanting my forgiveness but only on my willingness to give it.”

“I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them.”

“Forgiveness is the weapon. Our choices moving forward are the battlefield. Moving on is the journey.”

“I forgive this person for how their actions back then are still impacting me now. And whatever my feelings don’t yet allow for, the blood of Jesus will surely cover.”

“I’m lonelier and wiser now, and I know it isn’t cruelty or shame that characterizes the human race. It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are.”

“Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions.”

“On the whole he is not a bad pupil. I wouldn’t want to make him miserable because of a single prank. I know what it means to be a young Roman to be a pupil in the Xanthos School. And I hope you know it too.”

“Why must the young die and the old wrecks go on living? Why do little children die? I shall never, never forgive God for that, do you hear?”

“Maria was not the kind of person who bore malice for injuries, and she was certainly not the kind of kidnapper who habitually stole babies from their heartbroken mothers, for the mere cynical pleasure of hearing them scream.”

“Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment.”

“Well done, Pinocchio! To reward you for your good heart I will forgive you for all that is past. Boys who minister tenderly to their parents and assist them in their misery and infirmities, are deserving of great praise and affection...”

“Everyone has the same hunger, son. We must learn to forgive”

“Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.”

“Maybe He’ll get what he deserves. Maybe Not. Maybe I’ll never find it in my heart to forgive him. And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that,either. All those maybes swimming around my head make me think that “maybe” could just be another word for hope.”

“If you do hate your ex, I’d like you to consider the damage you might be doing to yourself. Look, I have heard some horror stories from my girlfriends. Things I would never tell my friends to just forgive and forget. But I think you can focus on letting go of hating someone first and then forgive the person on your own time. Because carrying hate is a heavy load, but offering forgiveness is freeing.”

“AN ELDER was asked by a certain soldier if God would forgive a sinner. And he said to him: Tell me, beloved, if your cloak is torn, will you throw it away? The soldier replied and said: No. I will mend it and put it back on. The elder said to him: If you take care of your cloak, will God not be merciful to His own image?”

“With my past forgiven, my present secure, and my future irrevocably guaranteed, why shouldn’t I be enthusiastically optimistic?”

“The heart is resilient and forgiving, it is the mind that causes us stress.”

“We forgive when we no longer need to blame; we forget when we no longer need to remember.”

″‘I forgive you, Sir Knight,’ said Rowena, ‘as a Christian.’ ‘That means,’ said Wamba, ‘that she does not forgive him at all.‘”