QUOTES ON CHRITIAN FORGIVENESS A retentive memory is a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.
Elbert Green Hubbard (1856–1915)
Alas! if my best Friend, who laid down his life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such.
William Cowper (1731–1800)
An injury is much sooner forgiven than an insult.
Lord Chesterfield (1694–1773)
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël (1766–1817)
As we practice the work of forgiveness we discover more and more that forgiveness and healing are one.
Agnes Sanford
Doing an injury puts you below your enemy; revenging one makes you even with him; forgiving it sets you above him.
For the sake of one good action a hundred evil ones should be forgotten.
Chinese Proverb
Forgiveness is a funny thing—it warms the heart and cools the sting.
William Arthur Ward (1812–1882)
Forgiveness is a required course.
Charles R. Swindoll (1934– )
Forgiveness is man’s deepest need and highest achievement.
Horace Bushnell (1802–1876)
Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a permanent attitude.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968)
Forgiveness is not that stripe which says, “I will forgive, but not forget.” It is not to bury the hatchet with the handle sticking out of the ground, so you can grasp it the minute you want it.
Dwight Lyman Moody (1837–1899)
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the one who crushed it.
Mark Twain (1835–1910)
Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note—torn in two and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887)
God will forgive me; that is his business.
Heinrich Heine (1797–1856)
Good to forgive;
Best, to forget!
Robert Browning (1812–1889)
He that demands mercy, and shows none, ruins the bridge over which he himself is to pass.
Thomas Adams (1612–1653)
He who forgives ends the quarrel.
African Proverb
Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness or when forgiving another.
Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763–1825)
If God forgives us, we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than him.
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963)
If God were not willing to forgive sin, heaven would be empty.
German Proverb
It is cheaper to pardon than to resent. Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred.
Hannah More (1745–1833)
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
Saint Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226)
It is necessary to repent for years in order to efface a fault in the eyes of men; a single tear suffices with God.
François René, Vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768–1848)
Know all and you will pardon all.
Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471)
Life lived without forgiveness becomes a prison.
William Arthur Ward (1812–1882)
Making peace requires action:
sometimes crossing the street when the light is red
swimming upstream
getting bruised
maybe dying.
Jean Janzen
Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin (1814–1880)
Only one petition in the Lord’s Prayer has any condition attached to it. It is the petition for forgiveness.
Sir William Temple (1628–1699)
Regard as enormous the little wrong you did to others, and as trifling the great wrong done to you.
Talmud
The heaviest load any man carries on his back is a pack of grudges.
The more a man knows, the more he forgives.
Catherine ii of Russia (1729–1796)
The voice of sin is loud, but the voice of forgiveness is louder.
Dwight Lyman Moody (1837–1899)
They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.
Philip James Bailey (1816–1902)
To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human; but to return good for evil is godlike.
We achieve inner health only through forgiveness—the forgiveness not only of others but also of ourselves.
Joshua Loth Liebman (1907–1948)
We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it.
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963)
We hand folks over to God’s mercy and show none ourselves.
George Eliot (1819–1880)
We pardon to the degree that we love.
François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1813–1913)
When God pardons, he consigns the offense to everlasting forgetfulness.
Merv Rosell
When you forgive you in no way change the past—but you sure do change the future.
Bernard Meltzer
You must choose to forgive whoever has wronged you. Forgiveness is not an emotion, it is a decision of the will.
Erwin W. Lutzer (1941– )
Proverbs 19:11 A man's discretion makes him slow to anger, And it is his glory to overlook a transgression.
Mark 11:25. "Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. 26. ["But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.]"
Luke 17:3. "Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4. "And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, 'I repent,' forgive him."
Ephesians 4:32. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
