Quotes about forgive
forgiveness our-love overcoming
Genuine forgiveness is participation, reunion overcoming the powers of estrangement. . . We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness is, the greater is our love. Paul Tillich
forgiveness hurt children
Forgiving presupposes remembering. And it creates a forgetting not in the natural way we forget yesterday's weather, but in the way of the great "in spite of" that says: I forget although I remember. Without this kind of forgetting no human relationship can endure healthily. I don't refer to a solemn act of asking for and offering forgiveness. Such rituals as sometimes occur between parents and children, or friends, or man and wife, are often acts of moral arrogance on the one part and enforced humiliation on the other. But I speak of the lasting willingness to accept him who has hurt us. Paul Tillich
forgiveness heart giving
Today I forgive all those who have ever offended me. I give my love to all thirsty hearts, both to those who love me and to those who do not love me. Paramahansa Yogananda
forgiveness dust blood
Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow: they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and the redeemer, Time. Percy Bysshe Shelley
forgiveness night thinking
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; ... This alone is Life, Joy, Empire, Victory. Percy Bysshe Shelley
forgiveness letting-go hurt
Forgiving is not about forgetting, it's letting go of the hurt Mary McLeod Bethune
forgiveness forgiving god-forgives
God forgives somehow we have yet to learn the same. Mary Chapin Carpenter
forgiveness independent thinking
Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. Emma Goldman
forgiveness challenges growth
When you tame and domesticate the divine it loses its danger and it's power to forgive you, make you happy, or its power to challenge you, and call you towards new growth. John O'Donohue
forgiveness forgive-and-forget forgiving
Let us forgive each other - only then will we live in peace. Leo Tolstoy
forgiveness acceptance love-is
I think tolerance and acceptance and love is something that feeds every community. Lady Gaga
forgiveness believe heart
I am certain that people never forgive because they believe they have an obligation to do it or because someone told them to do it. Forgiveness has to come from inside as a desire of the heart. Wanting to is the steam that pushes the forgiving engine. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness hurt children
Forgiving is an affair strictly between a victim and a victimizer. Everyone else should step aside...The worst wounds I ever felt were the ones people gave to my children. Wrong my kids, you wrong me. And my hurt qualifies me to forgive you. But only for the pain you caused me when you wounded them. My children alone are qualified to forgive you for what you did to them. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness hurt memories
If we say that monsters [people who do terrible evil] are beyond forgiving, we give them a power they should never have...they are given the power to keep their evil alive in the hearts of those who suffered most. We give them power to condemn their victims to live forever with the hurting memory of their painful pasts. We give the monsters the last word. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness eye world
Gandhi was right: if we all live by 'an eye for an eye' the whole world will be blind. The only way out is forgiveness. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness forgiving
We forgive freely or we do not really forgive at all. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness wise justice
A wise judge may let mercy temper justice but may not let mercy undo it. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness people understanding
I have discovered that most people who tell me that they cannot forgive a person who wronged them are handicapped by a mistaken understanding of what forgiving is. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness past names
The rule is: we cannot really forgive ourselves unless we look at the failure in our past and call it by its right name. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness pain revenge
The problem with revenge is that it never gets what it wants; it never evens the score. Fairness never comes. The chain reaction set off by every act of vengeance always takes its unhindered course. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain...Why do family feuds go on and on?...the reason is simple: no two people, no two families, ever weigh pain on the same scale. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness release inevitable
Our history is an inevitable component of our being. One thing only can release us from the grip of our history. That one thing is forgiveness. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness rights long
Don't do it quickly, but don't wait too long... If we wait too long to forgive, our rage settles in and claims squatter's rights to our souls. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness pain feelings
Their pain [the injurer's pain at having injured you] and your pain create the point and counterpoint for the rhythm of reconciliation. When the beat of their pain is a response to the beat of yours, they have become truthful in their feelings...they have moved a step closer to a truthful reunion. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness hurt hate
We attach our feelings to the moment when we were hurt, endowing it with immortality. And we let it assault us every time it comes to mind. It travels with us, sleeps with us, hovers over us while we make love, and broods over us while we die. Our hate does not even have the decency to die when those we hate die-for it is a parasite sucking OUR blood, not theirs. There is only one remedy for it. [forgiveness] Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness imagination miracle
God is the original, master forgiver. Each time we grope our reluctant way through the minor miracle of forgiving, we are imitating his style. I am not at all sure that any of us would have had imagination enough to see the possibilities in this way to heal the wrongs of this life had he not done it first. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness understanding forgiving
...Forgiving is not having to understand. Understanding may come later, in fragments, an insight here and a glimpse there, after forgiving. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness thinking feet
How many times should you forgive your household bruiser? You should not even think about forgiving him. Not yet. Not as long as he has his foot on your neck. Your problem at this point is not forgiving. Your problem is how to get out of his reach. Once you get away from him, you can think about forgiving him. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness husband children
Forgive a wife-slammer if you can. But you don't have to live with him. Forgive a husband who is abusing your children if you can. But only after you kick him out of the house. And if you can't get him out, get help. It's available. In the meantime, don't let him near the kids, and don't let anyone tell you that if you forgive him it means you have to stay with him. [There's an important difference between forgiving a person and tolerating their bad behavior.] Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness pain order
I worry about fast forgivers. They tend to forgive quickly in order to avoid their pain. Or they forgive fast in order to get an advantage over the people they forgive. And their instant forgiving only makes things worse... People who have been wronged badly and wounded deeply should give themselves time and space before they forgive... There is a right moment to forgive. We cannot predict it in advance; we can only get ourselves ready for it when it arrives... Don't do it quickly, but don't wait too long. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness hate believe
None of us wants to admit that we hate someone... When we deny our hate we detour around the crisis of forgiveness. We suppress our spite, make adjustments, and make believe we are too good to be hateful. But the truth is that we do not dare to risk admitting the hate we feel because we do not dare to risk forgiving the person we hate. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness people risk
Forgiving is love's toughest work, and love's biggest risk. If you twist it into something it was never meant to be, it can make you a doormat or an insufferable manipulator. Forgiving seems almost unnatural. Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do. But forgiving is love's power to break nature's rule. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness break-through done
Not even God can make something fair out of what is intrinsically unfair. Only one thing can be done. Something must break through the crust of unfairness and create a chance for a new fairness. Only forgiveness can make the breakthrough. Lewis B. Smedes
forgiveness past forgiving
God invented forgiving as a remedy for a past that not even he could change and not even he could forget. His way of forgiving is the model for our forgiving. Lewis B. Smedes