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A collection of inspirational wisdom, sayings and quotes on forgiveness. Forgiveness is not about condoning others hurtful actions, it is about releasing your negative emotions and perceptions about the painful events. Otherwise you keep yourself chained to those events or people - you keep it alive within you - and you carry it with you where-ever you go. It is a very heavy burden to carry around and you end up crippling yourself emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically.
Holding on to anger, resentment, etc. keeps you in 'victim' mode - powerless. It means you are letting those people who have hurt you in the past dictate who you are in the present moment. You can take your power back by releasing these negative emotions and no longer let them hold sway over your thoughts, feelings and actions.
Only you are responsible for what you do, think and feel. You can choose to hold on to painful events, like a weight around your neck, or you can choose to remove that burden by releasing it (giving it no more emotional energy and therefore power) and living a happier life despite past circumstances. In other words... let the past be in the past, and live in the now moment. You can't change what happened in the past, but you have choice over how you live now.
A soft refusal is not always taken, but a rude one is immediately believed.
Alexander Chase
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde
For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
Adlai E. Stevenson
Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.
Ausonius
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy
Forgiveness is a funny thing, it warms the hearts and cools the sting.
Peter Allen
Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.
William Arthur Ward
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
God will forgive me. It's his job.
Heinrich Heine
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
I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. 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
I do not bring forgiveness with me, nor forgetfulness. The only ones who can forgive are dead; the living have no right to forget.
Chaim Herzog
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
William Blake
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
John Dryden
It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
Grace Hopper
It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited.
Lewis B. Smedes
It's far easier to forgive an enemy after you've got even with him.
Olin Miller
It's said in Hollywood that you should always forgive your enemies - because you never know when you'll have to work with them.
Lana Turner
