And so we should not only remember the dead, but also forgive the living. Just as we reach out our hand to the dead, across all graves, so we reach out to the living--across all hatred. And when we say: Honored be the dead, so we should add: And peace to all the living who are of goodwill.

To know the truth—to accept without bitterness

Certainly we struggle as victims of other people's unkindness. We have been sinned against. But we cannot excuse our sinful responses to others on the grounds of their mistreatment of us. We are responsible for what we do. We are both strugglers and sinners, victims and agents, people who hurt and people who harm.

We never argue anymore. And when we do, it never lasts more than a week or two.

Go, poor devil, get thee gone! Why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

Only the brave know how to forgive…. A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.

But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round...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.

Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her.

It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.

If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces-- love her, love her, love her!

Christmas, and the end of the year, is definitely a time when people try their hardest to begin afresh, "a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely". (Dickens - "A Christmas Carol")

Do not allow a trivial misunderstanding to wither the blossoms of spring, which, once put forth and blighted, cannot be renewed...The gushing fountains which sparkle in the sun must not be stopped in mere caprice; the oasis in the desert of Sahara must not be plucked up idly.