Quotes about Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the economy of the heart.…forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.

Thus it seems that the Cross of Christ, laden with every sinful refusal of man, must stand at the very last extremity of hell; indeed, it must stand beyond hell, where the Son is forsaken by the Father in a way that only he can know.

Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be?

I believe strongly that one of the primary goals of religion is to teach people to like themselves and feel good about themselves. All my experience has taught me that people who feel good about themselves will be more generous, more forgiving of others, less defensive about their mistakes, more assessable to change, and better able to cope with misfortune and adversity.

Perhaps they suspected that I thought less of them because I knew it. (I'm too aware of human frailty to have let that happen. If anything, I thought more of them for wanting to face up to what they had done and for trying to change.)

when you are able to forgive yourself and to forgive people around you for not being perfect, I will recognize you as My child.

Forgiveness is a favor we do for ourselves, not a favor we do to the other party.

That is why we have to make room in our lives for people who may sometimes disappoint or exasperate us. If we hold our friends to a standard of perfection, or if they do that to us, we will end up far lonelier than we want to be.

These are his people, this congregation of misfits, crack addicts, and drunks, the unshaven, unwashed, unemployed, and unwanted.

It's hard to think seriously about grace until you understand that you've failed morally and will someday stand accountable before a holy God.

Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?

Don't hold to anger, hurt or pain. They steal your energy and keep you from love.