On Forgiveness

• "To forgive oneself"? No, that doesn’t work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive.—Dag Hammarskjöld, 20th-century Swedish diplomat
  (1905–1961) Markings, "Night is Drawing Nigh" (1963)
• A man cannot be "friends with" God on any other terms than complete obedience to Him, and that includes being "friends with" his fellow man. Christ stated emphatically that it was quite impossible, in the nature of things, for a man to be at peace with God and at variance with his neighbor. This disquieting fact is often hushed up, but it is undeniable that Christ said it, and the truth of it is enshrined in the petition for forgiveness in the "Lord’s Prayer."—John Bertram Phillips, 20th-century English Bible translator, writer, and broadcaster
  (1906–82) Your God is Too Small (1952)
• A mother's hardest to forgive. / Life is the fruit she longs to hand you, / Ripe on a plate. And while you live, / Relentlessly she understands you.—Phyllis McGinley, 20th-century American poet and humorist
  (1905-1978) "The Adversary"
• A sin concealed needs two forgivings.—American proverb
• A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the full value of time and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.—The Rambler, an 18th-century English periodical edited by Samuel Johnson (1752)
• All your sins may be forgiven and never trouble you again—unless you run for office.—Anonymous saying
• And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.—From the Lord’s Prayer in The Book of Common Prayer
• Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.—George Bernard Shaw, 19th-20th-century British playwright and critic
• (1856–1950) Man and Superman, "Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings" (1903)
• Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.—Oscar Wilde, 19th century British playwright and writer
  (1854–1900) Lord Illingworth, in A Woman of No Importance, act 2. Wilde had used almost the same words in The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that "We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."—Sir Francis Bacon, 16th–17th-century English philosopher, essayist and statesman
  (1561–1626) Apothegms, No. 206
• Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.—Bible, Luke 6:37–38
• Forgive you?—Oh, of course, dear, / A dozen times a week! / We women were created / Forgiveness but to speak.—Ella Higginson, 19th-20th-century American writer and journalist
  (1862–1940) "Wearing Out Love," st. 1
• Forgive! How many will say, "forgive," and find / A sort of absolution in the sound / To hate a little longer!—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 19th-century British poet
  (1809–1892) Sea Dreams
• Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee / And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.—Robert Frost, 19th-20th-century American poet
  (1874–1963) Cluster of Faith
• Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err.—Euripides, ancient Greek tragic playwright
  (ca. 485–406 B.C.E.) Hippolytus, ln. 615 (428 B.C.E.)
• Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who forgives you—out of love—takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.—Dag Hammarskjöld, 20th-century Swedish diplomat
  (1905–1961), Markings
• Forgiveness is better than punishment; for the one is the proof of a gentle, the other of a savage nature.—Epictetus, 1st-2nd-century Greek Stoic philosopher
  (ca. 55–ca. 135) Fragment lxii
• Forgiveness to the injured does belong; / But they ne’er pardon who have done the wrong.—John Dryden, 17th-century English poet and playwright
  (1631–1700) The Conquest of Granada, Part ii. Act i. Sc. 2 (1670-71)
• God forgives sins committed against Him, but offenses against man must first be forgiven by the injured person.—Joseph HaCohen, 1st-2nd-century Talmudic sage (Tanna)
  Talmud: Rosh Hashana, 17b
• He who cannot forgive a trespass of malice to his enemy, has never yet tasted the most sublime enjoyment of love.—Johann Kaspar Lavater, 18th–19th-century Swiss theologian and poet
  (1741–1801) Aphorisms on Man
• He who forgiveth, and is reconciled unto his enemy, shall receive his reward from God; for he loveth not the unjust doers.—Koran, sacred book of the Moslems
  sura 42
• How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, / And love th’offender, yet detest th’offence?—Alexander Pope, 17th–18th-century English poet
  (1688–1744) Eloisa to Abelard
• I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.—Adlai Stevenson, 20th-century American diplomat, politician and lawyer
  (1900–1965) retort to a heckler asking him to state his beliefs, Time, November 1, 1963
• 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, 19th-century American abolitionist and clergyman
  (1813–1887) Life Thoughts
• I learned that true forgiveness includes total acceptance. And out of acceptance wounds are healed and happiness is possible again.—Catherine Marshall, 20th-century American writer and editor
  (b. 1914) Christy, Ch. 33
• I’d rather keep my promises to other politicians than to God. God, at least, has a degree of forgiveness.—Anonymous Politician
• If God said, "I forgive you," to a man who hated his brother … what would it mean to him? … The man would think, not that God loved the sinner, but that He forgave the sin, which God never does. Every sin meets its due fate—inexorable expulsion from the paradise of God’s Humanity.—George Macdonald, 19th-century Scottish novelist
  (1824–1905) "It Shall Not Be Forgiven"
• If I die, I forgive you; If I live, we shall see.—Spanish Proverb
• If you can’t forgive, don’t ask to be forgiven.—Anonymous Saying
• If you forgive people enough, you belong to them, and they to you, whether either person likes it or not—squatter's rights of the heart.—James Hilton, 20th-century English novelist
  (1900-1954) Time and Time Again
• If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?—Dolores Huerta, 20th-century American union organizer
  (b. 1930) Quoted in Barbara L. Baer, "Stopping Traffic: One Woman’s Cause," The Progressive (Sept. 1975)
• In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression …, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.—Hannah Arendt, 20th-century American political philosopher
  (1906–1975) The Human Condition, "Action," ch. 33 (1958)
• In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.—Bible, Ephesians 1:7
• It is a verry delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimashun, and yures too.—Josh Billings, 19th-century American humorist
  (1818–1885) [Pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw] Josh Billings, His Sayings, ch. 39 (1865)
• It is characteristic of the thinking of our time that the problem of guilt and forgiveness has been pushed into the background and seems to disappear more and more. Modern thought is impersonal. There are, even today, a great many people who understand that man needs salvation, but there are very few who are convinced that he needs forgiveness and redemption.… Sin is understood as imperfection, sensuality, worldliness—but not as guilt.—Emil Brunner, 20th-century Swiss Protestant theologian
  (1889–1966), The Word and the World
• It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.—William Blake, 18th-19th-century English poet
  (1757–1827) "What God Is," Jerusalem (1804-20)
• Lead us not into the temptation of believing that we have truly forgiven, while rancor lingers.—Katherine Zell, 16th-century German church worker and hymnist
  (1497/98-1562) "Den Psalmen Misere" (1558), quoted in Roland H. Bainton, Women of the Reformation, I: Germany and Italy (1971)
• Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.—Peter Ustinov, 20th century British actor, writer, director
  (b. 1921), Christian Science Monitor (Boston, 9 Dec. 1958)
• Man forgives women anything save the wit to outwit him.—Minna Antrim, 19th-20th century American writer
  (1861–?) Naked Truth and Veiled Allusions, p. 41 (1901)
• Marriage is three parts love and seven parts forgiveness of sin.—Langdon Mitchell, 19th-20th century American playwright and poet
  (1862-1935) The New York Idea (1907)
• Mutual forgiveness of each vice. / Such are the Gates of Paradise.—William Blake, 18th–19th-century English poet
  (1757–1827) The Gates of Paradise, prologue (1793)
• Nobody ever forgets where he buried a hatchet.—Kin Hubbard, American journalist and humorist
  (1868–1930) Indianapolis News (4 Jan. 1925)
• Of course God will forgive me; that’s his business.—Heinrich Heine, 19th-century German poet
  (1797–1856) last words
• Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.—Marlene Dietrich, 20th-century German-born American film actress
  (1904–1992) Marlene Dietrich’s ABC, "Forgiveness" (1962)
• One can’t relive one’s life. Forgiveness is not what’s difficult; one’s always too ready to forgive. And it does no good, that’s obvious.—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 20th-century French author
  (1894–1961) The narrator (Ferdinand Bardamu), in Journey to the End of the Night (1932; tr. 1934; repr. 1966, p. 186)
• Only heaven / Means crowned, not conquered, when it says "Forgiven."—Adelaide Proctor, 19th-century English poet
  (1825-1864) "A Legend of Provence," The Poems of Adelaide Proctor (1869)
• Only the brave know how to forgive... A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.—Laurence Sterne, 18th century English novelist
  (1713-1768), Sermons, vol. I n. 2
• Poor souls are apt to think that all those whom they read of or hear of to be gone to heaven, went thither because they were so good and so holy... Yet not one of them, not any man that is now in heaven (Jesus Christ alone excepted), did ever come thither any other way but by forgiveness of sins. And that will also bring us higher, though we come short of many of them in holiness and grace.…—John Owen, 17th-century English theologian
  (1616-1683) Sermons
• Remember, before you can expect forgiveness for sin, you must sin.—Anonymous saying
• Setting too good an example is a kind of slander seldom forgiven.—Benjamin Franklin, 18th century American statesman
  (1706-1790) Poor Richard’s Almanac
• She intended to forgive. Not to do so would be un-Christian; but she did not intend to do so soon, nor forget how much she had to forgive.—Jessamyn West, 20th-century American author
  (1902–1984) "The Buried Leaf," The Friendly Persuasion (1945)
• Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of the finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness.—David Augsburger, 20th-century Mennonite clergyman and author
  Caring Enough to Forgive, Regal 81
• Some people give and forgive; others get and forget.—Anonymous Saying
• The condition of being forgiven is self-abandonment. The proud man prefers self-reproach, however painful—because the reproached self isn’t abandoned; it remains intact.—Aldous Huxley, 20th-century British writer
  (1894–1963) Bruno Rontini’s notes, in Time Must Have a Stop, ch. 30 (1944)
• The Goldplated Brazen Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Then, do unto them as they do unto you, but forgive them once in a while.—Carl Sagan, 20th-century American astronomer, author, and popularizer of science
  (1934-1996) "A New Way to Think about Rules to Live By," Parade, 11/28/93
• The highest and most difficult of all moral lessons, to forgive those we have injured.—Joseph Jacobs, 19th-20th-century English folklorist, critic, and historian
  (1854-–1916) Jewish Ideals (1895)
• The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 19th century American writer and philosopher
  Society and Solitude: Clubs (1870)
• The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.—Thomas Szasz, 20th-century American psychiatrist
  (b. 1920) The Second Sin, "Personal Conduct" (1973)
• The sweetest revenge is to forgive.—Isaac Friedman, 19th-20th-century Lithuanian rabbi
  (1874–?) Imré Bina (1912), p. 71
• 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, 19th-century English poet
  (1792–1822) A Defence of Poetry (written 1821; published 1840), referring specifically to the reputations of poets
• To err is human, to forgive divine.—Alexander Pope, 17th–18th-century English poet
  (1688–1744) Essay on Criticism, Part ii, Line 325
• To err is human, to forgive unusual.—Anonymous saying
  We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.—Samuel Butler, 19th-century English author
  (1835–1902) Samuel Butler’s Notebooks (1951, p.236)
• We pardon to the extent that we love.—François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, 17th-century French writer and moralist
  (1613–1680) Sentences et Maximes Morales, no. 330 (1678)
  Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?—George Eliot, 19th-century English novelist
  (1819–1880) [pen name of Mary Ann Evans] Middlemarch, bk. 2, ch. 21 (1871)
• You are forgiven for you happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.—Albert Camus, 20th-century French philosopher and writer
  (1913–1960) The Fall
• "You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing."—Jane Austen, 18th–19th-century English novelist
  (1775–1817) Pride and Prejudice, ch. 57
• Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.—George Bernard Shaw, 19th-20th-century British playwright and critic
  (1856–1950) Man and Superman, "Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings" (1903)

© 1998 KPOZ

Discussion Forum

The following contradictory statements have been made concerning forgiveness:

• "To forgive oneself"? No, that doesn’t work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive.—Dag Hammarskjöld, 20th-century Swedish diplomat
  (1905–1961) Markings, "Night is Drawing Nigh" (1963)
• If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?—Dolores Huerta, 20th-century American union organizer
  (b. 1930) Quoted in Barbara L. Baer, "Stopping Traffic: One Woman’s Cause," The Progressive (Sept. 1975)

Which author do you agree with, and why? Please e-mail your comments to: anewhaus@earthlink.net