Forgiveness Quotes

I have been thinking a great deal about forgiveness lately. Here are some quotes that I found. It's curious why I can know that forgiveness is "good", but I am still unable to do it.

"Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love." - Mahatma Gandhi

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." - Mahatma Gandhi

"We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies." - Voltaire

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you." — Unknown

"The offender never pardons." - George Herbert

"He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass." - George Herbert

"Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die." — Unknown

"My greatest weapon is mute prayer." - Mahatma Gandhi

"Forgiveness is giving up the possibility of a better past." - Unknown

"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

"Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence." - Sholem Asch

"Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting." - William A. Ward

"What we forgive too freely doesn't stay forgiven." - Mignon McLaughlin

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." - William Blake

"There is no path to peace. Peace is the path." - Mahatma Gandhi

"We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck . . . But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness." - Ellen Goodman

"Freedom and slavery are mental states.” - Mahatma Gandhi

"A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers." - Robert Quillen

"Forgiveness is the final form of love." - Reinhold Niebuhr

“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.” - Mahatma Gandhi

"One forgives to the degree that one loves." - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Hatred can be overcome only by love.” Mahatma Gandhi

"'Tis the most tender part of love, each other to forgive." - John Sheffield

"You must be the change you want to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi

"Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control... to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare." - Lance Morrow