This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive." - Alan Stewart Paton
"Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on man’s rights; he will rather have regard for everyone, forgive everyone, help everyone as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Many forgive injuries, but none ever forgave contempt." - Author Unknown NULL
"Today. Mend a quarrel. Search out a friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Worship your God. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Still speak it again. Speak it still once again." - Author Unknown NULL
"If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive." - Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
"We forgive others when it suits us." - Cesare Pavese
"May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done to us? That we may forgive it." - Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens
"It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us, than the powerful whom we have injured. The conduct will be continued by our fears which commenced in our resentment." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself." - Charles Caleb Colton
"We forgive to the extent that we love." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another." - Emma Goldman
"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves." - Eric Hoffer
"We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends." - Francis Bacon
"To understand all, is to forgive everything." - French Proverbs
"Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself." - George Bernard Shaw
"Forgiveness is the most necessary and proper work of every man; for, though, when I do not a just thing, or a charitable, or a wise, another man may do it for me, yet no man can forgive my enemy but myself." - George Herbert
"He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven; for everyone has need to be forgiven." - George Herbert
"He who cannot forgive others destroys the bridge over which he himself must pass." - George Herbert
"What heart has not acknowledged the influence of this hour, the sweet and soothing hour of twilight - the hour of love - the hour of adoration - the hour of rest - when we think of those we love, only to regret that we have not loved them more dearly; when we remember our enemies only to forgive them." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself." - Henry Ward Beecher
""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 can never be shown against one." - Henry Ward Beecher
"It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes. It takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own." - Jessamyn West, fully Mary Jessamyn West
"I can forgive a foe, but not a mistress and a friend; treason is there in its most horrid shape, where trust is greatest!" - John Dryden
"Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own." - John Dryden
"What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity, and consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men’s evil practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice." - John Ruskin
"The highest and most difficult of all moral lessons, to forgive those we have injured." - Joseph Jacobs
"It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his estimations, and yours too." - Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
"Increasing your gratitude about the good things in your past intensifies positive memories, and learning how to forgive past wrongs defuses the bitterness that makes satisfaction impossible." - Martin Seligman, Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman
"Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever, do they forgive them." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
"They who forgive most shall be most forgiven." - Philip James Bailey
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato NULL
"We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all one pattern. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only sin which we never forgive in each other is a difference of opinion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness." - Robert Muller
"To understand is to forgive, even oneself." - Stuart Alexander Chase
"A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her, but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account." - W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
"One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything every night before you go to bed." - Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch
"The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather understand one another. " - Emma Goldman
"I have never in my life met a man like him for noble simplicity, and boundless truthfulness. I understood from the way he talked that anyone who chose could deceive him, and that he would forgive anyone afterwards who had deceived him, and that was why I grew to love him." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?" - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives." - Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
"In the external scheme of things, shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye, yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of -- moments when we human beings can say "I love you," "I'm proud of you," "I forgive you," "I'm grateful for you." That's what eternity is made of: invisible imperishable good stuff." - Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
"Forgiveness is not a moral issue. It is an energy dynamic... Forgiveness means that you do not carry the baggage of an experience. When you choose not to forgive, the experience that you do not forgive sticks with you. When you choose not to forgive, it is like agreeing to wear dark, gruesome sunglasses that distort everything, and it is you who are forced every day to look at life through those contaminated lenses because you have chosen to keep them. " - Gary Zukav