Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Waiting is the hardest work of hope.
No one really forgives unless he has been hurt.
The longer we hate, the harder it is to heal us.
We forgive freely or we do not really forgive at all.
God is not a doormat, nor should anyone else be a doormat.
Forgiving is love's toughest work, and love's biggest risk.
The lies we tell ourselves are the most subtle of all lies.
We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are.
It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited.
To miss out on joy is to miss out on the reason for your existence.
A wise judge may let mercy temper justice but may not let mercy undo it.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
Our sense of fairness tells us that people should pay for the wrong they do.
Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory.
Nothing enables us to forgive like knowing in our hearts that we have been forgiven.
Some people still have causes they will not desert, even though the cause seems lost.
The God who has the whole world in his hands has grace for the whole world in his heart.
I learned that gratitude is the best feeling I would ever have, the ultimate joy of living.
Some people have loved ones they will not forsake, even though they are a pain in the neck.
Kindness is the power that moves us to support and heal someone who offers nothing in return.
Seeing reality for what it is is what we call discernment. The work of discernment is very hard.
The secret of grace is that it can be all right at the center even when it is all wrong on the edges.
Common sense suggests that if no one ever judged other people, there would be no real human community.
My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed - and each of the five has been me.
Forgiving is, first of all, a way of helping yourself to get free of the unfair pain somebody caused you.
The Holy Spirit, thank God, often enables people to forgive even though they are not sure how they did it.
The right to personal privacy is precious. Without it, we are all potential victims for a prying secret police.
As I read the New Testament, I find only one path to salvation - the path of an informed faith in Jesus Christ.
You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.
Any moment that opens us up to the reality that life is good is a parable of the supreme end for which we were made.
Any lazy or biased fool can have opinions; making judgments is the hard work of responsible and compassionate people.
Gandhi was right: if we all live by 'an eye for an eye' the whole world will be blind. The only way out is forgiveness.
The rule is: we cannot really forgive ourselves unless we look at the failure in our past and call it by its right name.
Some people still make promises and keep those they make. When they do, they help make life around them more stably human.
Promise keeping is a powerful means of grace in a time when people hardly depend on each other to remember and live by their word.
God does not give us salvation because we believe. Our believing is only the normal way of receiving the salvation he freely gives.
The blood of Christ covers all of our sins, but each of us must do personal business with God in order to experience his forgiveness.
We are anxious in the face of our unchangeable past; we long to recreate segments of our private histories, but we are stuck with them.
...Forgiving is not having to understand. Understanding may come later, in fragments, an insight here and a glimpse there, after forgiving.
Retributive justice did not arise from any Christian principle; almost every pre-Christian society dealt with wrongdoers by causing them pain.
Don't do it quickly, but don't wait too long... If we wait too long to forgive, our rage settles in and claims squatter's rights to our souls.
Our history is an inevitable component of our being. One thing only can release us from the grip of our history. That one thing is forgiveness.
When I feel the joy of receiving a gift my heart nudges me to join creation's ballet, the airy dance of giving and receiving, and getting and giving again.
God invented forgiving as a remedy for a past that not even he could change and not even he could forget. His way of forgiving is the model for our forgiving.
When we have been badly injured and clearly wronged, we make an instant caricature of the person who did it to us. We define him totally by the one wrong he did.
Our society is pluralistic. We who accept the privilege of membership in that society agree to respect the people's right to live by their own religious precepts.
I have discovered that most people who tell me that they cannot forgive a person who wronged them are handicapped by a mistaken understanding of what forgiving is.
Modern Americans suffer from a fear of judging. Passing judgment on the behavior of fellow human beings is considered an act of medieval, undemocratic intolerance.
Restorative justice is not a replacement of retributive justice, but a complement. It seeks the rehabilitation of the wrongdoer and the repair of the victim's injury.
Self control is about being in charge of the direction our lives are taking. Now for the paradox: We get control of our lives, ultimately, not by will power but by surrender.