c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Women have endeavored to guide men to love because patriarchal thinking has sanctioned this work even as it has undermined it by teaching men to refuse guidance…A useful gift all love’s practitioners can give is the offering of forgiveness. It not only allows us to move away from blame, from seeing others as the cause of our sustained lovelessness, but it enables us to experience agency, to know we can be responsible for giving and finding love.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
It's not just other people we need to forgive, Mitch. " He finally whispered, "We also need to forgive ourselves.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
Home is 
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Then Caspian caught up a battle-axe and rushed upon the Lord Drinian to kill him, and Drinian stood still as a stock for the death blow. But when the axe was raised, Caspian suddenly threw it away and cried out, "I have lost my queen and my son: shall I lose my friend also?" And he fell upon the Lord Drinian's neck and embraced him and both wept, as their friendship was not broken.
— C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
We are forgiven, that we may be like Him who forgives us.
— Horatius Bonar, Everlasting Righteousness
Sometimes lost treasures can be reclaimed.
— Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Self redemption is the first step to exoneration from guilt.
— Dennis E. Adonis
Forgive is the last best thing i can do.
— Ariel Seraphino
I know he's a good person. And he said he was sorry. And I love him. And when you love a person, you have to forgive him sometimes.
— Gabrielle Zevin
Sometimes Edith came into the room and sat on the bed beside him and they talked. They talked of trivial things – of people they knew casually, of a new building going up on the campus, of an old one torn down; but what they said did not seem to matter. A new tranquility had come between them. It was a quietness that was like the beginning of love; and almost without thinking, Stoner knew why it had come. They had forgiven themselves for the harm they had done each other, and they were rapt in a regard of what their life together might have been.Almost without regret he looked at her now; in the soft light of late afternoon her face seemed young and unlined. If I had been stronger, he thought; if I had known more; if I could have understood. And finally, mercilessly, he thought: if I had loved her more. As if it were a long distance it had to go, his hand moved across the sheet that covered him and touched her hand. She did not move; and after a while he drifted into a kind of sleep.
— John  Williams, Stoner
To forgive is to unlock the cage of another's folly to set ourselves free.
— Richard Paul Evans, The Road to Grace
Because I have forgiven my past, and God has forgiven my past, no person can make me denounce my past. It made me who I am today, and the choices I make from this moment on are what will ultimately define me.
— Julie-Anne
She's been conned, ruined, left for dead, and she's not going to forgive any of it. She will soldier on, if only out of spite.
— Lauren DeStefano, Sever
Procrastination is not Laziness", I tell him. "It is fear. Call it by its right name, and forgive yourself.
— Julia Cameron, The Prosperous Heart
We all make mistakes, we all have fears, and we all have weaknesses. Behind all that is our essential self. When our essential self has made contact with another, the light is dazzling and would fill the universe. The challenge of enchantment is to remain faithful to that light, to believe in it when it is not so apparent. Then that light becomes an incandescent glow and it wraps itself around everything.
— Marianne Williamson, Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power Of Intimate Relationships
Let's forgive someone for Valentines day, it's a great way to show love, and forgive yourself too for the hurt you held onto.
— Jay Woodman
When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger.
— Timothy J. Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters
Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God's great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it.
— Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
There is, inside all our heads, the ego’s rabid attack dog. It is purely vicious toward others and toward ourselves as well. Learning to control that dog, and ultimately to end its life, is the process and purpose of enlightened relationships.
— Marianne Williamson, Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power Of Intimate Relationships
God gives us His strength by giving us His vision of things. Our seeing people as innocent is the only way to achieve God’s peace.
— Marianne Williamson, Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power Of Intimate Relationships
What power has love but forgiveness?In other wordsby its interventionwhat has been donecan be undone.What good is it otherwise?
— William Carlos Williams
Because the truth was, and we both knew it, he'd gone long, long ago. I'd just made him stick around when he really wanted to be somewhere else. In his own weird way, he was another victim of the shooting, One of the ones who couldn't get away. "Are you mad?" he asked, which I thought was a really strange question. "Yes," I said. And I was. It's just that I wasn't so sure I was mad at him. But I don't think he needed to hear that part. I don't think he wanted to hear that part. I think it was important to him to hear that I cared enough to be angry."Will you ever forgive me?" he asked."Will you ever forgive me?" I shot back, leveling my gaze directly into his eyes.He stared into them for a few moments then got up silently and headed for the door. He didn't turn around when he reached it. Just grabbed the doorknob and held it. "No," he said without facing me. "Maybe that makes me a bad parent, but I don't know if I can. No matter what the police found, you were involved in that shooting, Valerie. You wrote those names on that list. You wrote my name on that list. You had a good life here. You might not have pulled the trigger, but you helped cause the tragedy."He opened the door."I'm sorry. I really am." He stepped out into the hallway. "I'll leave my new address and phone number with your mother," he said before walking slowly out of my sight.
— Jennifer Brown, Hate List
Achilles might be a good papa to the family, but he was also a killer, and he never forgives.Poke knew that, though. Bean warned her, and she knew it, but she chose Achilles for their papa anyway. Chose him and then died for it. She was like that Jesus that Helga preached about in her kitchen while they ate. She died for her people. And Achilles, he was like God. He made people pay for their sins no matter what they did.The important thing is, stay on the good side of God. That's what Helga teaches, isn't it? Stay right with God.I'll stay right with Achilles. I'll honor my papa, that's for sure, so I can stay alive until I'm old enough to go out on my own.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow
Someone, somewhere, needs to take courage to break the cycle of violence. Forgiveness is superior to justice. Being kind and compassionate to those who are good to you is easy. True forgiveness and compassion come only when one is able to forgive even those who have committed barbaric acts. If Angulimala is capable of renouncing violence, then tell me, your Majesty: is your civilized society also capable of being truly civilized and renouncing violence?
— Satish Kumar, The Buddha and the Terrorist
It is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things ... I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount ... No ... we always have a choice. All of us.
— M.L. Stedman
Billos ran. He tore down the shore, bounded up on the rock, and dove into the air.  The warm water engulfed him. A boiling heat knocked the wind from his lungs. The shock alone might kill him. But it was pleasure that surged through his body, not pain. The sensations coursed through his bones in great unrelenting waves. Elyon. How he was certain, he did not know. But he knew. Elyon was in this lake with him. Billos opened his eyes. Gold light drifted by. He lost all sense of direction. The water pressed in on every inch of his body, as intense as any acid, but one that burned with pleasure instead of pain. He sank into the water, opened his mouth and laughed. He wanted more, much more. He wanted to suck the water in and drink it. Without thinking, he did just that. The liquid hit his lungs. Billos pulled up, panicked. He tried to hack the water from his lungs, but inhaled more instead. No pain. He carefully sucked more water and breathed it out slowly. Then again, deep and hard. Out with a soft whoosh. He was breathing the water! Billos shrieked with laughter. He swam into the lake, deeper and deeper. The power contained in this lake was far greater than anything he'd ever imagined. "I made this, Billos." Billos whipped his body around, searching for the words' source. "Elyon?" His voice was muffled, hardly a voice at all. "Do you like it?" "Yes!" Billos said. He might have spoken; he might have shouted--he didn't know. He only knew that his whole body screamed it.  Billos looked around. "Elyon?" "Why do you doubt me, Billos?" In that single moment the full weight of Billos's foolishness crashed on him like a sledgehammer. "I see you, Billos." "I made you." "I love you." The words crashed over him, reaching into the deepest folds of his flesh, caressing each hidden synapse, flowing through every vein, as though he had been given a transfusion. "I choose you, Billos." Billos began to weep. The feeling was more intense than any pain he had ever felt. The current pulled at him, tugging him up through the colors. His body trembled with pleasure. He wanted to speak, to yell, to tell the whole world that he was the most fortunate person in the universe. That he was loved by Elyon. Elyon himself. "Never leave me, Billos." "Never! I will never leave you." The current pushed him through the water and then above the surface not ten meters from the shore. He stood on the sandy bottom. For a moment he had such clarity of mind that he was sure he could understand the very fabric of space if he put his mind to it. He was chosen. He was loved.
— Ted Dekker, Renegade
To shame our sins He blushed in blood
— He closed His eyes to show us God
Skeptics always want miracles such as stepping down from the Cross, but never the greater miracle of forgiveness.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ
A thorn in your side will drive you to find someone or thing to remove it. Therefore, don't hate your enemies. Thank them. Without them, you wouldn't have traveled as far in your life to find peace and happiness.
— Shannon L. Alder
My past life is abundantly full of God’s mercy, and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Sometimes we wait too long for the forgiveness of our fathers.
— Harley King
...you either forgive a lover for abandoning you or you forgive God for taking them - either way you have to forgive...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
A cynical modification of letting go doesn't bring forgiveness, it's when, once you forgive, will you be able to let go.
— Anthony Liccione
A dying man asked a dying man for eternal life; a man without possessions asked a poor man for a Kingdom; a thief at the door of death asked to die like a thief and steal Paradise. One would have thought a saint would have been the first soul purchased over the counter of Calvary by the red coins of Redemption, but in the Divine plan it was a thief who was the escort of the King of kings into Paradise. If Our Lord had come merely as a teacher, the thief would never have asked for forgiveness. But since the thief's request touched the reason of His coming to earth, namely, to save souls, the thief heard the immediate answer:'I promise thee, this day thou shalt beWith Me in Paradise'(Luke 23:43)It was the thief's last prayer, perhaps even his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything, and found everything. When even the disciples were doubting and only one was present at the Cross, the thief owned and acknowledged Him as Saviour.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ
You are the person that I should have had out there.....right out in front for eveyone to see. To be able to say to the world; Look at who it is that I love! Look how wonderful she is. To be proud of who it is that I am with. That person was you. In my self-absorbed and selfish ways, I didn't celebrate or regard you in the way I should have. I will always have regrets about that and those are the types of thoughts and feelings that have haunted me as I have sat alone in my quiet.
— John Britton
The fourth gift is Compassion. May you be gentle with yourself and others. May you forgive those who hurt you and yourself when you make mistakes.
— Charlene Costanzo, The Twelve Gifts of Birth
Forgiveness is a gift we can only give to ourselves.
— Jeffrey Spahr-Summers
Maybe the best thing we can do for our spouses is give them permission to forgive themselves.
— Justin  Davis, Beyond Ordinary: When a Good Marriage Just Isn't Good Enough
No matter what you say, or how much you talk, someone isn’t really forgiven until you can stand beside them without wanting to slap them in the face.
— Alan Heathcock, Volt
The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.
— Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
And so I discovered that it is not on our own forgiveness any more than on our own goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.
— Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom
How accommodating love is
—  it forgives everything.
Every time you ask for forgiveness, you recognize that the biggest problems you face in life exist inside of you, not outside of you.
— Paul David Tripp, A Quest For More: Living For Something Bigger than You
Sometimes a person can say I’m sorry a thousand times and that glue will never dry.
— Stephanie Kallos, Broken for You
Forgiveness is a choice you can make to free yourself from the shackles of your past, from pain, hurt and resentment. Forgiveness is your road to inner freedom. It does not mean that you need to forget, deny or condone what has transpired. You choose to forgive because forgiveness is the only way to transcend painful experiences and to attain inner peace and freedom. Transcending Abuse & Betrayal.
— Sasha Samy, Shadow To Light: Transformational Journeys From Abuse & Betrayal To Empowerment
...the best way to forgive someone is to enter into their sufferings ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Forgiving was the hardest thing. Sometimes forgiving was the hardest thing in the whole world.
— Sergei Lukyanenko, The Last Watch
There's a fine line between forgiveness and denial.
— Janet Rebhan, Finding Tranquility Base: A Novel
If you can't forgive and forget, then pick one and do it ...
— Jim Brault
God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
Loss of social standing is an ever-present threat for individuals whose social acceptance is based on behavioral traits rather than unconditional human value.
— Melissa V. Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
He’d meant to forgive his brother, maybe even imagined he had. He’d also meant to learn to trust him, but instead merely fell into the habit of waiting for him to fuck up again.
— Richard Russo, Empire Falls
Forgiveness. The frail beauty of the world takes root in me as I make my way back through the woods, past the caves and the ravine, where the earth has accepted the flesh of the deer, leaving nothing but a bone or two, peeking above Kartik's makeshift grave, to prove that any of this ever happened. Soon, they'll be gone too.But forgiveness...I'll hold on to that fragile slice of hope and keep it close remembering that in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret. cruelty and sacrifice. We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.
— Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
I'm Sorry,' he says. It's simple and direct, with none of the nonsense about God calling home an angel too young and who are we to question his mysterious ways.
— Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
Every time you ask for forgiveness, you declare that your life does not belong to you, but has been created for the purpose of Another.
— Paul David Tripp, A Quest For More: Living For Something Bigger than You
People fail each other all the time, Mo, and they forgive each other, and start again. It's a question of knowing the other person's limitations. Knowing what's fair to expect of them. Knowing what's fair for them to expect of you.
— Erica O'Rourke, Bound
As Christ bore and received us as sinners so we in his fellowship may bear and receive sinners into the fellowship of Christ through the forgiving of sins.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
What i realise now is that the story actually did have a happy ending: the children came back. In spite of everything the adults did to them, the children found their own way home, their pockets full of precious stones and pearls that gleamed and shone in the light.
— Julia Green, Drawing with Light
Help us to forgive ourselves as we struggle in our process of forgiving others."~R. Alan Woods [2013]
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
Richard Nixon was a serial collector of resentments.
— Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
...it's easy to express romantic love - harder to manage daily love - to forgive failings close to feelings - to divide self from soul...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
It seems we need someone to know us as we are--with all we have done--and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone's sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please. ...for...others it seems there must be a person to redeem us to ourselves. It isn't enough, apparently, to know oneself. To forgive oneself in secret.
— Sue Miller, While I Was Gone
No matter how long you behest, to the fruit draped tree. It will do you no best, until a shingle you free.
— Shahzad Ashraf
Only through Absolution will you reach the Absolute.
— Toni Petrinovich
Forgiveness is a practiced and fervrent process".~R. Alan Woods [2012]
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
The old adage of forgive and forget became a trudge through quicksand on a beach as high tide crashed onto the shore.
— I.E. Castellano, Bow of the Moon
It's not an easy journey, to get to a place where you forgive people. But it is such a powerful place, because it frees you.
— Tyler Perry
Holding on to weight (i.e. anger, bitterness, the past, hatred) will not only hold you back, but also block your blessings. You've got to let some things go to move forward.
— Yvonne Pierre, The Day My Soul Cried:  A Memoir
Oh, you've outdone me twice now, you queen of forgiveness. The ring's a promise of peace and I'm greedy with hope. It's a song that we sing in a tongue that we share. And though you say it's a gift from a king to a king, I say it's a sign from a queen to a queen.
— Melina Marchetta, Quintana of Charyn
If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.
— Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men
Forgiveness is freedom. It's something you do for yourself - to keep who you are intact. Now that I think about it - in some ways, it's kind of a selfish act.
— Anne Greenwood Brown, Lies Beneath
Forgiveness wasn’t ever easy, but a feat much more manageable when you weren’t the subject of its grace. Maybe I’d always be a broken recipient of grace. And in that musing, I found rest.
— Rachael Wade, Love and Relativity
Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.
— Judith Guest, Ordinary People
I would rather be a conscious wrongdoer than a mindless saint.
— Habeeb Akande
The ability to forgive is one of man’s greatest achievements.
— Bryant McGill
Unforgiveness,splinter in your breastbone, lives there lodged like a small tree.Withers in winter, looms in spring. Its fruit is sweet on first bite, then turns into the taste of your own flesh.
— Katerina Stoykova Klemer, The Porcupine of Mind
Love, forgiveness, modesty, humility and gratitude are most important virtues in life.
— P. Remes
I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.""But it's not that easy."He smiled that Frank smile. "Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things...
— M.L. Stedman
Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of its immense benefits to the one who forgives.
— Lawana Blackwell
Simply having the courage to say senseless things made me euphoric. I was free, with no need to seek or to give explanations for what I was doing. This freedom lifted me to the heavens - where greater love, one that forgives everything and never allows you to feel abandoned, once again enveloped me.
— Paulo Coelho
I didn't have a catharsis for my childhood pain, most of us don't, and until I learned how to forgive those people and let it go, I was unhappy.
— Tyler Perry
Their tongues met, starving, two years without this delicious meal. They kissed and kissed and kissed. The joining of their mouths was more intense than that night on the ferry. This was a kiss of reunion. Of forgiveness. Of coming home.
— Lori Wilde, Once Smitten, Twice Shy
Granny was right,' I said. 'When you forgive someone it does make you stronger. It makes your heart bigger than your hate.
— Jack Gantos, I Am Not Joey Pigza
Lay down an unforgiving spirit, because there'll be no peace until you do.
— Anita R. Sneed-Carter
True repentance isn't just saying, "I'm sorry". It's. saying "I'm sorry, I'll never, ever do that again because my relationship with you means more to me than anything".
— Serita Ann Jakes, The Crossing: A Novel
Love always precedes repentance. Divine love is a catalyst for our turning, our healing. Where fear & threat may gain our compliance, love captures our heart. It changes the heavy burden of the "have-to's" of imposed obedience to the "get-to's", a joyful response to the genuine love of God. It is in the security of this love we find Sabbath (rest).
— Michael M. Rose
Grigsby had looked at him askance. “Why is it,” he said, “that I have the distinct impression you’re not surprised by this news?”	‘Surprised by the fact that the reverend is first and foremost a human being? Surprised by the fact that every human being, reverend or ribald, can be undone by capricious circumstances? Or should I be surprised by the fact that a man who teaches love and forgiveness can love and forgive? Tell me, Marmy, exactly what it is I should be surprised at?
— Robert McCammon, The Queen of Bedlam
There are things that can be fixed with an apology and things that can't.
— Otani Lovely Complex
When it comes to the crunch, coming out is the greatest of all confessions. Nothing is more difficult to acknowledge. When we become ourselves we reach right back to the time when we were conceived out of our parents’ passion. We murder their lives. There can never be any forgiveness.
— Witi Ihimaera, Nights In The Gardens Of Spain
There is no point in burying the hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.
— Sydney Harris
The only way to prevent pride from taking root in our heart and our life is to embrace a life filled with faith, understanding, and forgiveness.
— Heather Bixler, Breaking Pride
Nakao: Koizumi, I'm so sorry I said such cruel things.Otani: What's that?Nakao: The whispering of your heart.
— Heikichi Nakao Otani
The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person's face. When you forgive, it's like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total.
— Louis Zamperini, Devil at My Heels
Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
— Alain de Botton
But life isn’t about learning to forgive those who have hurt you or forgetting your past. It’s about learning to forgive yourself for being human and making mistakes.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Time Untime
Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Sometimes... the first step to forgiveness is realizing that the other person... is batshit crazy.
— Michelle Bartlett
Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all! Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall: Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none: And some condemned for a fault alone.
— William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
I forgive him and like water draining from the sand after a wave, the power he held over me disappears. A slow smile rises on my face.
— Ryan Winfield, South of Bixby Bridge
Bless them that persecute you.' If our enemy cannot put up with us any longer and takes to cursing us, our immediate reaction must be to lift up our hands and bless him. Our enemies are the blessed of the Lord. Their curse can do us no harm. May their poverty be enriched with all the riches of God, with the blessing of Him whom they seek to oppose in vain. We are ready to endure their curses so long as they redound to their blessing.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
It was about grace, she decides, something that has been missing from her own life. ... She wants to be the kind of person who can bestow unearned kindness on another, replace bitterness with empathy, forgive only for the sake of forgiving.
— Emily Giffin, Heart of the Matter
Forgiveness is a gift to the one who is hurting.
— Josee D'Amore
God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
Forgiving is not about forgetting, it's letting go of the hurt
— Mary McLeod Bethune
The saved sinner is prostrate in adoration, lost in wonder and praise. He knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. It serves as an expression of gratitude rather than an effort to earn forgiveness. Thus the sequence of forgiveness and then repentance, rather than repentance and then forgiveness, is crucial for understanding the gospel of grace.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Forgiveness is empowering for the forgiver. Years of resentment, frustration, and pain are set FREE!
— Dana Arcuri
And be aware that people fall under one of two categories: they are either your brother and sister in faith, or they are your counterpart in humanity.
— Imam Ali bin abi Taleb
I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling.
— Dorothy Allison
Love is just like the flower; it has hidden depths that we rarely ever explore. Beneath the surface lies a network of roots. You can admire the flower for what it is, or you can dig deeper. The more you dig, the more you will find. The real reasons we love a person sometimes exist in the darkest and deepest part of us, the part that knows no logic…or rationale.
— Carol Oates, Iridescent
I have met people who truly do not believe in God, and they feel no anger when they see suffering. They are indifferent to it. But you and I are angry. Anger is not indifference. I blamed God because He took my family. But I couldn’t get revenge from God, so I turned my rage against other people. I wanted revenge. Someone must pay.”“You’re wrong.” Helen said, wanting desperately to believe that he was. “I told you, I no longer believe in God.”“Then why are you so angry with Him?” His eyes were so sorrowful that Helen had to look away. She was unable to reply. “You blame me and my country for your losses Miss Kimball. And I blame you and your country. But you and I are people, not countries. Did you kill my wife? My child? Would you put a gun to their heads and shoot them, or take away all of their food and watch them die? No, of course not. Neither would I kill someone you loved if I met him face to face. Wars come from bitterness and hatred. They are started by nations without face. But wars end when the hatred ends in the hearts of people like you and me. That is why I ask you to please forgive me.
— Lynn Austin, A Woman's Place
Parenting is a giant responsibility forever, so we need to learn how to drop the guilt and go easy on ourselves when we mess up.
— Rachael Bermingham
He was not thinking that the Christian law which he had wanted to follow all his life prescribed that he forgive and love his enemies
—  but the joyful feeling of love and forgiveness of his enemies filled his soul.
I readily admit that I'm not, and have never been, big on forgiving. That doesn't mean I will seek revenge - It just means I don't forgive.
— Karen E. Quinones Miller
Baggage is a funny thing. The more you have of it, the heavier it becomes and the longer it takes to reach your destination in life.
— Chloe Maxwell, Living With Max
Everyone believes in sin, the people who charge their peers with political incorrectness and the people who regard political correctness as the bogey of a little mind. What everyone does not believe in, as nearly as I can tell, is forgiveness.
— Garret Keizer, Help: The Original Human Dilemma
Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again.
— Augustine of Hippo
He arches his back because when you forgive, the body says, "Thank God.
— Edmond Manning
He was gone and did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
You have the power to take away someone's happiness by refusing to forgive. That someone is you.
— Alan Cohen
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.' Not only do the followers of Jesus renounce their rights, they renounce their own righteousness too. They get no praise for their achievements or sacrifices. They cannot have righteousness except by hungering and thirsting for it (this applies equally to their own righteousness and to the righteousness of God on Earth), always they look forward to the future righteousness of God, but they cannot establish it for themselves. Those who follow Jesus grow hungry and thirsty on the way.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
...when you hate someone so much, a part of you wants desperately to forgive them. But you can't decide if it's because you really want, or if you just want to stop hating. I still don't know if forgiveness is generous or selfish. Maybe both.
— Miguel Syjuco
It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.
— Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.
— Anne Lamott
The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay
Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
I guess by now I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.
— Alyson Noel, Evermore
It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.
— John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.
— Paulo Coelho
Losing me will hurt; it will be the kind of pain that won't feel real at first, and when it does, it will take her breath away.
— Gayle Forman, If I Stay
It was one of those times you feel a sense of loss, even though you didn't have something in the first place. I guess that's what disappointment is- a sense of loss for something you never had.
— Deb Caletti, The Nature of Jade
It sucks that we miss people like that. You think you've accepted that someone is out of your life, that you've grieved and it's over, and then bam. One little thing, and you feel like you've lost that person all over again.
— Rachel Hawkins, Demonglass
You never know what you have till you've lost it.
— Alyson Noel, Evermore
You don't know who is important to you until you actually lose them.
— Mahatma Gandhi
She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.
— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
Issac:"I dislike living in a world without Augustus Waters."Computer: "I don't understand-"Issac: "Me neither. Pause
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
Everyone keeps telling me that time heals all wounds, but no one can tell me what I’m supposed to do right now. Right now I can’t sleep. It’s right now that I can’t eat. Right now I still hear his voice and sense his presence even though I know he’s not here. Right now all I seem to do is cry. I know all about time and wounds healing, but even if I had all the time in the world, I still don’t know what to do with all this hurt right now.
— Nina Guilbeau, Too Many Sisters
He came up and kissed me on my forehead, and before he stepped away, I closed my eyes and tried hard to memorize this moment. I wanted to remember him exactly as he was right then, how his arms looked brown against his white shirt, the way his hair was cut a little too short in the front. Even the bruise, there because of me.Then he was gone.Just for that moment, the thought that I might never see him again… it felt worse than death. I wanted torun after him. Tell him anything, everything. Just don’t go. Please just never go. Please just always be near me, so I can at least see you.Because it felt final. I always believed that we would find our way back to each other every time. That no matter what, we would be connected—by our history, by this house. But this time, this last time, it felt final. Like I would never see him again, or that when I did, it would be different, there would be a mountain between us.I knew it in my bones. That this time was it. I had finally made my choice, and so had he. He let me go. I was relieved, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was to feel so much 
— Jenny Han, We'll Always Have Summer
Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here's what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it's still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it's been too long since you missed them last.
— Kristin O'Donnell Tubb, The 13th Sign
I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one's self-respect.
— Mahatma Gandhi, Fools, Martyrs, Traitors: The Story of Martyrdom in the Western World
When you lose someone, you get used to living day to day without them. But you’ll never get used to the “10 second heartbreak.” That’s the time it takes to wake to full consciousness each day and remember…
— Nina Guilbeau
When one person is missing the whole world seems empty.
— Pat Schweibert, Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss
Losing people you love affects you. It is buried inside of you and becomes this big, deep hole of ache. It doesn't magically go away, even when you stop officially mourning.
— Carrie Jones, Captivate
it is a sad truth in life that when someone has lost a loved one, friends sometimes avoid the person, just when the presence of friends is most needed.
— Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning
To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.
— Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?''I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.
— Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.
— Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
Less is less. Heartbreak is heartbreak. You think I'm sitting here gloating. Telling myself that my suffering beats yours? Hurt is hurt. You don't measure these things.
— Stephanie Kallos, Broken for You
It’s difficult to ever go back to the same places or people. You turn away, even for a moment, and when you turn back around, everything’s changed.
— Gabrielle Zevin, Elsewhere
I knew that somewhere God was laughing. He had taken the other half of my heart, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, and He had done what nothing else could do. By bringing us together, He had set into motion the one thing that could tear us apart.
— Jodi Picoult, Harvesting the Heart
Fly me up to where you are beyond the distant star. I wish upon tonight to see you smile, if only for a while to know you're there. A breath away's not far to where you are.
— Josh Groban
...until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you're faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking.
— James Patterson, Angel
When we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we grow up, and we were free to travel around the counry, we would always go and find it in Norfolk...And that's why years and years later, that day Tommy and I found another copy of that lost tape of mine in a town on the Norfolk coast, we didn't just think it pretty funny; we both felt deep down some tug, some old wish to believe again in something that was once close to our hearts.
— Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.
— Thomas Wolfe
You know, I think the people I feel saddest for are the ones who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder, who felt their emotions floating away and just didn't care. I guess that's what's scariest: not caring about the loss.
— Douglas Coupland, Player One: What Is to Become of Us
With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day, in fact, years later, when [she] would no longer bewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There would come a day when the details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the street call after her child by [his] name would no longer cut her adrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion--like the phantom pain of an amputee.
— Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
To want to understand is an attempt to recapture something we have lost.
— Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow
It's hard to be done a favor by a man you hate. It's hard to hate him so much afterwards. Losing an enemy can be worse than losing a friend, if you've had him for long enough.
— Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings
He remembered Tessa weeping in his arms in Paris, and thinking that he had never known the loss she felt, because he had never loved like she had, and that he was afraid that someday he would, and like Tessa he would lose his mortal love. And that it was better to be the one who died than the one who lived on. He had dismissed that, later, as a morbid fantasy, and had not remembered it again until Alec.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire
I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this.
— Jane Austen
Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still. (page 103)
— Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It’s a lot easier to be angry at someone than it is to tell them you’re hurt.
— Tom Gates
Loss
—  is the returning of what never actually belonged to us in the first place.
When you go,if you go,And I should want to die,there's nothing I'd be saved bymore than the timeyou fell asleep in my armsin a trust so gentleI let the darkening roomdrink up the evening, tillrest, or the new rainlightly roused you awake.I asked if you heard the rain in your dreamand half dreaming still you only said, I love you.
— Edwin Morgan, New Selected Poems
You think you're lost but you're not lost on your own. You're not alone. I will stand by you, I will help you through when you’ve done all you can do.If you can’t cope, I will dry your eyesI will fight your fight, I will hold you tight and I wont let go
— Rascal Flatts
I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.
— Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart
Only after disaster can we be resurrected.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club