A coward never forgives. [ Sterne ]

Write thy wrongs in ashes. [ Sir T. Browne ]

The offender never pardons. [ Herbert ]

We pardon as long as we love. [ Rochefoucauld ]

To have the power to forgive,
Is empire and prerogative,
And 'tis in crowns a nobler gem,
To grant a pardon than condemn. [ Butler ]

Thou whom avenging powers obey.
Cancel my debt (too great to pay)
Before the sad accounting day. [ Wentworth Dillon ]

Good, to forgive; Best to forget! [ Robert Browning ]

Men are less forgiving than women. [ Richardson ]

That curse shall be - forgiveness! [ Byron ]

His great offence is dead,
And deeper than oblivion do we bury
The incensing relics of it. [ William Shakespeare ]

The brave only know how to forgive. [ Sterne ]

To err is human; to forgive, divine. [ Pope ]

Forgive others often, yourself never. [ Syrus ]

I pardon him, as God shall pardon me. [ William Shakespeare ]

As you from crimes would pardon'd be.
Let your indulgence set me free. [ William Shakespeare ]

We forgive too little, forget too much. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

To bear no malice or hatred in my heart. [ Church Catechism ]

'Tis easier for the generous to forgive.
Than for offence to ask it. [ Thomson ]

Pardon, not wrath, is God's best attribute. [ Bayard Taylor ]

When women love us they forgive everything. [ Balzac ]

They who forgive most shall be most forgiven. [ Bailey ]

The more we know, the better we forgive;
Whoe'er feels deeply, feels for all who live. [ Mme. de Stael ]

Let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of love, how we may lighten
Each other's burden, in our share of woe. [ Milton ]

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness. [ H. W. Shaw ]

It is easier to forgive an enemy than a friend. [ Mme. Deluzy ]

The truly great man
Is as apt to forgive as his power is able to revenge. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Forgive and forget! - why, the world would be lonely,
The garden a wilderness left to deform.
If the flowers but remember'd the chilling winds only.
And the fields gave no verdure for fear of the storm. [ Charles Swain ]

The narrow soul knows not the godlike glory of forgiving. [ Rowe ]

She hugged the offender and forgave the offense - sex to the last! [ Dryden ]

Yes, we ought to forgive our enemies, but not until they are hanged. [ Heinrich Heine ]

Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has for its first duty to forgive. [ Edward Bulwer Lytton ]

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. [ The Lord's Prayer ]

Young men soon give, and soon forget affronts: Old age is slow in both. [ Addison ]

We may forgive those who bore us, we cannot forgive those whom we bore. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

As nice as we are in love, we forgive more faults in that than in friendship. [ Henry Home ]

To forgive a fault in another is more sublime than to be faultless one's self. [ George Sand ]

If we can still love those who have made us suffer, we love them all the more. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

If ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. [ Bible ]

The mind that too frequently forgives bad actions will at last forget good ones. [ Reynolds ]

It is right for him who asks forgiveness for his offenses to grant it to others. [ Horace ]

Forgiveness is commendable, but apply not ointment to the wound of an oppressor. [ Saadi ]

God pardons like a mother who kisses the offense into everlasting forgetfulness. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

It is easy enough to forgive your enemies if you have not the means to harm them. [ Heinrich Heine ]

We should always forgive, - the penitent for their sake, the impenitent for our own. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they never pardon, who commit the wrong. [ Dryden ]

Only a woman will believe in a man who has once been detected in fraud and falsehood. [ Dumas, Pere ]

Women do not often have it in their power to give like men, but they forgive like Heaven. [ Mme. Necker ]

Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another. [ Jean Paul ]

'Tis sweet to stammer one letter of the Eternal's language; on earth it is called forgiveness. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong. [ Emerson ]

He who has not forgiven an enemy has never yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life. [ Lavater ]

We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends. [ Cosmus ]

If you bethink yourself of any crime, unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace, solicit for it straight. [ William Shakespeare ]

Nothing in this low and ruined world bears the meek impress of the Son of God so surely as forgiveness. [ Alice Cary ]

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury. [ E. H. Chapin ]

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance; but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination. [ St. Augustine ]

When a man but half forgives his enemy, it is like leaving a bag of rusty nails to interpose between them. [ Latimer ]

There is a manner of forgiveness so divine that you are ready to embrace the offender for having called it forth. [ Lavater ]

It is necessary to repent for years in order to efface a fault in the eyes of men; a single tear suffices with God. [ Chateaubriand ]

May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it. [ Dickens ]

He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven. [ Lord Herbert ]

Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own. [ John Dryden ]

If thou wouldst find much favor and peace with God and man, be very low in thine own eyes. Forgive thyself little, and others much. [ Leighton ]

God's way of forgiving is thorough and hearty - both to forgive and to forget; and if thine be not so, thou hast no portion of His. [ Leighton ]

Receive no satisfaction for premeditated impertinence; forget it, forgive it, but keep him inexorably at a distance who offered it. [ Lavater ]

Forgiveness, that noblest of all selfdenial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another. [ Colton ]

An old Spanish writer says, To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human; but to return good for evil is godlike. [ Whately ]

A more glorious victory cannot be gained over another man than this, that when the injury began on his part the kindness should begin on ours. [ Tillotson ]

The world never forgives our talents, our successes, our friends, nor our pleasures. It only forgives our death. Nay, it does not always pardon that. [ Elizabeth, Queen of Roumania ]

A brave man thinks no one his superior who does him an injury: for he has it then in his power to make himself his superior to the other by forgiveness. [ Drummond ]

More bounteous run rivers when the ice that locked their flow melts into their waters. And when fine natures relent, their kindness is swelled by the thaw. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Hath any wronged thee? be bravely revenged; slight it, and the work is begun; forgive it, and it is finished; he is below himself that is not above an injury. [ Quarles ]

It is vain for you to expect, it is impudent for you to ask of God forgiveness on your own behalf, if you refuse to exercise this forgiving temper with respect to others. [ Hoadley ]

God never pardons: the laws of His universe are irrevocable. God always pardons: sense of condemnation is but another word for penitence, and penitence is already new life. [ William Smith ]

When thou forgivest, - the man who has pierced thy heart stands to thee in the relation of the sea-worm that perforates the shell of the mussel which straightway closes the wound with a pearl. [ Richter ]

It is right that man should love those who have offended him. He will do so when he remembers that all men are his relations, and that it is through ignorance and involuntarily that they sin, - and then we all die so soon. [ Marcus Aurelius ]

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. [ Colton ]

Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain. [ Johnson ]