55 Inspiring Forgiveness Quotes

Forgiveness is a profound and transformative act that allows us to release the burdens of anger, hurt, and resentment. In many ways, it offers a path toward healing, both for ourselves and others. To navigate through the complex emotions tied to forgiveness, we often seek wisdom and inspiration from those who have experienced and reflected deeply on this theme. This collection of 55 inspiring forgiveness quotes brings together words of wisdom from various thinkers, leaders, and authors, each offering their unique perspective on the power of letting go and the beauty of grace. Whether you're on a personal journey toward forgiveness or simply seeking to understand its significance better, these quotes are sure to provide clarity, motivation, and insight.

1. “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” - Alexander Pope

2. “Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” - Anne Lamott

3. “If, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much talked of immortality.” - José Saramago

4. “Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.” - J.K. Rowling

5. “I guess forgiveness, like happiness, isn’t a final destination. You don’t one day get there and get to stay.” - Deb Caletti

6. “It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.” - P.D. James

7. “…she eventually forgave him, because she understood him.” - Whitney Otto

8. “When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines upon you.” - Jon Krakauer

9. “...it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it... Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.[Letter to William Short, 13 April 1820]” - Thomas Jefferson

10. “Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.” - Ted Chiang

11. “Always forgive, but never forget, else you will be a prisoner of your own hatred, and doomed to repeat your mistakes forever.” - Wil Zeus

12. “The forgiving state of mind is a magnetic power for attracting good.” - Catherine Ponder

13. “A Short TestamentWhatever harm I may have doneIn all my life in all your wide creationIf I cannot repair itI beg you to repair it,And then there are all the wounded The poor the deaf the lonely and the oldWhom I have roughly dismissedAs if I were not one of them.Where I have wronged them by itAnd cannot make amendsI ask youTo comfort them to overflowing,And where there are lives I may have withered around me,Or lives of strangers far or nearThat I've destroyed in blind complicity,And if I cannot find themOr have no way to serve them,Remember them. I beg you to remember themWhen winter is overAnd all your unimaginable promisesBurst into song on death's bare branches.” - Anne Porter

14. “The dead don't desire revenge, but the happiness of the livng. To dirty your small hands would bring joy to no one.-Kenshin to Eiji” - Watsuki Nobuhiro

15. “I want to be the kind of person who can do that. Move on and forgive people and be healthy and happy. It seems like an easy thing to do in my head. But it's not so easy when you try it in real life.” - Susane Colasanti

16. “You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.” - Lewis B. Smedes

17. “How can I judge?" she said at last. "To me, he is a hero. To the world a monster." She let her head fall into her arms and started crying quietly. "I miss him! Curse him! I miss him!"Mithorden put a hand on her shoulder and let her cry for a few minutes. A sad smile slowly spread across his face. "I'm glad you can forgive him," he said at last.Luthiel lifted her head. "How do you know?"Because you miss him.” - Robert Fanney

18. “Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man.'Valjean, who did not recall having made any promise, was silent. The bishop had spoken the words slowly and deliberately. He concluded with a solemn emphasis:Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good. I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.” - Victor Hugo

19. “Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.” - Lewis B. Smedes

20. “You know we talked about where people go when they die. I just believe you go someplace and I seen her layin there and I thought maybe she wouldn't go to heaven because, you know, I thought she wouldn't and I thought about God forgivin people and I thought about if I could ask God to forgive me for killin that son of a bitch because you and me both know I ain't sorry for it and I reckon this sounds ignorant but I didn't want to be forgiven if she wasn't. I didn't want to do or be nothin that she wasn't like going to heaven or anything like that.” - Cormac McCarthy

21. “Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.” - William Arthur Ward

22. “And we're all good, everything is forgiven between Beethoven and me because this is the part of me that hasn't changed. In this monent I'm not defined by the other things, the things that happened to me, the things I didn't choose. This is the part of me that defines me for all time, for always. The thing I choose completely.” - Daisy Whitney

23. “So what does forgiveness really do for you? Is it even a real thing? Or is it something humans just made up to make ourselves feel better? Or is it like the concept of time, something that actually exists, but our little brains can't really comprehend it, so we just measure it and give the pieces names until we've dumbed it down for ourselves?” - Juliette Fay

24. “How does one know if she has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him. You tend to have nothing left to say about it all.” - Clarissa Pinkola Estés

25. “At the moment, it's simply a difference of opinon between the Doctor and you.. You both want the best. You've only tried to kill him a couple of times... I mean, don't worry about that. I've seen people do much worse to him and at the end of the day he'll take them out for pizza. He's very forgiving. The Doctor is brilliant,' [said Rory]” - James Goss

26. “When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

27. “Most importantly, love each other deeply, because love cause many sins to be forgiven. - 1 Peter 4:8” - Thomas Nelson Publishers

28. “Take a walk through the garden of forgiveness and pick a flower of forgiveness for everything you have ever done. When you get to that time that is now, make a full and total forgiveness of your entire life and smile at the bouquet in your hands because it truly is beautiful.” - Stephen Richards

29. “Mistakes are your school of learning therefore forgiveness is your greatest teacher in this school of learning.” - Stephen Richards

30. “Learn to love someone when they least deserve it, because that is when they need your love most.” - Rodolfo Costa

31. “A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.” - Alain De Botton

32. “I'm here to tell you, there ain't much forgiveness in that old-time religion. That particular savior was a mean son of a bitch. If you sinned, honey, he was going to get you, no doubt about it.” - Ava Gardner

33. “People have to forgive. We don't have to like them, we don't have to be friends with them, we don't have to send them hearts in text messages, but we have to forgive them, to overlook, to forget. Because if we don't we are tying rocks to our feet, too much for our wings to carry!” - C. JoyBell C.

34. “Forgiveness is healing—everything is energy—thoughts create—we are all connected—what you resist persists—true love never dies—the soul’s immortality is the only true immortality—” - Alyson Noel

35. “In all my travels, I've never seen a country's population more determined to forgive, and to build and succeed than in Rwanda.” - Rick Warren

36. “Last night I lost the world, and gained the universe.” - C. JoyBell C.

37. “Time grants a unique perspective which allows us to see events through a filter of accumulated wisdom.” - Christopher Earle

38. “Sometimes... the first step to forgiveness is realizing that the other person... is batshit crazy.” - Michelle Bartlett

39. “Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.” - Alain De Botton

40. “I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me.” - Judy Collins

41. “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

42. “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

43. “Sometimes people need to know they could be forgiven to have the strength to change.” - J. Leigh Bralick

44. “I didn’t answer. We were not buddies. We could not chat about the proximity of our offices, or football, or forgiveness.” - Kimberly Novosel

45. “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

46. “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

47. “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

48. “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

49. “What power has love but forgiveness?In other wordsby its interventionwhat has been donecan be undone.What good is it otherwise?” - William Carlos Williams

50. “All children should be taught to unconditionally accept, approve, admire, appreciate, forgive, trust, and ultimately, love their own person.” - Asa Don Brown

51. “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

52. “There are things that can be fixed with an apology and things that can't.” - Otani Lovely Complex

53. “Sometimes we wait too long for the forgiveness of our fathers.” - Harley King

54. “We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker's, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.” - C.S. Lewis

55. “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