To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
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.
Forgiveness is the key that can unshackle us from a past that will not rest in the grave of things over and done with. As long as our minds are captive to the memory of having been wronged, they are not free to wish for reconciliation with the one who wronged us.
If you cannot free people from their wrongs and see them as the needy people they are, you enslave yourself to your own painful past and by fastening yourself to the past, you let your hate become your future.
Forgiving is, first of all, a way of helping yourself to get free of the unfair pain somebody caused you.
The secret of grace is that it can be all right at the center even when it is all wrong on the edges.
The rule is: we cannot really forgive ourselves unless we look at the failure in our past and call it by its right name.
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.
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.
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.
We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are.
The longer we hate, the harder it is to heal us.
Because arrogance is born in personal vanity, arrogant people are driven without mercy. They can never get enough power to fill the soul’s needs or enough respect to overcome the fear that they deserve less than they are getting.
My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed – and each of the five has been me.
Kindness is the power that moves us to support and heal someone who offers nothing in return.
We forgive freely or we do not really forgive at all.
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.
I am certain that people never forgive because they believe they have an obligation to do it or because someone told them to do it. Forgiveness has to come from inside as a desire of the heart. Wanting to is the steam that pushes the forgiving engine.
There are some things about God that, were I to stop believing them, my world would change color, my hope would turn sour, and the meaning of my life would be yanked inside out.
We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are. A person feels guilt because he did something wrong. A person feels shame because he is something wrong.