Forgiven But Not Forgotten Quotes

Siena DePiero...will you do me the honour of becoming my wife? Because you're in my head and my heart and my soul, and you have been for five years - ever since I first saw you. First you were a fascination, then you became an obsession, and now...I love you. The thought of you being in this world but not with me is more terrifying than anything I've ever known. So, please...will you marry me? ~ Abby Green

Injuries may be forgiven, but not forgotten ~ Aesop

A Catholic may sin and sin as badly as anyone else, but no genuine Catholic ever denies he is a sinner. A Catholic wants his sins forgiven - not excused or sublimated. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Forgotten is the first duty of love: to speak the truth (Ephesians 4:15). Real love does not flatter or soothe when correction is needed but points out the error which is blinding and harming the loved one. Christ said, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent" (Revelation 3:19). Instead, the idea is now current that love excludes rebuke, ignores the truth, and seeks unity at any price. Only disaster can result. ~ Dave Hunt

Today I felt like a part of something awesome, the human race. I know it can be ugly; it really is in so many ways. But today there was nothing ugly to see, just people trying to be better. And maybe that's the key. Not resolutions and forgotten promises, but instead a commitment to do this year a little better than the last. I'm feeling good about this one. I really am. ~ Andrew McMahon

Here. Here I am.
You've taken everything from us, but not who we are! We still exist! One day grass will grow here and overgrow the ruins. Or day this will be forgotten. But you... No one will ever forget you! The shame of humanity. ~ Bruno Apitz

My dearest Lydia
I do not wish to disturb your thoughts with sad tidings, and yet to do otherwise than write to you at this time with an honest heart would give cause for you to reproach me in years to come, years when you will live and breathe the warm air while I rest beneath the turf, and the very thought of such reproach grieves my heavy heart as it prepares to beat its last. For I am fading, and henceforth you will not hear word of this frail shell whom once you graced with friendship, except, perhaps, through another's report or distant memory.
Whether our encounter in this life has brought me more joy than pain is a question that once I asked myself, but now see as a thing of no concern. My love for you is not to be judged by degrees of pleasure. It is not of the world of matter to be placed on the scale or weighed in the balance. Our flesh, the deeds we commit and things we created may be subject to the measure, but not a love like this. Joy and pain are but the distant resonance, while my love for you is the present song; they are but patterns of dust caught on the edge of the morning light, while my love is the blazing sun that illuminates them. My love abides, my love existed before we met, and my love will continue as the centuries roll by when we and our story are shades forgotten. But my love must perforce now return to its cave, to its sleeping state, whence it emerged that morning long ago by the water's edge, when our eyes met and the spirit took ~ Roland Vernon

Often a thing that is ugly is ugly in itself, and often a thing that is ugly is only a thing that is forgotten, kept from view and kept from memory, and often a thing that is ugly is not only a definition of beauty itself but also renders beauty as something beyond words or beyond any kind of description. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Hippolytus: Do you believe in God?
Priest: (Looks at him.)
Hippolytus: I know what I am. And always will be. But you. You sin knowing you'll confess. Then you're forgiven. And then you start all over again.
How do you dare mock a God so powerful? Unless you don't really believe.
Priest: This is your confession, not mine.
Hippolytus: Then why are you on your knees? God certainly is merciful. If I were him I'd despise you. I'd wipe you off the face of the earth for your dishonesty.
Priest: You're not God.
Hippolytus: No. A prince. God on earth. But not God. Fortunate for all concerned. I'd not allow you to sin knowing you'd confess and get away with it.
Priest: Heaven would be empty.
Hippolytus: A kingdom of honest men, honestly sinning. And death for those who try to cover their arse. ~ Sarah Kane

Though he was tired of loneliness - tired down to the depths of his heart - that was really not was troubled him most. What tortured him was the hunger in his soul. A longing. A quiet voice that could not be stilled. Not a threatening voice - or a nagging one. But a persistent calling. Like a parent who calls an errant child back to dinner. Or a father who calls for a son to join him down at the pier for a fishing trip; like a voice echoing off the lake. It was a strangely familiar voice that was calling. A little like the memory of a reunion, long forgotten. Why did he resist it, even fear it? Why would he not respond to a call that came to him in a way that sounded, and felt, so much like family? ~ Craig Parshall

If we refuse to forgive, we have stepped into dangerous waters. First, refusing to forgive is to put ourselves in the place of God, as though vengeance were our prerogative, not his. Second, unforgiveness says God's wrath is insufficient. For the unbeliever, we are saying that an eternity in hell is not enough; they need our slap in the face or cold shoulder to "even the scales" of justice. For the believer, we are saying that Christ's humiliation and death are not enough. In other words, we shake our fists at God and say, "Your standards may have been satisfied, but my standard is higher!" Finally, refusing to forgive is the highest form of arrogance. Here we stand forgiven. And as we bask in the forgiveness of a perfectly holy and righteous God, we turn to our brother and say, "My sins are forgivable, but yours are not." In other words, we act as though the sins of others are too significant to forgive while simultaneously believing that ours are not significant enough to matter. ~ Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

Do not forgive. Forgiveness accuses before it forgives. By accusing, by stating the injury, it makes the wrong irredeemable. It carries the blow all the way to culpability. Thus, all becomes irrepairable; giving and forgiving cease to be possible.
For nothing saves innocence.
Forgive me for forgiving you.
The sole fault would be one of position: the one and only fault is to be "I,", for it is not identity that the Self in myself brings me. This self is merely a formal necessity: it simply serves to allow the infinite relation of Self to Other. Whence the temptation (the sole temptation) to become a subject again, instead of being exposed to subjectivity without any subject, the nudity of dying space.

I cannot forgive -- forgiveness comes from others -- but I cannot be forgiven either, if forgiveness is what calls the "I" into question and demands that I give myself, that I subject myself to the lack of subjectivity. And if forgiveness comes from others, it only comes; there is never any certitude that it can arrive, because in it there is nothing of the (sacramental) power to determine. It can only delay in the element of indecision. In The Trail, one might think that the death scene constitutes the pardon, the end of the interminable; but there is no end, since Kafka specifies that shame survives, which is to say, the infinite itself, a mockery of life as life's beyond. ~ Maurice Blanchot

I went up to his gravestone and repeated what the others had done: I placed a pebble on his tomb and silently said to him:

'Well, Oskar, at last we meet again, but this is not the time for reproaches and complaints. It would not be fair to you or to me. Now you are in another world, in eternity, and I can no longer ask you all those questions to which in life you would have given evasive replies... and death is the best evasion of all. I have received no answer, my dear, I do not know why you abandoned me... But what not even your death or my old age can change is that we are still married, this is how we are before God. I have forgiven you everything, everything...'

Murmuring these words, I let them push my wheelchair up the slight incline leading to the gravestone that marks the place where his remains are laid to rest, outside the Jewish cemetery of Jerusalem. I knew that somehow the power of my thoughts had reached him, and felt, after all those years, a strange inner peace filling my spirit. ~ Emilie Schindler

The only gold stars the CIA gives out are for death in the field, and then only to actual employees, not contracted assets. You get my appreciation." She smiled. "You'll get a gold star in a forgotten file when you die. It will have to wait for now, but I doubt it will wait for too long." "With friends like you." "All your friends fucked you over, Court. Face it, you are better off with a straight shooter like me managing you. ~ Mark Greaney

Just accept as a fact that everyone of any emotional importance to you is related to everyone else of any emotional importance to you; these relationships need not extend to blood, of course, but the people who change your life emotionally - all those people, from different places, from different times, spanning many wholly unrelated coincidences - are nonetheless 'related'. We associate people with each other for emotional not for factual reasons - people who've never met each other, who don't even know each other exists; people, even, who have forgotten us. ~ John Irving

Long ago," he said, "I thought like you that my mother would always keep the window open for me; so I stayed away for moons and moons and moons, and then flew back; but the window was barred, for mother had forgotten all about me, and there was another little boy sleeping in my bed."
I am not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was true; and it scared them.
"Are you sure mothers are like that?"
"Yes."
So this was the truth about mothers. The toads! ~ J.M. Barrie

To live, fiction must be read, and to be read it must be enjoyed. Why do so many people talk about the number of times they've lost interest in a book after a couple of chapters, or only "toughed it out" to the end out of a sense of obligation? I'd say it's because too many writers have forgotten that the writer's job isn't merely to express himself, it's to reach a reader. That doesn't mean pandering to the lowest common denominator. But it does mean that even a work of smart, thoughtful fiction should strive to engage and entertain. If you're a writer of literary fiction and all you're bringing to the party is a poetic turn of phrase or a deep thought, that's not enough. What about pace? Humour? Characters you care about and a smattering of suspense that makes you want to "find out what happens next?" All of these, plus rich language, bracing honesty and emotional resonance, should be components of the best, most thoughtful fiction. Because that's the sort of reading experience that readers should be able to expect from a novel that demands hours of their time. ~ Trevor Cole

But Pastor Prince, doesn't such preaching just make believers feel that it is all right to go on sinning?"
Let me ask you a question: when a truly born-again believer knows that he is forgiven of all his sins, does he go, "Yippee! Now I can go sin all I want"?
I submit to you that no true believer of Jesus is looking for an excuse to sin. Many may be struggling with sin, but they are looking for a way out. They know that what they are doing is self-destructive and not glorifying to their Lord and Savior.
"Oh, Pastor Prince, I know of so-and-so, who says he is under grace, and now he has left his wife to be with his mistress."
Friend, let me be the first to tell you that this person isn't living under grace. The Word of God tells us in no uncertain terms that "sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace" (Rom. 6:14).
This Scripture shows us that when a person is truly under grace, he is not ruled by sin, nor does he happily continue to live a sinful lifestyle. Notice that it also tells us that the way to be liberated from sin's dominion is to come under grace. ~ Joseph Prince

Honor is not a thing to dismiss or forgotten but a thing to uphold at all time". ~ Abdulazeez Henry Musa

One night when I got in from work a bit late, 'cause it was really nice weather and everyone wants to take the punts out when it's sunny, I found Larry just sitting on the sofa staring at a blank TV screen. At first I thought maybe he'd forgotten to turn it on, but then I thought, no, Larry's not stupid. He'd have noticed. ~ J.L. Merrow

A man should begin with his own times. He should become acquainted first of all with the world in which he is living and participating. He should not be afraid of reading too much or too little. He should take his reading as he does his food or his exercise. The good reader will gravitate to the good books. He will discover from his contemporaries what is inspiring or fecundating, or merely enjoyable, in past literature. He should have the pleasure of making these discoveries on his own, in his own way. What has worth, charm, beauty, wisdom, cannot be lost or forgotten. But things can lose all value, all charm and appeal, if one is dragged to them by the scalp. ~ Henry Miller

So much pain. I had thought it would be over, but not all scars heal. Not all sins are forgiven. ~ Pierce Brown

Well,that all worked out nicely," Edward said from my hand.
"Yup." I sat down and propped the postcard upright against my books. "Thanks."
"Whatever for?"
"Being real,I guess. I'm pretty sure this paper about your life will get me into NYU.Which,when you think about it, is a pretty great gift from a guy I've never met who's been dead for a hundred years."
Edward smiled. It was nice to see. "My pleasure,darling girl. I must say, I like this spark of confidence in you."
"About time,huh?"
"Yes,well.Have you forgiven the Bainbridge boy?"
"For...?"
"For hiding you."
"He wasn't.I was hiding me." I gave Edward a look before he could gloat. "Yeah,yeah. You've always been very wise. But this isn't really about my forgiving Alex,is it?"
He had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "I suppose not. So?"
"So.I think you were a good guy, Edward. I think you probably would have told everyone exactly how you felt about Marina of you could have.If she hadn't been married, maybe, or if you'd lived longer. I think maybe all the pictures of you did of her were your public delcaration. Whaddya think? Can I write that? Is it the truth?"
"Oh,Ella." His face was sad again, just the way he'd cast it in bronze. But it was kinda bittersweet now, not as heartbroken. "I would give my right arm to be able to answer that for you.You know I would."
"You don't have a right arm,Mr. Willing. Left,either." I picked up the card again. "Fuhgeddabo ~ Melissa Jensen

Ms.Mutou-
I was told to write a last will, but…
But even if I had possessions that were worth passing on, I have no family to give them to,
So I wrote a letter to you, like always..
I never could have imagined how shocked I'd been…
When I first saw you at the prison.
The truth is, I'd been looking for you.
On that day that my brother died and I was left alone,
Even you disappeared from the television screens…
I looked for you…
I looked and looked…
But I couldn't find you…
I'd forgotten about it…
So when I saw you here at the prison…
I thought that perhaps…
God truly did exist…
Thanks to the Thursday that I spent with you,
I knew for the first time how it felt to be happy.
It was something I couldn't obtain living by myself…
It felt like I understood why people live their lives mingling with others…
I won't put a brave front…
And tell you to forget about me, and live your life without letting your past hold you back…
I want you to remember me.
Just you-…
That there was a little person like me…
You told me once that even though there was someone you hated enough to want to kill, you were afraid to do it and stopped.
I don't think that you stopped because you were afraid, but rather that you were brave.
If I had also done so…
Perhaps I could have said to you the word that I could never say…
Words…
That I haven't said once…
Not ~ Mizu Sahara

Maybe it wasn't rational, but she didn't like the idea of Leo invading her little world. Yesterday, Brooklyn had belonged to her. The Long Island 'burbs where she'd grown up had felt far away from the brick streets and renovated factory spaces of Brooklyn. In this job, she'd felt truly independent, putting down her own fragile roots in a new place.

Fast forward twenty-four hours, and her daddy had joined the workplace and her ex-boyfriend had shown up to remind her of all that she'd lost. Really, a girl could be forgiven for feeling slightly hysterical.

Not that there was any time to panic. ~ Sarina Bowen

But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright son has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves.
Because they have no memory ... because they are not human. ~ Herman Melville

Think of the purest, most all-consuming love you can imagine. Now multiply that love by an infinite amount - that is the measure of God's love for you. God does not look on the outward appearance. I believe that He doesn't care one bit if we live in a castle or a cottage, if we are handsome or homely, if we are famous or forgotten. Though we are incomplete, God loves us completely. Though we are imperfect, He loves us perfectly. Though we may feel lost and without compass, God love encompasses us completely. He loves us because He is filled with an infinite measure of holy, pure, and indescribable love. We are important to God not because of our résumé but because we are His children. He loves every one of us, even those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken. God's love is so great that He loves even the proud, the selfish, the arrogant, and the wicked. What this means is that, regardless of our current state, there is hope for us. No matter our distress, no matter our sorrow, no matter our mistakes, our infinitely compassionate Heavenly Father desires that we draw near to Him so that He can draw near to us. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

you will perhaps miss
the part of you that is gone
but do not fear:
all is for the best in the world
and soon you will not realize it is gone:
you have either forgotten it entirely or
it has come back
alive ~ Tah The Trickster

Gandhi said, "I'm going to throw all the arms into the ocean and send all the armies to work in the fields and in the gardens." And Louis Fischer asked, "But have you forgotten? Somebody can invade your country." Gandhi said, "We will welcome them. If somebody invades us, we will accept him as a guest and tell him, 'You can also live here, just the way we are living. There is no need to fight.'" But he completely forgot all his philosophy - that's how revolutions fail. It is very beautiful to talk about these things, but when power comes into your hands . . . First, Mahatma Gandhi did not accept any post in the government. It was out of fear, because how was he going to answer the whole world if they asked about throwing the weapons into the ocean? What about sending the armies to work in the fields? He escaped from the responsibility for which he had been fighting his whole life, seeing that it was going to create tremendous trouble for him. If ~ Osho

Art thou that man,' she cries, 'who, erstwhile fed with the milk and reared upon the nourishment which is mine to give, had grown up to the full vigour of a manly spirit? And yet I had bestowed such armour on thee as would have proved an invincible defence, hadst thou not first cast it away. Dost thou know me? Why art thou silent? Is it shame or amazement that hath struck thee dumb? Would it were shame; but, as I see, a stupor hath seized upon thee.' Then, when she saw me not only answering nothing, but mute and utterly incapable of speech, she gently touched my breast with her hand, and said: 'There is no danger; these are the symptoms of lethargy, the usual sickness of deluded minds. For awhile he has forgotten himself; he will easily recover his memory, if only he first recognises me. ~ Boethius

Jem's knees gave out, and he sank to the trunk at the foot of his bed, still playing. He played Will breathing the name Cecily, and he played himself watching the glint of his own ring on Tessa's hand on the train from York, knowing it was all a charade, knowing, too, that he wished that it wasn't. He played the sorrow in Tessa's eyes when she had come into the music room after Will had told her she would never have children. Unforgivable, that, what a thing to do, and yet Jem had forgiven him. Love was forgiveness, he had always believed that, and the things that Will did, he did out of some bottomless well of pain. Jem did not know the source of that pain, but he knew it existed and was real, knew it as he knew of the inevitability of his own death, knew it as he knew that he had fallen in love with Tessa Gray and that there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it. ~ Cassandra Clare

Edouard, I have spent so many hours wrestling with my faith - my lack of faith - but now, in this fearful corner of an all but forgotten world, riddled as I am with this loathsome parasite, I have somehow rediscovered a strength of belief the likes of which I have not known since you and I were boys. I now understand the need for faith - pure, blind, fly-in-the-face-of-reason faith - as a small life preserver in the wild and endless sea of a universe ruled by unfeeling laws and totally indifferent to the small, reasoning beings that inhabit it. Day ~ Dan Simmons

Repetition and familiarity work. What is repeated becomes familiar, and this becomes a part of us. Our own culture understands this, but alas, not always the church. Far too many equate ritual with spiritual dryness. True, ritual and liturgy can be dead
even using the terms can raise hackles
but only when the significance and power of those rituals are forgotten. Spiritual death is not a property of ritual itself. To the contrary, ritual has always been and will always be a means of securing for future generations the power and reality of the gospel. (Peter Enns, Exodus, page 262). ~ Peter Enns

In the second half of life, our old compasses no longer work. The magnetic fields alter. The new compass that we need cannot be held in our hand, only in our heart. We read it not with our mind alone, but with our soul.

Now we yearn for wholeness. We yearn to remember the parts of ourselves that we have forgotten, to nourish those that we have starved, to express those we have silenced, and to bring into the light those we have cast into the shadows. On this quest for wholeness, we must let go of cliches of adult life, both positive and negative . . . Using the best information available , each of us must find his own way.

To varying degrees, all of us are trying to break out of . . . the "life structure" that we have built during the first part of our lives. ~ Mark Gerzon

Debarred from public worship, David was heartsick. Ease he did not seek, honour he did not covet, but the enjoyment of communion with God was an urgent need of his soul; he viewed it not merely as the sweetest of all luxuries, but as an absolute necessity, like water to a stag. Like the parched traveler in the wilderness, whose skin bottle is empty, and who finds the wells dry, he must drink or die – he must have his God or faint. His soul, his very self, his deepest life, was insatiable for a sense of the divine presence. . . . Give him his God and he is as content as the poor deer which at length slakes its thirst and is perfectly happy; but deny him his Lord, and his heart heaves, his bosom palpitates, his whole frame is convulsed, like one who gasps for breath, or pants with long running. Dear friend, dost thou know what this is, by personally having felt the same? It is a sweet bitterness. The next best thing to living in the light of the Lord's love is to be unhappy till we have it, and to pant hourly after it – hourly, did I say? Thirst is a perpetual appetite, and not to be forgotten, and even thus continually is the heart's longing after God. When it is as natural for us to long for God as for an animal to thirst, it is well with our souls, however painful our feelings ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Everyone I have lost in the closing of a door the click of the lock is not forgotten, they do not die but remain within the soft edges of the earth, the ash of house fires and cancer in sin and forgiveness huddled under old blankets dreaming their way into my hands, my heart closing tight like fists. - Indian Boy Love Song #1 ~ Sherman Alexie

Diversity matters. Not only in what we look like, or what religion we practice, or in whom we love, but also in how we live our lives, including the order in which we go about things, the seasons in which we are able to create art. Those who are engaged in the arts should be the last to send any other message, because when artists endorse the traditional order of a society, it suggests that they have forgotten their own true role within it. ~ Robin Black

Tonight, as you eat, reflect if you can: there are children starving in the world, starving in numbers larger than the mind can easily hold, up in the big numbers where an error of a million here, a million there, can be forgiven. It may be uncomfortable for you to reflect upon this or it may not, but still, you will eat. ~ Neil Gaiman

But people have their own troubles and tend to forget. One is not all that interesting. Even Hitler is being forgotten at last. ~ Iris Murdoch