Forgiving Yourself Quotes

The past doesn't determine your future unless you carry it with you into the present. Forgiving yourself and others, you free the universe to begin again at any moment. ~ Marianne Williamson

I've been in situations where forgiveness has been withheld from me. And I've come to understand it's their choice. But just because they choose to live in a prison of unforgiveness doesn't mean I have to sit in there with them. Another perspective comes from R.T. Kendall in his book, Total Forgiveness, "Forgiving yourself may bring about the breakthrough you have been looking for. It could set you free in ways you have never experienced before." The things we've been through, even if they are shameful or destructive, could very well be things God wants to use in our lives to help others. And if we're standing in the way of our forgiveness, healing, and freedom, how can God do His work in our lives? ~ Tracie Stier-Johnson

Yogi Bhajan shows us that a key to being the master of your own mind is to learn how to forgive yourself. So for today, just for one minute, practice forgiving yourself. ~ Gabrielle Bernstein

The thought that makes most people the weakest is shame, which produces humiliation. The importance of forgiving yourself cannot be stated strongly enough. If you carry around thoughts of shame about what you've done in the past, you're weakening yourself both physically and emotionally. Similarly, if you use a technique of shame and humiliation on anyone to get them to reform, you're going to create a weakened person who will never become empowered until those shameful and humiliating thoughts are removed. Removing your own thoughts of shame involves a willingness to let go, to see your past behaviors as lessons you had to learn, and to reconnect to your source through prayer and meditation. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

... Of his sins [Heavenly Father] does not want [man] to think [on them] too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better [Heavenly Father] is pleased. ~ C.S. Lewis

It is a difficult thing―if not impossible―to forgive oneself for foolish errors, not for trampling a life or goring another with sharp horns, but for being the fool who opened the gate and let the bull out, blind to potential consequences. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Forgiving yourself may be for many people, at least for myself, extremely difficult. And then in a larger context, I will say that I'm constantly astonished by those who pray daily, "Forgive me my sins as I forgive those who sin against me," and beat very loudly the war drum. ~ Alexander Payne

There is a lot to look at when you are serious about transformation. You look at everything you've ever done, every circumstance you've ever been in, cleaning up everything in your past. Reconciling, forgiving others, forgiving yourself. It's a lot of work, actually. ~ Marianne Williamson

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself. ~ Eckhart Tolle

When we have opened ourselves to give forgiveness or to accept forgiveness we have opened ourselves to touch the Divine. ~ Genevieve Gerard

Your number one task here is forgiving yourself and the people who mistreat you. You must learn to do this if you want to experience real happiness and peace in this life. You must do this if you want to feel accepted, valued and safe. The only way to feel innocent and worthy – is to give it to other people. That is just how it works. ~ Kimberly Giles

You're human. You'll screw up. Denying that is crazy. Forgiving yourself has all the benefits of self-esteem without making you a narcissist that's out of touch with reality. ~ David D. Burns

I did then what I knew best, when I knew better, I did better. Maya Angelo ~ Maya Angelou

Can you forgive her? Can you do that?
There was no response.
Because if you can start to forgive, then it will become easier.
And?
And then you will be able to forgive yourself - and ask others to forgive you. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

You can literally go on and on and on with the blame game, but let me tell you, it only causes more heartache. You will be no better off and will still have no answers. ~ Sharon Critchfield

My problem stemmed from not forgiving myself. ~ Shannon A. Thompson

We can make choices, but we can be vulnerable; we can do the wrong thing, but the wrong thing for all the right reasons. I think it [life] is basically about forgiveness, and not about someone else forgiving you, but you forgiving yourself. I think we all want a lot of that. ~ Kelli O'Hara

By not forgiving yourself you are limiting your ability to give to others. ~ Danielle Joworski

It's easy to be hard on yourself, but true self-love also lies in forgiving yourself when your plans get disrupted - life happens. Surrender and keep pushing. ~ Martika Shanel

As women, we almost never give ourselves enough credit for what we're capable of, for what we endure and how giving we are.
Part of loving yourself is about forgiving yourself - which is something I've always struggled with. It's the messy parts that make us human, so we should embrace them too - pat ourselves on the back for getting through them rather than being angry for having gotten into them in the first place. Because loving yourself is ultimately about self-acceptance, about embracing every part of who you are. And that's never just one thing. ~ Jennifer Lopez

forgiving also applies to forgiving yourself. ~ Abi Ketner

Love means letting go. Love is forgiving yourself. ~ Edith Eger

But not forgiving yourself often becomes the root of severe self-loathing extreme self hatred and intense inhibitions. It will be next to impossible to truly start over when you feel unforgivable. ~ Sue Augustine

The reason to forgive ourselves is not because we feel like it or because we want to see ourselves as blameless but because we limit what we can receive from God when we hold on to our past. He wants to do so much more than we could ever imagine. Forgiving yourself starts with believing in God's incredible love for you and accepting His amazing grace and mercy. If God Almighty can forgive us who are we to hold on to what He has not only forgiven but forgotten ~ Sue Augustine

We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them. ~ Samuel Butler

HD is not forgiving. Once you see your face for the first time in a movie cinema, you run straight to the gym. ~ Sondra Radvanovsky

When you forgive somebody, when you are generous, when you withhold judgment, when you love and when you stand up to injustice, you are, in that moment, bringing heaven to earth. ~ Rob Bell

My desire is to be a forgiving, non-judgmental person. ~ Janine Turner

Forgiving himself came easy to him. His, he'd come to realize, was a forgiving nature. ~ Lawrence Block

Each man forms his duty according to his predominant characteristic; the stern require an avenging judge; the gentle, a forgiving father. Just so the pygmies declared that Jove himself was a pygmy. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Love is within us. It cannot be destroyed. It can be ignored. To the extent that we abandon love we will feel it has abandoned us.
Denying love is our only problem, and embracing it is the only answer.
Through the power of love, we can let go of past history and begin again.
Love heals, forgives, and makes whole. ~ Ernest Holmes

The friend who holds up before me the mirror, conceals not my smallest faults, warns me kindly, reproves me affectionately, when I have not performed my duty, he is my friend, however little he may appear so. But if a man praises and lauds me, never reproves me, overlooks my faults, and forgives them before I have repented, he is my enemy, however much he may appear my friend. ~ Johann Gottfried Herder

One may forgive infidelity, but one does not forget it. ~ Madame De La Fayette

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

Grovelling then busking
All at once
And all in time
Leaving a Ferris-wheel trail
Across a deep mountainous climb
Descended with rapture and with joy
Their mindless triumphant demeanour
Gossamer wings parade-parade
These gormless little ants
Full to the brimful
Empty to the last meandering weight
Pulled across the
Rotting fruit filled with retiring goodness
Tiny prissy princelings
These masterful creatures
Filled with adventuring spirit
March on, march on
Under the forgiving human's
Watchful, waiting and wandering eye. ~ Abigail George

I have always hated celebrities lecturing people on politics. So forgive me. But I am passionate about this country. I am equally passionate about the potential of the people who live here. ~ Simon Cowell

Your parents were fighting machines and self-pitying machines. Your mother was programmed to bawl out your father for being a defective moneymaking machine, and your father was programmed to bawl out your mother for being a defective housekeeping machine. They were programmed to bawl each other out for being defective loving machines. Then your father was programmed to stomp out of the house and slam the door. This automatically turned your mother into a weeping machine. And your father would go down to the tavern where he would get drunk with some other drinking machines. Then all the drinking machines would go to a whorehouse and rent fucking machines. And then your father would drag himself home to become an apologizing machine. And your mother would become a very slow forgiving machine. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

We must forgive each other our arising, for our existence always torments others. The golden rule in the midst of this mutual misery has always been, not to do no harm, but as little as possible; and not to love one another, but as much as you can. ~ Ken Wilber

In the moral calculus of currently prevailing state capitalism, profits and bonuses in the next quarter greatly outweigh concern for the welfare of one's grandchildren, and since these are institutional maladies, they will not be easy to overcome. While much remains uncertain, we can assure ourselves, with fair confidence, that future generations will not forgive us our silence and apathy. ~ Noam Chomsky

The most faithful disciples of Christ have been builders of peace, to the point of forgiving their enemies, sometimes even to the point of giving their lives for them. ~ Pope John Paul II

I like to think of love as being slightly more forgiving than time. ~ Cath Crowley

Lovers O lovers, lovers it is time to set out from the world. I hear a drum in my soul's ear coming from the depths of the stars. Our camel driver is at work; the caravan is being readied. He asks that we forgive him for the disturbance he has caused us, He asks why we travellers are asleep. Everywhere the murmur of departure; the stars, like candles thrust at us from behind blue veils, and as if to make the invisible plain, a wondrous people have come forth. ~ Rumi

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. ~ Francis Quarles

Sometimes you forgive people simply becuase you still want them in your life. ~ Ally Carter

They say that when god was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for differing with him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, "Forgive your enemies." I say, "I do;" but he says, "I will damn mine." God should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my enemies he should forgive his. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt him. He certainly ought to be as generous as he asks us to be. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

But the human spirit is resilient. God made us so. He gave us the ability to forgive. To leave our past behind. To look forward instead of back. ~ Elizabeth Smart

The words 'I will forgive you, but I'll never forget what you've done' never explain the real nature of forgiveness. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

We forgive freely or we do not really forgive at all. ~ Lewis B. Smedes

Love knows how to forgive. Love cannot hurt and cannot be violent. ~ Rajneesh

The Lord is forgiving, but sometimes life is not forgiving. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

A while ago?" Anaxantis asked. "Yes, he raped me a while ago. Exactly nine months and two days ago. What's that? Nine months or nine minutes. It's the same. And it is in the past, you say? Then why is it still happening, every day, every time I close my eyes? Every time I hear someone behind me, and I don't know who it is? How is it that I get an almost irresistible urge to kill anyone who happens to touch me unexpectedly? Tell me, Hemarchidas, how do I forgive, let alone forget, something that is still happening, that keeps happening over and over? How? How do I do that? ~ Andrew Ashling

And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all. ~ John Donne

I think one should forgive and remember ... If you forgive and forget in the usual sense, you're just driving what you remember into the subconscious; it stays there and festers. But to look, even regularly, upon what you remember and know you've forgiven is achievement. ~ Faith Baldwin

Los Angles to me seems to be a little bit more forgiving. They're just as rowdy and they're just as excited but they understand a [botch] happens sometimes, and they're excited to see the show and they just want to have some fun. ~ Adam Cole

Forgiveness takes intelligence, discipline, imagination, and persistence, as well as a special psychological strength, something athletes call mental toughness and warriors call courage. ~ Edward M. Hallowell

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
I refuse to say this. If it means I will have to forgive Mrs. Smeath or else go to Hell when I die, I'm ready to go. Jesus must have known how hard it is to forgive, that was why he put this in. He was always putting in things that were impossible to do really, such as giving away all your money. ~ Margaret Atwood

The American people are a very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible, exception of stupidity. ~ Will Rogers

A forgiven Christian is a forgiving Christian. ~ Jim George

I believe in discipline. You can forgive incompetence. You can forgive lack of ability. But one thing you cannot ever forgive is lack of discipline. ~ Forrest Gregg

Some people are more forgiving when they understand a situation, while others become even more furious once they see the whole picture. ~ Jonathan Carroll

For a great life it is a necessity to be kind, but for the greatness of life it is essential to be forgiving. ~ Debasish Mridha

What's really great about Buddhism is its rational, informal quality. Coming from my experience of growing up a Catholic, I found Buddhism to be refreshingly easygoing and forgiving. ~ Matt Dillon