Mamacita says:  Who among us doesn’t need help with forgiveness?  We all need to learn to forgive, and to learn to be forgiven, and to learn to cope when we get neither.

Learning to forgive is one of my (many) shortcomings, for even though I try and have tried all my life to be a forgiving person, the sad fact is, there are a few circumstances wherein I am not.  Not in the least.  Not for want of trying, because I’ve tried for years, but so far, I haven’t been able to.  Sometimes, I think I’ve succeeded, and then a reminder will cross my path and I realize I haven’t forgiven these people.  Not really.  I’ve even tried to help some of them, secretly, when things weren’t going well for them, and succeded in the helping but not in the forgiving of what they did.  Knowing that if they ever found out I had a hand in their stroke of good luck they’d turn tail and run from it doesn’t help much, either.

We are what we are, but we can always change that.  Heaven knows I’ve tried.  Heaven knows I’m still trying, too.

But no luck.  I can’t forgive certain people for certain things.  Other people for other things, yes.  I can.  But not those people.  Not yet.  But I will keep trying.

1.  Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.  –Ausonius

2.  Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.  –Cherie Carter-Scott

3.  If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?  Dolores Huerta

4.  To err is human; to forgive, infrequent.  –Franklin P. Adams

5.  There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.  –Josh Billings

6.  Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of its immense benefits to the one who forgives.  –Lawana Blackwell

7.  The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.  –Gandhi

8.  Life is an adventure in forgiveness.  –Norman Cousins

9.  Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.  –Oscar Wilde

10.  Forgiveness does not always lead to a healed relationship.  Some people are not capable of love, and it might be wise to let them go along with your anger.  Wish them well, and let them go their way.  — Real Live Preacher (He’s on my blogroll, and he’s AWESOME!)

11.  It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.  –Stuart’s Law of Retroaction

12.  The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.  –Thomas Szasz

13.  It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.  –William Blake

14.  There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.  –Bryant H. McGill

15.  To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.  –Lewis B. Smedes

16.  Resentment is one burden that is incompatible with your success.  Always be the first to forgive, and forgive yourself first always.  –Dan Zadra

17.  When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle.  Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.  –Emo Phillips

18.  Since forgiveness isn’t colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change, don’t worry whether or not they finally understand you.  Love them and release them.  Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time.  –Sara Paddison

19.  People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than for being right.  –J.K. Rowling

20.  Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.  –Peter Ustinov

21.  Most of us can forgive and forget; we just don’t want the other person to forget that we forgave.  –Ivern Ball

22.  You wll know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.  –Lewis B. Smedes

23.  When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.  –Alan Paton

24.  Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.  –Mark Twain

25.  Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you:  love, prayer, and forgiveness.  –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

26.  I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive.  Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note – torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.  –Henry Ward Beecher

27.  He who is devoid of the power to forgive, is devoid of the power to love.  –Martin Luther King, Jr.

28.  Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.  –Paul Boese

29.  Forgiving means letting go of the past.  –Gerald Jampolsky

30.  Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.  –Tolstoy

31.  Without forgiveness, there’s no future.  –Desmond Tutu

32.  True forgiveness is not an action after the fact; it is an attitude with which you enter each moment.  –David Ridge

33.  Forgive or relive.  –Unknown

34.  Forgiveness is the remission of sins.  For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again.  –Saint Augustine

35.  Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.  –Isaac Friedmann

36.  Forgiveness is the needle that knows how to mend.  –Jewel

37.  Forgiveness is a funny thing.  It warms the heart and cools the sting.  –William Arthur Ward

38.  We attach our feelings to the moment when we were hurt, endowing it with immortality.  And we let it assault us every time it comes to mind.  It travels with us, sleeps with us, hovers over us while we make love, and broods over us while we die.  Our hate does not even have the decency to die when those we hate die – for it is a parasite sucking OUR blood, not theirs.  there is only one remedy for it: forgiveness.  –Lewis B. Smedes

39.  Forgiveness does not mean that we suppress anger; forgiveness means that we have asked for a miracle: the ability to see through mistakes that someone has made to the truth that lies in all of our hearts.  Forgiveness is not always easy.  At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it.  And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.  Attack thoughts towards others are attack thoughts towards ourselves.  The first step in forgiveness is the willingness to forgive.  –Marianne Williamson

40.  In the Bible it says they asked Jesus how many times you should forgive, and he said 70 times 7.  Well, I want you all to know that I’m keeping a chart.  –Hillary Rodham Clinton

41.  Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.  –John F. Kennedy

42.  Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealted wounds.  It is rediscovering the strenths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves.  –Sidney and Suzanne Simon

43.  No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.  –Voltaire

44.  This is certain: that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.  –Francis Bacon

45.  Those who forgive most shall be most forgiven.  –Josiah Bailey

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

47.  To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.  –Confucius

48.  What is forgiven is usually well remembered.  –Louis Dudek

49.  Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always makes you less than you are.  –Malcolm Forbes

50.  If a good person does you wrong, act as though you had not noticed it.  they will make note of this and not remain in your debt long.  –Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

51.  Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean.  –Dag Hammarskjold

52.  He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven; for everyone has need to be forgiven.  –George Herbert

53.  Seeing with better eyes, we can recognize that the offender is a valuable human being who struggles with the same needs, pressures, and confusions that we struggle with.  We will recognize that the incident really may not have been about us in the first place.  Instead it was about the wrongdoer’s misguided attempt to meet his or her own needs.  As we regard offenders from this point of view (regardless of whether they repent and regardless of what they have done or suffered), we will be in a position to forgive them.  –Holmgren

54.  Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.  –Kin Hubbard

55.  There is nothing that in the end, cannot be forgiven, but there remains much that is inexcusable.  –Jankelevitch

56.  One pardons to the degree that one loves.  –Francois de la Rochefoucauld

57.  He who has not forgiven an enemy has never yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life.  –Lauter

58.  Everyone says that forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.  –C.S. Lewis

59.  If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.  –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

60.  Forgiveness unleashes joy.  It brings peace.  It washes the slate clean.  It sets all the highest values of love in motion  In a sense, forgiveness is Christianity at its highest level.  –John MacArthur

61.  Forgiveness is the giving and receiving of life.  –George McDonald

62.  Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope.  Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we are saved by faith.  Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.  No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.  –Reinhold Niebuhr

63.  God forgives us.  Who am I not to forgive?  –Alan Paton

64.  In our society, forgiveness is often seen as weakness.  people who forgive those who have hurt them or their family are made to look as if they really don’t care about their loved ones.  But forgiveness is tremendous strength.  It is the action of someone who refuses to be consumed by hatred and revenge.  –Helen Prejean

65.  A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the full value of time and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.  –Rambler

66.  Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.  –Laurence Sterne

67.  There is no condition for forgiveness.  –Paul Tillich

68.  To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.  –William H. Walton

69.  Forgetting is something that time takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of volition, and only the sufferer is qualified to make the decision.  –Simon Wiesenthal

70.  Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party comes prepared to be forgiven.  –Charles Williams

71.  It really doesn’t matter if the person who hurt you deserves to be forgiven.  Forgiveness is a gift you give youself.  You have things to do and you want to move on.  –Real Live Preacher

72.  When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel.  Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free. — Catherine Ponder

73.  One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything every night before you go to bed.  –Ann Landers

74.  We do not really know how to forgive until we know what it is to be forgiven.  Therefore we should be glad that we can be forgiven by others.  It is our forgiveness of one another that makes the love of Jesus manifest in our lives, for in forgiving one another we act towards one another as He has acted towards us.  –Hannah More