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

Forgiving is rediscovering the shining path of peace that at first you thought others took away when they betrayed you.
~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com

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

Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.
~Marlene Dietrich

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.
~Grace Hopper

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
~Mahatma Gandhi

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
~Lewis B. Smedes, "Forgiveness - The Power to Change the Past," Christianity Today, 7 January 1983 (Thanks, Donna)

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

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

If you can't forgive and forget, pick one.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

You can make up a quarrel, but it will always show where it was patched.
~Edgar Watson Howe, Country Town Sayings, 1911

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
~William Blake, Jerusalem

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.
~Isaac Friedmann

Forgive all who have offended you, not for them, but for yourself.
~Harriet Nelson

He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.
~George Herbert

There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.
~Sydney Harris

Nobody forgets where he buried the hatchet.
~Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard, Abe Martin's Broadcast, 1930

Yes, this is what good is: to forgive evil. There is no other good.
~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

The man who forgives is far stronger than the man who fights.
~Nathan Croall

What we forgive too freely doesn't stay forgiven.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

It's far easier to forgive an enemy after you've got even with him.
~Olin Miller

Forgiving is love's toughest work, and love's biggest risk. If you twist it into something it was never meant to be, it can make you a doormat or an insufferable manipulator. Forgiving seems almost unnatural. Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do. But forgiving is love's power to break nature's rule.
~Lewis B. Smedes

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
~Josh Billings

Without forgiveness life is governed by... an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.
~Roberto Assagioli

One thing you will probably remember well is any time you forgive and forget.
~Franklin P. Jones

Forgive. It doesn't erase their crime but why should you do the time. Let go of resentment.
~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury.
~E.H. Chapin

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
~Oscar Wilde