Quotes on Forgiveness
How would the father (Ben Sills) in Words By Heart react to these quotes and poems?
Memorize for extra credit: 5 points for any two quotations. Poems as marked.
Forgiveness
Is the mightiest sword
Forgiveness of those you fear
Is the highest reward
When they bruise you with words
When they make you feel small
When it's hardest to take
You must do nothing at all...
- Jane Eyre. (5 points)
~
What power has love but forgiveness?
- William Carlos Williams.
~
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
- Paul Boese.
~
"Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves."
--James E Faust, "The Healing Power of Forgiveness", May 2007 Ensign
--
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 made clean again.
-- Dag Hammarskjold.
~
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
-Mahatma Gandhi
~
"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
~
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
--Oscar Wilde
~
If we really want to love
we must learn how to forgive
- Mother Teresa
~~~
If I cannot forgive myself
For all the blunders
That I have made
Over the years,
Then how can I proceed?
How can I ever
Dream perfection-dreams?
Move, I must, forward.
Fly, I must, upward.
Dive, I must, inward,
To be once more
What I truly am
And shall forever remain.
- Sri Chinmoy (6 points)
~
"Father, forgive them;
for they know not what they do. "
-- Luke 23
_______
If Someone Speaks Ill of You
If anyone speaks ill of you,
Praise him always.
If anyone injures you,
Serve him nicely.
If anyone persecutes you,
Help him in all possible ways.
You will attain immense strength.
You will control anger and pride.
You will enjoy peace, poise and serenity.
You will become divine
- Swami Sivananda (6 points)
Under One Small Star (You may select part of this poem to memorize for the indicated points.)
My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second. (to here -- 6 points)
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minutes to those who cry from
the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep
today at five a.m. (6 points)
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful
of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the
same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed. (6 points)
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional
thread from your train. (6 points)
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and
each man.
I know I won't be justfied as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light. (7 points)
- Wislawa Symborska
