Quotes & Sayings About Being Forgiven

I could stay depressed about my bad memory, but that's a negative way to live. Let's look on the bright side and list the advantages of having a bad memory.
(1) You can reread a book and see a movie over and over and enjoy it as much as the first time.
(2) If you make an inconvenient promise, you can pretend that you forgot about it and still be forgiven.
(3) This is the most important thing: you can keep coming up with ideas without being held back by convictions or the past. — Hirohiko Araki

All men are chums who will never leave each other in the lurch. A chum doesn't forgive, he just forgets - women forgive everything but never forget. Being forgiven is very unpleasant. — Tove Jansson

Isaac Newton was being called on to defend to quality of moneys as master of the Royal Mint. He had to face the problem of the debasement of the currency through the practice of shaving some of the silver off silver coins to make more coins (an easy way to make money, when you think about it). Convicted coin-clippers were publicly hung at Tyburn - offences against God were to be forgiven, but offences against capital and mammon deserved capital punishment! — David Harvey

Disraeli was now at the height of his fame and popularity. He still had his enemies ... But the people as a whole now admired and respected him deeply ... His unscrupulous past and cynical opportunism were being largely forgotten or forgiven. He was gradually becoming recognized not only as the prophet of a new Conservatism, at once compassionate at home and positive abroad, but as a great statesmen whom the Queen did well to honour. Power had brought responsibility. By 1878 the transformation in public attitudes towards Disraeli was complete. — Christopher Hibbert

We may understand again, therefore, from this picture, that God's purpose in the cross of Jesus Christ was two-fold: first that we might be forgiven, being saved from sin's penalty because Christ died for us, and secondly, that we might be delivered from sin's power, because this old sinful nature, called the flesh, died with Him. — W. Ian Thomas

Christianity is not about religion. It's about faith, about being held, about being forgiven. It's about finding joy and finding home. — Bear Grylls

I feel like that now: tired of the Me I've always been, tired of making the same mistakes, repetitively stumbling after the same small ego strokes, being caught in the same loops of anxiety and defensiveness. At the end of my life, I know I won't be wishing I'd held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me. So what is stopping me from stepping outside my habitual crap?
My mind, my limited mind. — George Saunders

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods. — Elbert Hubbard

Sylvia had given him a scalding lecture, the gist of it being that whatever a woman enjoyed wearing was feminine and anything she didn't enjoy wearing wasn't, and if he was too stubborn and old fashioned to understand that, he could go and soak his head in a bucket of cold water. He hadn't quite forgiven her yet for saying they would have to look hard to find a bucket big enough to fit his head in to, but he admired the sass behind the remark. — Anne Bishop

I know a lot of people who just say that they are sorry for mistakes that they do, but most seem to repeat the same mistake over and over. The thing that they don't realize is that you are being observed, and just cause you say your sorry for something doesn't mean you are forgiven, because a person that continues to
repeat the same sin's over and over are blinded to the true path to heaven and to eternal happiness. — Austin V. Songer

The sun was up, the neighborhood waking. I wiped my face clean with the back of my sleeve, the warming air soft on my wet cheeks. A prayer welled up within me, a new kind of prayer. I was done begging God to forgive me for being too bitter, too needy, too egotistical, too tired. Repenting one day for being too much, the next for not being enough.

Now I clearly understood my real offence against heaven: the stubborn refusal that every failing that I had - from the first - had been forgiven. — Bethany Pierce

Carrying a grudge is a heavy burden. As you forgive, you will feel the joy of being forgiven. — Henry B. Eyring

So it had something to do with the sinner, and something with the judge, and the fear of not being forgiven, and the relief of being loved again. — Jonathan Safran Foer

You would be forgiven for thinking Alex Morningside was a boy. In fact, she would be the first to laugh at this, because, for one thing, she wasn't, and for another, she had an Excellent Sense of Humour. It wasn't that she wanted to be a boy or anything, it was simply that she didn't see much difference in being treated as a girl or boy. Because, after all, everyone is just people.
One of the reasons people thought she was a boy was her haircut. Her haircut looked like someone had put a bowl on her head and cut around it. Which is exactly what her uncle had done. Also, they thought she was a boy because her name was Alex. Of course, Alex was short for Alexandra, but neither Alex nor her uncle liked that very much, so they shortened the name. They could have shortened it the other was I suppose - Andra - but she and her uncle preferred Alex. — Adrienne Kress

The Righteous Salaf were as fearful of their good deeds being squandered, or not being accepted, as the present generation is certain that their neglect would be forgiven. — Hasan Of Basra

It is forgiveness that sets a man working for God. He does not work in order to be forgiven, but because he has been forgiven, and the consciousness of his sin being pardoned makes him long for its entire removal than ever he did before. An unforgiven man cannot work. He has not the will, nor the power, nor the liberty. He is in chains. Israel in Egypt could not serve Jehovah. "Let my people go, that they may serve Me." was God's message to Pharaoh (exodus 8:1) first liberty, then service. — Horatius Bonar

Oh, hour of forgiven sin, moment of perfect pardon, our soul shall never forget you while, within you, life and being find immortality! — Charles Spurgeon

As human beings, we are custom made to be happy. Why then would we want to change the order of things by not being happy? — Stephen Richards

This is the oath of a Knight of King Arther's Round Table and should be for all of us to take to heart. I will develop my life for the greater good. I will place character above riches, and concern for others above personal wealth, I will never boast, but cherish humility instead, I will speak the truth at all times, and forever keep my word, I will defend those who cannot defend themselves, I will honor and respect women, and refute sexism in all its guises, I will uphold justice by being fair to all, I will be faithful in love and loyal in friendship, I will abhor scandals and gossip-neither partake nor delight in them, I will be generous to the poor and to those who need help, I will forgive when asked, that my own mistakes will be forgiven, I will live my life with courtesy and honor from this day forward. — King Arthur

Despair has been called the unforgivable sin-not presumably because God refuses to forgive it, but because it despairs of the possibility of being forgiven. — Frederick Buechner

I think that what people who've committed crimes need isn't punishment, but rather the knowledge of the pain of being forgiven. — Inio Asano

The thing that awakens the deepest fountain of gratitude in a human being is that God has forgiven his sin. — Oswald Chambers

Death has no sting to a Believer. Once death was the penalty of sin-sin being forgiven, the penalty ceases and Christians do not die, now, as a punishment for their sin, but they die that they may be prepared to live! — Charles Spurgeon

It is not unreasonable to want repentance from a wrongdoer before forgiving that wrongdoer, since, in the absence of repentance, hasty forgiveness may harm both the forgiver and the wrongdoer. The forgiver may be harmed by a failure to show self-respect. The wrongdoer may be harmed by being deprived of an important incentive - the desire to be forgiven - that could move him toward repentance and moral rebirth. — Jeffrie G. Murphy

The Tao is the center of the universe, the good man's treasure, the bad man's refuge. Honors can be bought with fine words, respect can be won with good deeds; but the Tao is beyond all value, and no one can achieve it. Thus, when a new leader is chosen, don't offer to help him with your wealth or your expertise. Offer instead to teach him about the Tao. Why did the ancient Masters esteem the Tao? Because, being one with the Tao, when you seek, you find; and when you make a mistake, you are forgiven. That is why everybody loves it. — Laozi

You think you betrayed me and one day I will kill you for it.
I'm not sure why I even bother talking. My eyes flashed with temper. I hated being transparent.
That you allied with Darroc to attain your goals did not betray me. I'd have done the same.
Then why are you so pissy?
That you fucked him will be forgiven once you fuck me. Another woman might run headlong toward absolution. — Karen Marie Moning

The only thing that will make us remain glued to being the victim is our failure to handle the emotions that we go through and the pain that overcomes us. — Stephen Richards

To be forgiven is to be loved — Brene Brown

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

The thing that awakens the deepest well of gratitude in a human being is that God has forgiven sin." - Oswald Chambers — Randy Alcorn

The Sermon on the Mount proves that sin is a condition of our inmost being; although our sinful nature is atoned for in the cross and our failures freely forgiven, we must never willingly cultivate habits that Scripture condemns. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Being forgiven is like having all the worst bits of yourself stuffed into a balloon and then having that balloon set free. — Shannon Wiersbitzky

The minute we put aside our self-righteousness and move away from being the aggrieved, then we are on a healing process. — Stephen Richards

Forgiveness is tricky, Alexis, because in the end it's more about you than it's about the person who's being forgiven — Cynthia Hand

He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being. — Paul Tillich

It is hard to repent, to admit you are wrong on faith alone before the evidence of a feeling of being forgiven and light comes. — Henry B. Eyring

Redemption is reliant on being forgiven — R.E. Vance

Prayer is a meeting which nourishes our hearts. It is presence and communion. The secret of our being is in this kiss of God by which we know we are loved and forgiven. In our deepest selves, below the levels of action and understanding, there is a vulnerable heart, a child who loves but is afraid to love. Silent prayer nourishes this deep place. — Jean Vanier

What we see here (and in our lives) is that love inspires what the law demands - the law prescribes good works, but only grace can produce them. Gratitude, generosity, honesty, compassion, acts of mercy, and self-sacrifice (all requirements of the law) spring unsummoned from a forgiven heart. This is how God works on us. He picks us, the least deserving, out of the crowd, insists upon being in a relationship with us, and creates in us a new heart, miraculously capable of pleasing Him. — Tullian Tchividjian

evidently there was such a thing as "the childhood best friends law," by which any relationship involving two such individuals was immediately forgiven regardless of circumstance and then romanticized beyond any reasonable human being's suspension of disbelief. — Alice Keats

I don't think Harry cares about being forgiven," Poppy said glumly.
"Of course he does. Men love to be forgiven. It makes us feel better about our inability to learn from our mistakes. — Lisa Kleypas

That's what being Jewish is: summoning the means to question who you are and how you have behaved. Have you remained alight in the darkness of cruel wishes,..? Have you forgiven? Have you lived up to the standards of your one and only heart? — Emily Franklin

I had never deserved to be forgiven in the first place when I aas converted. I could do nothing to merit God's favour, His grace, His love. If all I had ever known was unmerited and undeserved grace, how could I then forfeit that which I never earned?... Was I too proud, in some strange, inverted way to humble myself to accept an unmerited forgiveness? I know that it was all of grace, yet my inner being wanted the right to do something to merit it. I was trying to work out my own salvation, to earn God's forgiveness, to prove the sincerity of my repentance...At last I knew that it was true. It was not based on my feeling or on my emotions. It was not dependent on my faith or my obedience. In no way could I merit or deserve it. He loved me. He knew me through and through, better than I knew myself, and yet still, He loved me. Christ died on Calvary to tell me that. Christ lives in Heaven, an unceasing intercessor on my behalf to make that love real to me in my experience. — Helen Roseveare

They'll all get to know me firsthand, the little and the big, the small and the great. They'll get to know me by being kindly forgiven, with the slate of their sins forever wiped clean. — Eugene H. Peterson

If, in the case of the worst sinners and those who formerly sinned much against God, when afterwards they believe, the remission of their sins is granted and no one is held back from baptism and grace, how much more, then, should an infant not be held back, who, having but recently been born, has done no sin, except that, born of the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of that old death from his first being born. For this very reason does he [an infant] approach more easily to receive the remission of sins: because the sins forgiven him are not his own but those of another — Cyprian

The condition of being forgiven is self-abandonment. The proud man prefers self-reproach, however painful
because the reproached self isn't abandoned; it remains intact. — Aldous Huxley

If our sins were only pardoned or forgiven, we would only go from being negative to being neutral. But with justification, God goes a step further and declares us to be righteous - to be 'justified'. He decides to treat us as perfectly good and righteous, like Jesus was in his earthly life. So, in that single declaration from God, we go not only from negative to neutral but also from neutral to positive. It is as if he is not only saying "Go, you're free", but also "Come near, you're actually good" - not because we are naturally good people, but because Jesus is good, and because God the judge makes that decision to treat us as though we share Jesus' goodness and righteousness. — Scott Petty

But there is also a depth-psychology which can discover in physical sickness a spiritual guilt, a person's covert acquiescence in being bound by the "strong man" in such a way that he cannot break free. Here Jesus starts by loosing the spiritual bond: the first thing he says to the lame man who is set before him is: "My son, your sins are forgiven you," and only after his power to forgive sins has been called into question does he utter the second word (which was in principle included in the first): "Rise, take up your pallet and go home" (Mt 2:5, 11). To the sick man by the pool, whom Jesus knew to have been "lying there a long time", he gave this admonition: "See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you" (Jn 5:6, 14). The — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

We are criminals and we do not know how to express or prove that we are criminals. The problem is that if, as criminals, we were recognized as such, we would have to pay for the crime. Yet if we paid, the crime would disappear and our debt would be wiped out. We must keep our crime in order to keep our crime safe, to avoid the terrible fate of being forgiven. — Helene Cixous

If she had hurt me, I could have forgiven her without even having to think about it; but I couldn't forgive her for being hurt. — Tana French

Every day that we can open our eyes and take a look at the world around us, is another day to be thankful for. It's a chance to remember how far we've come, and to remember how we did it -- by being honest with ourselves about who we are and what we've done. By letting hope back into our lives, and learning to lean on those who care when we're too weak to stand on our own two feet.

It hasn't been easy, and it never will be. After all, every day is also a chance to slide back into the darkness. To live in ourselves and our regrets, instead of this moment. To run away from those that would help us and let self-hatred drive us back into isolation, despair, and destruction.

So let's make a promise this morning -- that we will spend today with our eyes fixed forward.

Step by step, we will do things that help make life better, for ourselves and those around us. Because just as they have forgiven us -- we must also forgive ourselves. — Nick Spencer

...as long as her grace remains grace, she remains the only life he has - even while he is whoring around in some Babylonian dive. Whether he behaves or misbehaves, he is dead from start to finish but for her. Unchanging, unswerving, she goes on being his resurrection, the one center at which his sins are always forgiven. All he has to do the seventh time, or the seventy-times-seventh time, is the same thing he did the first time: confess, admit once more the truth of his abiding death, and trust once again the life that never left him for a second. — Robert Farrar Capon

Allowing one's self to be forgiven is just as hard as forgiving. Harder in some ways. Because to be forgiven, one first has to admit to being at fault. — Laura Lippman

Forgiveness is essentially God's way of removing the great obstacle to our fellowship with him. By canceling our sin and paying for it with the death of his own Son, God opens the way for us to see him and know him and enjoy him forever. Seeing and savoring him is the goal of forgiveness. Soul-satisfying fellowship with our Father is the aim of the cross. If we love being forgiven for other reasons alone, we are not forgiven, and we will waste our lives. — John Piper

We are not alone, and whether it is the Confiteor mentioned above or the "Lord have mercy," the opening prayers of the liturgy acknowledge that we are a community that hurts one another but also a community that forgives one another. It is through the experience of being forgiven that we can also begin to heal and grow in our humanity. The — David Matzko McCarthy

To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened, and loved
yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies. This is no one's fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes. The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn't want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn't just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life. — Bear Grylls

That kind of betrayal could not, and would not be forgiven, he reminded himself. It wasn't much of a mantra, but it had kept him going all day while he knew that the woman that just very well might be the one was sitting in a restaurant that discriminated against him simply because he'd had the misfortune of being born into a family with a food disability. — R.L. Mathewson

And he cries and cries, cries for everything he has been, for everything he might have been, for every old hurt, for every old happiness, cries for the shame and joy of finally getting to be a child, with all of a child's whims and wants and insecurities, for the privilege of behaving badly and being forgiven, for the luxury of tenderness, of fondness, of being served a meal and being made to eat it, for the ability, at last, at last, of believing a parent's reassurances, of believing that to someone he is special despite all his mistakes and hatefulness, because of all his mistakes and hatefulness. — Hanya Yanagihara

I've never been that cute kid that was forgiven for being naughty. — Richard C. Armitage

He did the same in the morning and didn't mind that Steel struggled against him. Steel needed to be subdued first, but he never said no, and he always came.

Maybe Steel thought he was being punished.

Maybe he thought the whipping was forgiven. — Aleksandr Voinov

This is what the Church is all about. It is a redemptive fellowship of forgiven sinners who are in the slow, difficult process of being transformed into saints by the grace of God. — Stanley S. Harakas

It is only the joy of hearing the gospel and being reminded that our sins are forgiven in Christ that will keep the demands of discipleship from becoming drudgery. It is only gratitude and love to God that comes from knowing that He no longer counts our sins against us (Romans 4:8) that provides the proper motive for responding to the claims of discipleship. — Jerry Bridges

Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved. — C.S. Lewis

We cannot make ourselves known to each other; we are not healed and forgiven by each other's presence. With words as valueless as poker chips, we play games whose object it is to keep us from seeing each other's cards. Chit-chat games in which "How are you?" means "Don't tell me who you are," and "I'm alone and scared" becomes "Fine thanks." Games where the players create the illusion of being in the same room but where the reality of it is that each is alone inside a skin in that room, like bathyspheres at the bottom of the sea. Blind man's buff games where everyone is blind. — Frederick Buechner

Lord, break the chains that hold me to myself; free me to be Your happy slave - that is, to be the happy foot washer of anyone today who needs his feet washed, his supper cooked, his faults overlooked, his work commended, his failure forgiven, his griefs consoled or his button sewed on. Let me not imagine that my love for You is very great if I am unwilling to do for a human being something very small. — Elisabeth Elliot

Blue thought about what Gansey had said, about being wealthy in love. And she thought about Adam, still collapsed on their sofa downstairs. If he had no one to wrap their arms around him when he was sad, could he be forgiven for letting his anger lead him? — Maggie Stiefvater

Forgiveness costs us nothing. All our costly obedience is the fruit, not the root, of being forgiven. That's why we call it grace. — John Piper

Forgiving and being forgiven frees our souls and lightens our load. — Sara Dormon

But I knew it wasn't just the cute girl on the screen that had made Eunice cry. It was her father laughing, being kind, the family momentarily loving and intact - a cruel side trip into the impossible, an alternate history. The dinner was over. The waiters were clearing the table with resignation and without a word. I knew that, according to tradition, I had to allow Dr. Park to pay for the meal, but I went into my apparat and transferred him three hundred yuan, the total of the bill, out of an unnamed account. I did not want his money. Even if my dreams were realised and I would marry Eunice someday, Dr. Park would always remain to me a stranger. After thirty-nine years of being alive, I had forgiven my own parents for not knowing how to care for a child, but that was the depth of my forgiveness. — Gary Shteyngart

Nothing can be more infuriating than being forgiven over and over again. — Elizabeth Peters

All men have parties and are pals who never let each other down. A pal can say terrible things which are forgotten the next day. A pal never forgives, he just forgets, and a woman forgives but never forgets. That's how it is. That's why women aren't allowed to have parties. Being forgiven is very unpleasant. — Tove Jansson

WHY IS IT impossible to be a woman? Men will never understand, men who are always themselves, day after day, shouting opinions and drinking freely and flirting and whoring and weeping and being forgiven for it all. When has a woman ever been forgiven? Can you even imagine it? For I have seen the plane of being, and nowhere upon it is the woman tracing her life as she always dreamed of it. Always there are the boundaries, the rules, the questions - wouldn't you prefer to be back home, little lady? - that break the spell of living. What a fantasy to live within that spell, the enchantment of speaking one's mind, and doing one's will, and waking in the bed of one's choosing. — Andrew Sean Greer

You talk of being a believer, but you can't seem to trust anyone, not even God. You cling to your wealth as your security and carry the baggage of being unworthy, even though God loves you and has forgiven you. You should have listened a little closer to that sermon in church a couple of weeks back. — Colleen Coble

Being joyous or happy is not something you should feel guilty about. — Stephen Richards

Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer's apprentice who lacked the formula to break the spell. — Hannah Arendt

a man like me, who does not work, who does not want to work, will always be disliked.
In that house full of working people , I was the madman that, deep down, everyone wanted to be. I was the one who went without food, the cinema, warm clothes, to be free. I was the one who, without meaning to, daily reminded people of their wretched state.
people have not forgiven me for being free and for not being afraid of poverty. — Emmanuel Bove

Once you experience being loved when you are unworthy, being forgiven when you did something wrong, that moves you into non-dual thinking. You move from what I call meritocracy, quid pro quo thinking, to the huge ocean of grace, where you stop counting or calculating. — Richard Rohr

So, no, when I mention "tolerance", I'm not talking about learning how to stomach pure awfulness. What I am talking about is learning how to accommodate your life as generously as possible about a basically decent human being who can sometimes be an unmitigated pain in the ass. In this regard, the marital kitchen can become something like a small linoleum temple where we are called up daily to practice forgivenessm as we ourselves would like to be forgiven. Mundane this may be, yes. Devoid of any rock star moments of divine ecstacy, certainly. But maybe such tiny acts of household tolerance are a miracle in some other way - in some quietly measureless way - all the same? — Elizabeth Gilbert

To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads. — Herman Melville

Julian was good at being in love. But he was clever enough to know that what he really liked about being in love was the state of unconsummated tension ... One had to believe that these lovely creatures were, in potentia, the longed for intimate friend from whom nothing need be hidden, by whom everything would be understood, forgiven and admired. But Julian was clever and observant enough to see that love was at its most intense before it was reciprocated. — A.S. Byatt

There was no way to compare the feeling of being forgiven to anything else in this world. — Sarah Bruni

The believer claims to know, not just that God exists, but that his most detailed wishes are not merely knowable but actually known. Since religion drew its first breath when the species lived in utter ignorance and considerable fear, I hope I may be forgiven for declining to believe that another human being can tell me what to do, in the most intimate details of my life and mind, and to further dictate these terms as if acting as proxy for a supernatural entity. — Christopher Hitchens