Self Forgiveness Quotes & Sayings

Lack of forgiveness of others breeds lack of self-forgiveness. — Albert Ellis

There are new mercies every morning. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Discover your deep inner-self and from that place spread love in every direction. — Amit Ray

I learned that forgiveness isn't an instant thing; it must be done on a regular basis otherwise anger would keep piling up and affect our personal vibration negatively. — Hina Hashmi

There is grace for forgiveness. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The more you are able to forgive then the more you are able to love. — Stephen Richards

One of the reasons I love prayer is that it is an antidote to guilt and blame. If we are unhappy with the way we have acted or been treated, instead of stewing in self-recrimination on the one hand, or harboring ill will toward someone else on the other, prayer gives us a way out of the circle of guilt and blame. We bring our painful feelings into the open and say, "I have done wrong," or "I have been wronged." And then we ask for a vaster view
one that contains within it all the forgiveness we need in order to move forward. — Elizabeth Lesser

Self-realization, which leads to purity of the soul, requires forgiving our enemies and working on the most horrendous modules of oneself. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Count your salted wounds then name them
like the stars of a bright constellation
Count your scars and bruises then give them
the wings of forgiveness to fly — Malak El Halabi

Self-forgiveness is a daily practice of the humble, strong and mentally sane. It is an intentional preservation of inner-peace and a reflection of a healthy self-concept. — Shannon Tanner

To forgive others, in order to forgive ourselves, because in their roles as our mirrors, they have been nothing other than a tool to our lack of self-love, a lack of self-recognition, and a lack of self-respect. — Human Angels

For me, I can't understand something unless I've experienced it and I tend to be very judgmental by nature. But, it's very telling when you see the world from the other side of the lens because it opens the door to self-discovery. Perspective changes everything. I prefer empathy to sympathy if I have a choice. That's where the research comes in. I've packed a lot of life into the past few years trying to understand people and situations. Trying to make sense of my life. I have a lot to work through. My past is something that requires introspection and forgiveness. And that takes time. Research. When I feel like I've learned something about myself and grown as a person, I move on to the next journey. Hopefully with new perspective. — Kim Holden

Don't harden your heart. Return to the Lord. He will revive and restore you. — Lailah Gifty Akita

There are times in every person's life when they feel lonely, isolated, like maybe they don't belong. For adoptees, this is often exacerbated by the circumstances. Because you were given up, you have a built-in scapegoat; you can blame everything that you feel on the fact that you were adopted. But, I want you to know that this is a fallacy. Finding your biological parents will not fill in the void that you feel. You will get answers to your questions, but no one can fill in the missing pieces except for you. Before you go on a search, take the time to get to know yourself very well. Heal the hurts you've experienced. Acknowledge the past and how it has affected you. Become a whole person who is seeking roots, not a damaged person who is seeking fulfillment. — Janet Louise Stephenson

And what of regrets? I shall live with them. I shall accept my regrets as part of my life, to be numbered among my self-inflicted wounds. But I will not endlessly gaze at them. I shall allow the memories to prod me into doing better with those still living. And I shall allow them to sharpen the vision and intensify the hope for that Great Day coming when we can all throw ourselves into each other's arms and say, I'm sorry. — Nicholas Wolterstorff

Often what keeps us stuck and continually doing penance is the very feeling that we must pay for lack of action. We become caught in a circle of blame, condemn ourselves, feel hopeless, and feed the fire - or slow burn - by reciting like a mantra our history of inertia and self-judged wrong choices. Well, let's break that dead-end cycle of waste and regret. — Noelle Sterne

Do the forgiveness and carry on going forward. Leave the worrying to the other person. Eat what is on your plate and leave the rest to them. — Stephen Richards

Support is not always easy to come by if you wait for the world to see your worth. Discover your own worth and the world will indeed follow your lead. Its the law of cause and effect! It has to happen. Support yourself. — Sereda Aleta Dailey

The best thing to give
your enemy is forgiveness;
to an oponent, tolerance;
to a friend, your heart;
to your child, a good example;
to your father, deference;
to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you;
to your self, respect;
to all men charity. — Swami Sivananda Radha

I've learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger: it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage
self destructive, destroy the world rage
and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness. — Sidney Poitier

God's revelation ... unmasks our illusions about ourselves. It exposes our pride, our individualism, our self-centeredness - in short, our sin. But worship also offers forgiveness, healing, transformation, motivation, and courage to work in the world for God's justice and peace - in short, salvation in its largest sense. — Marva J. Dawn

Forgiveness is probably the most important self-esteem building process anyone can undertake. Forgiveness is an internal response to the fact that we cannot, under any circumstances, change the past. The only things we can change are our thoughts about the past. Forgiveness happens when we stop wishing for a better past and understand that we are carrying hatred, anger and resentment within us. — Gudjon Bergmann

Offer yourself forgiveness as a gift. The word 'give' is the basic keyword in the word forgiveness, therefore it relays a meaning therein. — Stephen Richards

An important distinction can be made between religion and spirituality. Religion [is] concerned with faith in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition ... Spirituality is concerned with qualities of the human spirit, love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, that bring happiness both to self. — Dalai Lama

[ ... ]we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. And is not the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Distancing yourself from some painful event is probably the ignition for the process of forgiveness. — Stephen Richards

Pain can cause us to learn no end of lessons, but without resolution there can be no healing! — Stephen Richards

All the resentment that lies in your heart is simply causing damage to you mostly. — Stephen Richards

2 All of Me
Be Gentle My Friend
Be gentle with yourself,
forgive yourself for mistakes,
don't expect to be perfect
just get moving, and
keep putting one
foot in front of
the other
Love
***
* — Love

If there ever was someone who had a control over you, someone who could cause you the greatest pain, someone who could ignore your most necessary requirements and someone for whom forgiveness were truly difficult to render, that person is none other than YOU. — Stephen Richards

It was part of his nature to extenuate nothing and live on as one of his own worst accusers. — Thomas Hardy

Allow yourself to feel those old feelings, but now, instead of engaging in the habitual self-defensive patterns, begin practicing new patterns. In the process of changing the patterns, the residual trauma will emerge. Know that you can feel all your Feels and still be safe. Know that you did everything you could in that moment to protect yourself; grant yourself forgiveness for the things you may still blame yourself for, recognizing that the trauma is the fault of the perpetrator alone. And imagine yourself as you are now, safe and whole. — Emily Nagoski

Christian consciousness experiences itself in a curious sense as LIBERATED TO FAIL, without intolerable damage to self-esteem and without any reduction of moral seriousness. We are free to be inadequate, free to foul things up, and yet affirm ourselves in a more basic sense than the secular moralist or humanistic idealist (who can affirm themselves only on the basis of merits and accomplishments. We are free to choose and deny finite values, free to take constructive guilt upon us and to see it as an inevitable and providentially given aspect of our fallen human condition.
All that we have said leads us to the pinnacle of this good news: In Jesus Christ we need no longer be guilty before God. It is only before our clay-footed gods that we stand guilty! — Thomas C. Oden

Self redemption is the first step to exoneration from guilt. — Dennis E. Adonis

You are here having realized the necessity of contending with yourself; then thank everyone who provides an opportunity. — G.I. Gurdjieff

When we make mistakes, we can use the process of NVC mourning and self-forgiveness to show us where we can grow instead of getting caught up in moralistic self-judgments. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

If you did something in 1975 that you deeply regret and that you now can recognize as having been profoundly irresponsible, for example, the only way to be lifted out of deep regret and the pain over it is through atonement - through the kind of remorse that leads to genuine atonement, the making of amends, and forgiveness of self and others. — Marianne Williamson

Jesus came to save me from myself. He came to save me from self-effort. He didn't just die for my sin to give me forgiveness; he rose again to give me life. — Emily P. Freeman

Do not allow your sad past to rule your present situation. Unlike a tango, it does not take to two to forgive. — Stephen Richards

God has given you grace. Maybe you should give yourself some too. — Todd Stocker

A broken friendship that is mended through forgiveness can be even stronger than it once was. — Stephen Richards

When you make up your mind to forgive, your happiness will almost automatically follow. — Stephen Richards

Self-love is self liberation — Lailah Gifty Akita

In recovery, we try to take the opposite of our character defects/shortcomings and turn them into principles. For example, we work to change fear into faith, hate into love, egoism into humility, anxiety and worry into serenity, complacency into action, denial into acceptance, jealousy into trust, fantasizing into reality, selfishness into service, resentment into forgiveness, judgmentalism into tolerance, despair into hope, self-hate into self-respect, and loneliness into fellowship. Through this work we learn to understand the principles of our program. — Anonymous

The practice of forgiving is a sequential practice that begins with excusing someone. — Stephen Richards

These are the few ways we can practice humility:
To speak as little as possible of one's self.
To mind one's own business.
Not to want to manage other people's affairs.
To avoid curiosity.
To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully.
To pass over the mistakes of others.
To accept insults and injuries.
To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked.
To be kind and gentle even under provocation.
Never to stand on one's dignity.
To choose always the hardest. — Mother Teresa

If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. — Maya Angelou

Forgiveness" is a term that has been in use for two thousand years, but most people have a very limited view of what it means. You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your sense of self from the past. Only through accessing the power of the Now, which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless, and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are. The whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary. — Eckhart Tolle

A total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me-
who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was
-but now that fiend and i are such
immortal friends the other's each — E. E. Cummings

Do not allow yourself to be pulled into the role of embracing victimship as some sort of badge of honor to wear or flash around at any opportunity. — Stephen Richards

To commit one's life to the Jesus Reality is far more than an intellectual undertaking. While the Reality of Jesus is a perspective, it is not a worldview in the sense of a particular cosmology, or a body of doctrinal knowledge requiring assent. Rather it is a Word that addresses our lives and speaks to our human condition. It demands that we examine our own hearts, take inventory of our human failings, and open our lives to forgiveness and grace. It breaks the illusions of our self-importance and self-reliance, and calls us to recognize the Spirit reality that already exists in our midst and already lives in our hearts. — John F. Baggett

Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser; of the wrongdoer. It is not something to be squeeeeeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience-corrupting abuse. — Stefan Molyneux

The first time he had hit her, he had been so wracked with remorse, she had actually felt sorry for him. Consumed by guilt and self-loathing, he had sobbed in her arms like a child, swearing it would never happen again and begging for her forgiveness. Her stomach turned over now at the thought of how she had comforted him, assuring him that she trusted him and promising that she would never leave. She saw now with sickening clarity that she had been setting a precedent - giving him permission to do it again; reassuring him that she would tolerate anything.

If only she had walked out there and then. — Cleary James

It became clear to him that all the dreadful evil he had been witnessing in prisons and jails and the quiet self-satisfaction of the perpetrators of this evil were the consequences of men trying to do what was impossible; trying to correct evil while being evil themselves ... Now he saw clearly what all the terrors he had seen came from, and what ought to be done to put a stop to them. The answer he could not find was the same that Christ gave to Peter. It was that we should forgive always an infinite number of times because there are no men who have not sinned themselves, and therefore none can punish or correct others. — Leo Tolstoy

Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim
letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor. — C.R. Strahan

I would rather be a conscious wrongdoer than a mindless saint. — Habeeb Akande

Forgiveness is key to enchanted love because it is key to living right, period. It is the capacity to see beyond the veil of personality and worldly illusions. No one is perfect or attractive every day. Forgiveness means we are capable of relating to someone on a deeper level than the ordinary self. And that we are committed to doing so no matter what the appearances are, no matter what the situation is. — Marianne Williamson

We invent what we need to get us by, but in doing so we are really continuing to hold on to the pain of yesterday. — Stephen Richards

The movie, (X-Men: Days of Future Past), illustrates a spiritual journey that involves going back in time. The Purpose of the journey is to find the core grievance and let it be healed. When the grievance is healed in Forgiveness, all future scenarios of conflict and destruction are also healed. It is not that they have been prevented in time; it is that we have come to the realization that there was no time in which they could have existed. In the Happy Dream, everything is resolved. It becomes harmonious and then disappears.
Wolverine is the agent strong enough to go back through time and ignite the mission of forgiveness. We can think of ourselves this way as well. We can imagine that our future self, or our higher Self, is orchestrating this whole thing for our awakening. We are just perceiving it in time, where we perceive ourselves to be. There is great love and compassion coming from the higher Self, the future self. — David Hoffmeister

Forgiveness is an act of self-love and respect. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Forgiveness is not simply a single act, it is a full process. — Stephen Richards

You cannot change a man . . . you can only change yourself. — Michelle Muriel

The pain you have gone through will give you the strength of character to come through it all, so long as you learn from what you have suffered then it was not suffering at all. — Stephen Richards

The bond of love is sacred spirituality. — Lailah Gifty Akita

One way you can trace your way back to real and true happiness and joy is through forgiveness. — Stephen Richards

If you feel like a failure in any area of your life, then you are in need of some self-forgiveness. — Yancy Lael

The pain you feel is simply because you do not yet have the strength to forgive. But you will grow strong again, that is for sure. — Stephen Richards

Self-forgiveness comes when we realize that if God has forgiven us, we needn't remain angry with ourselves, needn't hate ourselves any longer. God will use it all for good. — Robert Morgan

Relationships without a Divine Aim always "break up," for they are based on nothing. Divine Purpose could be described as forgiveness -- the undoing and releasing of the ego. Belief in the ego prevents awareness of True Union and Intimacy. The underlying fear of Intimacy and Union is the ego's fear of loss of itself, the 'personal self' and the 'personal world. — David Hoffmeister

To forgive a fault in another is more sublime than to be faultless one's self. — George Sand

Forgiveness does carry with it numerous obstacles and one may well be surprised why many people find it a very difficult hurdle to jump over. — Stephen Richards

If we studied the issue of forgiveness with a wider perspective, we are bound to opt for it after all. — Stephen Richards

Laugh it off, Life gets better. — Touaxia Vang

Loving people are compassionate towards others. However, if that compassion doesn't start at home and doesn't include self-forgiveness, it is incomplete and lopsided. — Annette Vaillancourt

Love yourself and extend the love to others. — Lailah Gifty Akita

You are not, though, forgiving so as to let others off with things. You are forgiving so that you can empower yourself to get over it and become strong. — Stephen Richards

Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.
It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness. — Kahlil Gibran

Don't dwell too much on the past. The lessons are useful for the present and a preparation for the future. Move on! — Lailah Gifty Akita

Ultimately, we forgive others in order to free ourselves. — Sharon Salzberg

The inner life is bruised by a running against the laws of the Kingdom. The bruises are guilt complexes, a sense of inferiority, of missing the mark, of being out of harmony with God and with oneself, a sense of wrongness. Divine forgiveness wipes out all that sense of inner hurt and condemnation. Brings a sense of at-homeness- at home with God and oneself and with life. The universe opens its arms and takes one in. You are accepted- by God, by yourself, and by life. All self-loathing, self-rejection, all inferiorities drop away. You are a child of God; born from above, you walk the earth, a conqueror, afraid of nothing. Healed at the heart, you can say to life: Come on, I'm ready for anything. — E. Stanley Jones

If we can find forgiveness in our hearts for those who have caused us hurt and injury, we will rise to a higher level of self-esteem and well-being. — James E. Faust

Realize you have awesome people around you who want to love you. Let them. Show them you love them back. (Actions trump words.) Do the forgiveness thing. If necessary-and it almost always is- do the forgiveness thing on yourself. — Kari Luna

Forgive yourself. The supreme act of forgiveness is when you can forgive yourself for all the wounds you've created in your own life. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. When you forgive yourself, self-acceptance begins and self-love grows. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Your blessings far outweigh your bitterness. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The Aramaic word for "forgive" means literally to "untie." Hatred and anger had bound me to my pain. The fastest way to free the self from an enemy and all associated negativity is to forgive. Untie those bindings; free yourself from that person's ugliness. — Sharon E. Rainey

Gratefulness and forgiveness leads to happiness. — Lailah Gifty Akita

This pain you are avoiding is a very necessary pain that will make you strong again. — Stephen Richards

Blaming other people inevitably makes us blame ourselves because if we are pointing the finger at someone, practically, we are pointing it at ourselves as well. — Stephen Richards

It's easy to express romantic love - harder to manage daily love - to forgive failings close to feelings - to divide self from soul ... — John Geddes

I know when to say no and when to say yes. I take responsibility for my choices. The victim? She went somewhere else. The only one who can truly victimize me is myself, and 99 percent of the time I choose to do that no more. But I need to continue to remember the key principles: boundaries, letting go, forgiveness after feeling my feelings - not before, self-expression, loving others but loving myself, too. — Melody Beattie

Make a vow to yourself today that from now on you will treat yourself with the same love, attention, affection, understanding, compassion and forgiveness that you so readily give to others. — Miya Yamanouchi

I haven't sought self-forgiveness because I feel I was preyed upon and not responsible for the many bad things that happened to me. — Liane Holliday Willey

Forgiveness is nothing more and nothing less than an act of self-healing-an act of self-empowermen t. — Joyce Meyer

This is bigger than you," said Mr. Baram. "You can bring down this whole system. Erase the data that enslaves so many. Jubilee. Freedom. Forgiveness. Is that not enough? — Alex London

When you forgive, it does not mean that you have submitted, it simply means that you have made a choice to stop bearing any grudge. — Stephen Richards

In an unforgiving world, chaos rules. — Stephen Richards

Assuming you are still lost in thought about when exactly you should forgive someone, well the time is NOW. — Stephen Richards

I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. — Christopher Hitchens

When you slip up and let yourself back into old, toxic patterns of thinking, forgive yourself before you try to fix yourself. — Vironika Tugaleva

The only loss is the love did not express. — Lailah Gifty Akita