20 Forgiveness Quotes to Help You Move On

Forgiveness can sometimes feel impossible when we feel filled to the brim with intense feelings of hate and anger. It can be hard to move past something or someone that we feel has wronged or caused us pain. This refusal to let go is a slow poison that causes us more torment each day, but it has one simple antidote: forgiveness.

Only once we forgive do we realize how much anger was weighing us down. This is why forgiving is the best gift you can give to yourself. Let these quotes from great men and women like Maya Angelou, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr inspire you and help you let go of the past.

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

2. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

3. It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody. – Maya Angelou

4. Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge. -Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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

6. To err is human; to forgive, divine. -Alexander Pope

7. Forgiveness isn’t approving what happened. It’s choosing to rise above it. – Robin Sharma

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

9. I think the first step is to understand that forgiveness does not exonerate the perpetrator. Forgiveness liberates the victim. It’s a gift you give yourself. – T.D. Jakes

10. You’ll never know how strong your heart is until you learn to forgive who broke it.

11. When you choose to forgive those who have hurt you, you take away their power.

12. It’s not an easy journey, to get to a place where you forgive people. But it is such a powerful place, because it frees you. – Tyler Perry

13. Forgiveness is not weak. It takes courage to face and overcome powerful emotions. – Desmond Tutu

14. Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them. – Bruce Lee

15. The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive. – John Green

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

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

18. Forgiveness is the final form of love. – Reinhold Niebuhr

19. He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven. -Thomas Fuller

20. Forgiveness is the economy of the heart… forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.
– Hannah More