Quotes about Forgiveness

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The loss of enemies does not compensate for the loss of friends.

but let us judge not that we be not judged.

I rejoice with you in the success, which has thus far attended the cause. Yet in all our rejoicings, let us neither express nor cherish any hard feelings toward any citizen who by his vote has differed with us. Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.

I am slow to listen to criminations among friends, and never expose their quarrels on either side…allow bygones to be bygones, and look to the present & future only.

Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend?

Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged....

August] 26th. [1862] I am a patient man, always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance; and also to give ample time for repentance.

With Malice Towards None

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in...

Do good to those who hate you and turn their ill will to friendship.