Quotes About Reconciliation

Do not grieve yourself too much for those you hate, nor yet forget them utterly.

I believe that if everybody spent their next vacation in a community in America with people they didn't agree with, they'd probably leave feeling a little more comfortable about the country they live in.

Why is this important? Because it means the division between God and man has been abolished. Vanished. How? Because the great Jehovah, the One whose name may only be whispered once each year by the anointed high priest, had sent—yes, sent—his Son to be crucified. Why? How could the eternal Lord of all do such a thing?

You can't stay mad at someone who makes you laugh.

Everything is competing to show its good will. Things tend irresistibly towards perfection, effusiveness, reconciliation. Fortunately, nothing is ever perfect, thanks to Dostoevsky's 'unspeakable little demon ... that evil spirit that prompts to murder and scorn.' Everything tends irresistibly towards transparency. However, there remains a glimmer of secrecy - a clandestine dust-breeding that is mostly useless, an umbilical mirage, insider trading, but secret all the same.

Cultures, taken in themselves, are not moving towards each other. Or, if they are, they are doing so as slowly as tectonic plates. The dream of reconciling them all one day is an absurdity. From the point of view of the universal, which is our point of view, they can only be exterminated - including our own. The space left for any culture by Western un-culture can only be that of le mort (the dead man, but also the 'dummy' at cards).

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfilment. Manicheism is the irreconcilable antagonism between two forces. Morality is merely the opposition of two values. In the order of values, there is always a possibility of reconciliation. The disorder of forces is irreconcilable.

Might one suggest to the people that they storm the opera house and tear it down on the symbolic date of 14 July? Might one suggest that they parade the bloody heads of our modern cultural governors on the end of pikestaffs? But we no longer make history. We have become reconciled with it and protect it like an endangered masterpiece. Times have changed.

I'm starting to believe that happily ever after includes people doing things that upset each other. We all get cranky, or impatient, or worried, or careless enough to do or say things that hurt someone else. Like it or not, that's normal. We can't blame it all on Olympia's bad energy. The important part is that we feel sorry about what we've done and make up for it. That's something Olympia never did.

There is no evildoer who could not be made good for something.

I have tried, I said, but he does not believe me. It is too late for that now (it is always too late for truth, I thought).

You cannot disown what is yours. Flung out, there is always the return, the reckoning, the revenge, perhaps the reconciliation. There is always the return. And the wound will take you there.

I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.

I lay there, stretched out, looking at the one star visible through the tiny window of the room. Only connect. How can you do that when the connections are broken?

The past is a grenade that explodes when thrown.

I am sure that if we can find reconciliation with our past – whether parents, partners or friends – we should try and do that. It won't be perfect, it will be a compromise . . . but it might mean acceptance and, the big word, forgiveness.

The journey is about coming home....There is always the return. And the wound will take you there. It is a blood-trail. (p. 220,222)

Just as they were driving off on his horrible Iron Curtain motor bike, he patted my arm, told me he knew, and forgave us both. There was only one thing I could do; mustering all my spit, I did it.

You cannot disown what is yours. Flung out, there is always the return, the reckoning, the revenge, perhaps the reconciliation. There is always the return. And the wound will take you there. It is a blood-trail.

Reconcile those who are at strife, prevent lawsuits; incline children to duty, fathers to kindness; promote happy marriages; prevent annoyances; freely use the credit of your pupil's parents on behalf of the weak who cannot obtain justice, the weak who are oppressed by the strong. Be just, human, kindly. Do

Writing it has been a way of coming to terms with the impact these years have had on my entire life.

The times I thought I had dreamed it were one way of getting rid of it, part of wanting to lose it, part of what you might call a whole Manzanar mentality I had lived with for twenty-five years. Much more than a remembered place, it had become a state of mind. Now, having seen it, I no longer wanted to lose it or to have those years erased. Having found it, I could say what you can only say when you've truly come to know a place: Farewell

Mattie was right about one thing. I should have seen it all coming. I should have seen how much you were hurting, should have seen what Seymour meant to you, should have stopped him from leaving, should have spoken up, done something. If I had seen it coming, we could've fixed whatever was wrong, you and me, we could have made it work. But I didn't. So we can't. Jane was right. I was a danger to you. I never should have come back.

a wise person can want nothing better from life than to pay back the wrong that has been done him.