Quotes About Reconciliation

I think the hardest thing in life is to forgive. Hate is self destructive. If you hate somebody, you're not hurting the person you hate, you're hurting yourself. It's a healing, actually, it's a real healing...forgiveness.

I had finally come full circle. Except for continuing to tell my story and spreading the Word, a great part of my life was over: the delinquency, the running, the war, the imprisonment, the drinking, the nightmares, the greediness and desperation, the unhappiness. I was completely satisfied with my test of forgiveness and more than ready to move on.

Before, as much as the hate poisoned me, I think it gave me a kind of satisfaction. I believed hating was the same as getting even, but those I hated didn't even know my feelings. All I did was destroy myself with my hate.

My forgiveness was so authentic and total that I looked forward to seeing each of them. I longed to look into their eyes and say not only "I forgive you," but to tell them of the greatest event of forgiveness the world has ever known when Christ on the Cross, and at the peak of his agony, could say of his executioners, "Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.

One day I knew the war would be over, but I wondered how long the remains of war would last in me and in them even after the bombs had stopped falling and the guns were silent. What I feared most was that my generation would teach the hatred and resentment I was learning at the hands of the Japanese to our own children and the cycle of disaffection and violence would never stop.

The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person's face. When you forgive, it's like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total.

We need to choose to release the past and forgive everyone, ourselves included. We may not know how to forgive, and we may not want to forgive, but the very fact that we say we are willing to forgive begins the healing process. It is imperative for our own healing that "we" release the past and forgive everyone. "I forgive you for not being the way I wanted you to be. I forgive you and I set you free.

You forgive that person and then you release them. Taking a stand and setting healthy boundaries is often the most loving thing you can do—not only for yourself, but for the other person as well.

Now visualize your mother as a little girl of four or five, frightened and looking for love and not knowing where to find it. Reach out your arms and hold this little girl and let her know how much you love her, how much you care. Let her know she can rely on you to always be there, no matter what. When she quiets down and begins to feel safe, let her get very small, just the size to fit into your heart. Put her there with your own little child. Let them give each other lots of love.

You can forgive in the mirror, too. Forgive yourself and forgive others.

There is much to love, and that love is what we are left with. When the bombs stop dropping, and the camps fall back to the earth and decay, and we are done killing each other, that is what we must hold. We can never let the world take our memories of love away, and if there are no memories, we must invent love all over again.

Wait, Armand, he heard behind him but kept walking, ignoring the calls. Then he remembered what Emile had meant to him and still did. Did this one bad thing wipe everything else out? That was the danger. Not that betrayals happened, not that cruel things happened, but that they could outweigh all the good. That we could forget the good and only remember the bad. But not today. Gamache stopped.

You're lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?

You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?" Myrna

I'm saying people change." She held up her hands to ward off Clara's protests. "I know, it's easy to say. And it doesn't undo the damage. But we've seen changes of heart. Changes of perception. It happens. Racists, homophobes, misogynists, they can change. And some do." "Truth and reconciliation," said Clara. "Yes. The truth must come first. And then, maybe, reconciliation. Maybe.

holding on to resentments only binds you to the person you hate.

Armand Gamache wondered whether CC de Poitiers was at that very moment trying to explain herself to a perplexed God and two very angry seals.

I don't know. I need help. I was wrong. I'm sorry." Armond Gamache

We long to find home. After years and years of making war on everyone around us, on ourselves, we just want peace.' 'And

But she went from being a happy, carefree child to an embittered woman. Very solitary, not very likeable apparently. Then, near the end of her life, she wrote to a friend. In the letter she said that her father had said something to her. Something horrible and unforgivable." "The brutal telling.

Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive,

That moment of horror had finally given the young gardener what she'd longed for. Company. Acceptance. It was too bad it came at such a cost, but then peace often did.

I said I was only going to recite them once, and he could do with them as he wished." Armand Gamache lowered his fork to his plate and listened. "I don't know. I was wrong. I'm sorry." Lacoste recited them slowly, lifting a finger to count them off. "I need help," the Chief said, completing the statements.

I'm sorry, I don't know, I need help, I forget.