Quotes About Reconciliation

Even the most racist person make a very painful racial comment, give him a smile. It's better than you take a weapon on him because he's just gonna go like, "Oh." He's just being stupid.

Then she offers him a slim but sincere smile, and he reluctantly returns it. It doesn't bridge the gap between them, but at least it marks the spot where the bridge might be built.

in March 2000, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright offered an apology for the U.S. role in the August events. She offered carefully worded regrets for the fact that the United States had "played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister" in 1953.

Why does forgiveness irritate me so much? I ask Chuck. Because it's the ultimate act of passive aggression, he says. Because it keeps sin alive, says my sister.

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.

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 have destroyed my enemies when I make friends with them

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?

If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

With Malice Towards None

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

He encouraged us to reflect on the past. Make peace with it. You cannot control the evil done to you. You cannot turn back and right the good left undone.

Unanimous hatred is the greatest medicine for a human community.

Injuries may be forgiven, but not forgotten

No one truly forgets injuries in the presence of him who caused the injury.

Sherrie would be there, and the last time I'd seen her at a social event she burst into tears when she saw me and ran out of the room. You're upset, I'd yelled after her, meanly.

Good listeners are no less rare or important than good communicators. Here, too, an unusual degree of confidence is the key—a capacity not to be thrown off course by, or buckle under the weight of, information that may deeply challenge certain settled assumptions. Good listeners are unfussy about the chaos which others may for a time create in their minds; they've been there before and know that everything can eventually be set back in its place. The

We must reconcile ourselves to the necessary imperfectability of existence

A single idea recurs throughout his work: that we best endure those frustrations which we have prepared ourselves for and understand and are hurt most by those we least expected and cannot fathom. Philosophy must reconcile us to the true dimensions of reality, and so spare us, if not frustration itself, then at least its panoply of pernicious accompanying emotions.

We moved into Jade Moon's rooming house within the week, and slowly she and I found that our friendship, though damaged, was like fabric torn on the seam: not beyond repair.

But ... this will begin to make things right.

But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences.