How do I forgive someone who hurt me?

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Forgiveness is easier once you see the debt as one you also carry. I was exiled on a charge I half deserved, and I have wronged others in ways I would rather not itemize. Begin there. Then, tonight, write down what was actually done, one plain sentence, with no verdicts attached. Most of our anger feeds on the commentary. Strip it, and ask whether you are still willing to carry what remains.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Forgiveness is often revenge in a clean collar: I pardon you, therefore I stand above you. Ask first what you want from it. Peace? Then stop feeding the wound; a grudge is a debt you keep collecting, and the debtor pays with your own hours. I never forgave Wagner; I simply outgrew needing him to be other than he was. Make the hurt useful, and the debtor is released.

Marcus Aurelius

Begin with the morning rule: you will meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, false. They do wrong from ignorance of good and evil. Avidius Cassius rose against me; I did not need to hate him to deal with him. His act is his. Yours is to stop rehearsing the injury, which hurts you a second time, and to act justly. Forgiveness is that, done daily.

Søren Kierkegaard

Forgiveness is not a feeling you wait for, like weather over the Sound. You may be waiting for the wound to stop aching so that forgiving costs nothing; then it is only forgetting, and forgetting has no virtue. Love forgives before the debtor has deserved it. So the choice is this: remain the one who was wronged, which is a kind of faithful possession, or surrender that title. Each costs you something. Which will you pay?

Michel de Montaigne

I have never managed to forgive on purpose. When I tried, it was like ordering my memory to retain a name: it did the opposite. What happened instead was slower. I found the same fault in my own house, in my own temper, and the grudge lost its footing. So I would not push at forgiveness. Look at the one who hurt you until they become a man or woman, and see what follows.

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