Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

People in general would rather die than forgive. It's THAT hard. If God said in plain language. "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.

So many people live with anger and unforgiveness, and many of them are Christians.

In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.

we dislike those we've injured.

No more tears now; I will think about revenge.

I want to say somewhere: I've tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in.

How sad. How frightening. To be filled with so much hate that you could not even rejoice in the healing of a child...How did anyone ever come to that point?

What do you get out of hating people, out of having this bitterness in your heart always?

Hatred, jealousy, and fear hinder peace of mind. When you're angry or unforgiving, for example, your mental suffering is constant. It is better to forgive than to spoil your peace of mind with ill feelings.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” is only another way of saying, “I will not forgive.”

I still got the nasty in me.

I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It's a strange truth, but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process.

There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.

Fighting bitterness can be a full-time job.

Unforgiveness is like drinking poison yourself and waiting for the other person to die.

I always struggled with the idea of forgiving my enemies.

I can hold on to that, that bitterness and that anger. It won't get me anywhere.

I think cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness.

At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected, I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who, having been slugged no harder than anyone else, never got up again, neither to fight back, nor to finger their jaws in painful admiration.

Tis a human trait to hate one you have wronged

I don’t understand hate. I’ve seen its power. I’ve known its wrath. I’ve even felt it coursing through my veins, pushing me on. But I don’t know where it comes from or why it lasts, how it can take hold in some people and grow.

And what if I don't want forgiveness?

It's not easy to forgive. I definitely don't forget, but I do forgive and I think that you should.

When forgiveness is necessary, don't wait too long. We must begin to forgive, because without forgiving, we choke off our own joy; we kill our own soul. People carrying hate and resentment can invest themselves so deeply in that resentment that they gradually define themselves in terms of it.

I fear that we are living in a society, living in a world where forgiving people is becoming more and more difficult to do.