Cheryl Strayed Quotes

I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.

I have never thought that the circumstance of God's having forgiven me was any reason why I should forgive myself.

I know I may have done some bad things, but I'm not a bad person.

I don't think I will ever be able to forgive myself for what I have done.

I am not racked with self-loathing. Some issues of guilt and shame, but I'm a pretty good guy.

How unhappy is he who cannot forgive himself.

Then I proceeded to Williamsburg, where I found all well. I went to the capitol where I sent for the wench to clean my room and when I came I kissed her and felt her, for which God forgive me.... About 10 o’clock I went to my lodgings. I had good health but wicked thoughts, God forgive me.

I think it's a lot harder to forgive yourself for your own mistakes.

Those are not the tears of repentance!... Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates.

What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

Sometimes a person needs to hear you forgive them so they can start to forgive themselves.

If our elaborate and dominating bodies are given us to be denied at every turn, if our nature is always wrong and wicked, how ineffectual we are; like fishes not meant to swim.

In my experience, self-hatred is the dominant malaise crippling Christians and stifling their growth in the Holy Spirit.

[D]on’t cling to your self-righteous suffering, let it go. . . . Nothing is too good to be true, let yourself be forgiven. To the degree you insist that you must suffer, you insist on the suffering of others as well. (90)

There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position - a perspective, an opinion, a judgement, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, as so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.

It’s not always enough to be forgiven by someone, in most cases we have to forgive ourselves first.

Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story. All human odes are essentially one, "My life; what I stole from history, and how I live with it.

We spend a lot of energy remembering failures God spent a lot of love saying we could forget.

So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he's doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.

It's not a good feeling--knowing that you profoundly deserve the title of monster. It's better to be kind than to feel guilty.

I need the concept of mercy for me to have some semblance of self-admiration. So in real life, I'm probably somebody who is more devout.

I'm not a bad person. I'm just doing my thing... I'm, you know, running, I want to do something that's good. It's not an easy thing to do.

Then no rightful cause was left, and the pain of anger was turning into the shameful pain of submission. He had no right to condemn anyone - he thought - to denounce anything, to fight and die joyously, claiming the sanctity of virtue. The broken promises, the unconfessed desires, the betrayal, the deceit, the lies, the fraud - he was guilty of them all. What form of corruption could he scorn? Degrees do not matter, he thought; one does not bargain about inches of evil.

Good people end up in Hell because they can't forgive themselves.

Sometimes I'm so deeply buried under self-reproaches that I long for a word of comfort to help me dig myself out again.