I glad that my paintings were used to illustrate such spiritual article.
All quotes can be found on the Village Yontif website, please follow the link:
https://www.villageyontif.com/favorite_quotes
Some of Our Favorite Quotes
On Forgiveness and Compassion
“A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”
~ Abraham J. Heschel
“Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”
~ Gautama Buddha
“There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true.”
~ Stephen Levine
A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last
“If I have harmed anyone in any way either knowingly or unknowingly or through my own confusions I ask their forgiveness.
~ Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness
If anyone has harmed me in anyway either knowingly or unknowingly or through their own confusions I forgive them.
And if there is a situation I am not yet ready to forgive I forgive myself for that.
For all the ways that I harm myself, negate, doubt, belittle myself, judge or be unkind to myself through my own confusions I forgive myself.”
“Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another’s control… to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else’s nightmare.”
~ Lance Morrow, The Chief: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons
“It is lack of love for ourselves that inhibits our compassion toward others. If we make friends with ourselves, then there is no obstacle to opening our hearts and minds to others.”
~ Unknown
“I had to clear up my messy life. By letting go of the debris and filth, I have come to a deeper, more soulful beauty and clarity like an oasis in the desert. From that place of clarity, a vision of what I could have, what I could do, who I could be has emerged if I allow my heart to become a place of compassion, acceptance and forgiveness.”
~ Sharon E. Rainey, Making a Pearl from the Grit of Life