Mercy Quotes

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

One who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate

Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again.

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

An eye for any eye makes the whole world blind.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

One would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally.

Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except upon the side of mercy.

Compassion towards the wicked – is cruelty to all beings.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.

Those who do not love me do not deserve to live.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that that death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no-one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty.

But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself— that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved— what then?

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

We are immodest before the barbarians, who are more chaste than we. Even more, the barbarians are wounded at our lack of modesty; the Goths do not permit debauchees of their own nation to remain among them; alone in the midst of them, by the sad privilege of their nationality and their name, the Romans have the right to be impure. The oppressed fly to the barbarians to seek for mercy and a shelter.

I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies.

No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

Kill all the Germans you can, but do not put them up against the wall and kill them. Do your killing while they’re still fighting. After a man has surrendered, he should be treated exactly in accordance with the Rules of Land Warfare, and just as you would hope to be treated if you were fool enough to surrender… Americans do not kick people in the teeth after they are down.

Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think in such a case to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but withal, a great mercy.

Retaliation is sometimes mercy, mercy to both parties

All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy.

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.