Saturday, May 24, 2008

Revenge

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain. He that willingly suffers the corrosion's of inveterate hatred, and gives up his days and nights to the gloom and malice and perturbations of stratagem, cannot surely be said to consult his ease. Resentment is a union of sorrow with malignity; a combination of a passion which all endeavor to avoid, with a passion which all concur to detest. The man who retires to mediate mischief, and to exasperate his own rage - whose thoughts are employed only on means of distress and contrivances of ruin -- whose mind never pauses from the remembrance of his own sufferings, but to indulge some hope of enjoying the calamities of another - may justly be numbered among the most miserable of human beings, among those who are guilty without reward, who have neither the gladness of prosperity nor the calm of innocence.
Whoever considers the weakness both of himself and others , will not long want persuasives to forgiveness. We know not to what degree of malignity any injury is to be imputed; or how much its guilt, if we were to inspect the mind of him that committed it, would be extenuated by mistake, precipitance, or negligence; we cannot be certain how much more we feel than was intended to be inflicted, or how much we increase the mischief to ourselves by voluntary aggravations. We may charge to design the effects of accident; we may think the blow violent only because we have made ourselves delicate and tender; we are on every side in danger of error and of guilt, which we are certain to avoid only by speedy forgiveness.

Samuel Johnson - photo by Vasile Barbu

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