quotations about revenge
Best revenge is to move on happily, and let Allah do the rest. He knows what's the best, and how to put the wrong to rest.
SAMINA MUHAMMAD
Life is Tough
The best sort of revenge is not to be like him who did the injury.
MARCUS ANTONINUS
attributed, Treasury of Thought
Revenge is mine, says God in the Bible, and, when some find in the word retribution the idea of a special pleasure for the subjective will, it must be replied that it signifies only the turning back of crime against itself. The Eumenides sleep, but crime wakes them. So it is the criminal's own deed which judges itself. Although in requital we cannot venture upon equality of details, the case is different with murder, to which death is necessarily due. Life is the total context of one's existence, and cannot be measured by value. Its punishment, therefore, cannot be measured by value, but must consist in the taking of another life.
GEORGE H. W. HEGEL
Philosophy of Right
Revenge is but a small circle.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
You've spread your wings and learned to fly
You've tried and tried and now you've succeeded
Weil, that's too bad, that's too bad, that's too bad
I'm alive, that's too bad, that's too bad
Open your eyes, Revenge, open your eyes
Revenge, open wide
NOMEANSNO
"Revenge"
The mode of violence that has attracted most critical attention is revenge, which, in transferring a desire for retribution from a murdered character to survivors, raises questions of duty, justice, and loyalty.
R. A. FOAKES
Shakespeare and Violence
You ask forgiveness, I give you sweet revenge
I return this nightmare, I will find you
Sleepless, cloaked in despair, I'm behind you
METALLICA
"Here Comes Revenge"
Life has its grizzly moments that will maul you. Don't give up and crawl into your grave just yet. We all love the underdog or revenant that takes the world by storm. The best revenge is living well. Go after life with gusto and crush all those obstacles that try to thwart your best efforts.
RON BLAKE
"The Art of Wellness", LGBT Weekly, February 21, 2016
The best revenge is a good business venture, one where piles of money rack up like a throne beneath the once-scorned.
DAYNA EVANS
"Forget the Revenge Body -- Start a Revenge Business Instead", New York Magazine, January 27, 2016
The sixth precept of the natural law is, that in revenge and punishments we must have our eye not at the evil past, but the future good: that is, it is not lawful to inflict punishment for any other end, but that the offender may be corrected, or that others warned by his punishment may become better. But this is confirmed chiefly from hence, that each man is bound by the law of nature to forgive one another, provided he give caution for the future, as hath been showed in the foregoing article. Furthermore, because revenge, if the time past be only considered, is nothing else but a certain triumph and glory of mind, which points at no end (for it contemplates only what is past, but the end is a thing to come), but that which is directed to no end, is vain: that revenge therefore which regards not the future, proceeds from vain glory, and therefore without reason. But to hurt another without reason introduces a war, and is contrary to the fundamental law of nature. It is therefore a precept of the law of nature, that in revenge we look not backwards, but forward. Now the breach of this law is commonly called CRUELTY.
THOMAS HOBBES
De Cive
Man has made me oh so strong
Blurring lines of right and wrong
Far too late for frail amends
Now it's come to sweet revenge
METALLICA
"Here Comes Revenge"
Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong, putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon. And Solomon, I am sure, saith, It is the glory of a man, to pass by an offence. That which is past is gone, and irrevocable; and wise men have enough to do, with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labor in past matters. There is no man doth a wrong, for the wrong's sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man, for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge, is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed, the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man's enemy is still before hand, and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desirous, the party should know, whence it cometh. This is the more generous. For the delight seemeth to be, not so much in doing the hurt, as in making the party repent. But base and crafty cowards, are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable; You shall read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our enemies; but you never read, that we are commanded to forgive our friends. But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: Shall we (saith he) take good at God's hands, and not be content to take evil also? And so of friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well. Public revenges are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death of Caesar; for the death of Pertinax; for the death of Henry the Third of France; and many more. But in private revenges, it is not so. Nay rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end they infortunate.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Revenge", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
It seems that revenge stories sell well. Big box office sales and big ratings for the networks! Why is that? Probably because deep down inside, all of us have thought about what it would be like to get some payback on our enemies. Whether those enemies are political, national, cultural, tribal, professional, criminal, or personal, we want to see the wicked brought to justice. We even want to go outside the law and extract some cold, hard justice of our own making without the restraints of civility or legal process. We fantasize about indulging the more violent tendencies of our imagination where we stand over evil persons and give them what we think they deserve. We would like to take the gloves off and make the wicked pay with blood for their crimes. We imagine a situation where we disempower our enemies, deprive them of their freedom, activate their deepest fears, and inflict on them recompense without remorse. If you think hard enough, you can probably visualize a number of people you'd like to see get theirs and then imagine it as a movie with either Denzel Washington or Liam Neeson cast as the vengeful hero who unleashes all hell on the perpetrators. Revenge entertains and excites, but that is not the way of Jesus Christ.
MICHAEL F. BIRD
Romans
Vengeance is just:
Justly we rid the earth of human fiends
Who carry hell for pattern in their souls.
But in high vengeance there is noble scorn:
It tortures not the torturer, nor gives
Iniquitous payment for iniquity.
The great avenging angel does not crawl
To kill the serpent with a mimic fang;
He stands erect, with sword of keenest edge
That slays like lightning.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
To admit wanting revenge is to admit you have been crushed and need to be rebuilt. Few are comfortable admitting that, even to themselves.
LAURA BLUMENFELD
Revenge: A Story of Hope
Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Revenge is a virus which eats into the very vitals of the mind and poisons the entire spiritual being.
JAMES ALLEN
Mind is the Master
Revenge is, to him who is possessed with it, a continual anguish, and an excruciating pain; it is an eating canker at the heart, a biting plague, that gnaws and incessantly preys upon the very soul. The revengeful man wears in his breast a torment greater than any he can inflict on the person his malice aims at the destruction of, and has often the additional misery to see his enemy smiling in ease and security, while his own heart is burning and torn to pieces within him, for the miscarriages of his designs against him.
ANONYMOUS
The London Magazine, January 1779
Revenge is backward looking, whereas rationality is forward looking -- so the two fail to engage.
ALAN HAMLIN
attributed, Muslim/Arab Mediation and Conflict Resolution: Understanding Sulha
Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick