Sunday, October 27, 2019 – Semisweet Revenge
One of the things you should do in terms of success: If somebody hits you, you’ve got to hit ’em back five times harder than they ever thought possible. You’ve got to get even. Get even. And the reason, the reason you do, is so important… The reason you do, you have to do it, because if they do that to you, you have to leave a telltale sign that they just can’t take advantage of you. It’s not so much for the person, which does make you feel good, to be honest with you. I’ve done it many times. But other people watch and you know they say, “Well, let’s leave Trump alone” … I say it, and it’s so important. You have to, you have to hit back. You have to hit back. ~ Donald Trump, speech to the National Achievers Congress, 2012
Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged. ~ Heinrich Heine
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury. ~ Marcus Aurelius
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.~ Francis Bacon
Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge. ~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
Revenge is not always sweet. Once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim. ~ Emile M. Cioran
Revenge is sweet and not fattening. ~ Alfred Hitchcock
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning revenge that is worthwhile. ~ Ambrose Bierce
Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people’s minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide. ~ Barbara Deming
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged. ~ Samuel Johnson
Just vengeance does not call for punishment. ~ Pierre Corneille
War always reaches the depths of horror because of idiots who perpetuate terror from generation to generation under the pretext of vengeance. ~ Guy Sajer
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. ~ William Tecumseh Sherman
Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance. ~ Winston Churchill
Vengeance has no foresight. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
I want to be indifferent to vengeance. It’s degrading. Not having a spirit of vengeance protects me, internally. ~ Segolene Royal
I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing agonizing death. ~ Alan Bradley
I know there are people who believe you should forgive and forget. For the record, I’d like to say I’m a big fan of forgiveness as long as I’m given the opportunity to get even first. ~ Sue Grafton
Vengeance is the act of turning anger in on yourself. On the surface it may be directed at someone else, but it is a surefire recipe for arresting emotional recovery. ~ Jane Goldman
Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. ~ Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
You can get angry, you can get even, or you can get ahead. ~ Jeffrey Fry
The problem is that no matter how good your intentions, eventually you want to kill someone yourself. ~ Kenneth Cain
Look, you can’t go off half-cocked looking for vengeance against a fish. That shark isn’t evil. It’s not a murderer. It’s just obeying its own instincts. Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy. ~ Peter Benchley, Jaws
Vengeance, retaliation, retribution, revenge are deceitful brothers; vile, beguiling demons promising justifiable compensation to a pained soul for his losses. Yet in truth they craftily fester away all else of worth remaining. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich
There is no elegance in hate, but there is tremendous beauty in the unintended revenge of living well and being happy. ~ Victoria Malin Gregory
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness. ~ Josh Billings
When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her. ~ Sacha Guitry
It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive. ~ Edward Gibbon
I don’t believe in vengeance. Really, when all is said and done, I probably don’t believe in punishment. ~ Penn Jillette
In the history of mankind there are recorded two great Inversions. The first set forth by the Nazarene to the effect that love is a greater power and more real than vengeance. The second proclaimed the earth to be a sphere revolving in its course around the sun. These affirmations were made in the face of all evidence sacred to the contrary. ~ Louis Sullivan
In theory it may seem all right to some, but when it comes to being made the instrument of the Lord’s vengeance, I myself don’t like it. ~ Robert Gould Shaw
God will not let any violence go unpunished, but He Himself will take vengeance on our enemies and will send home to them what they have deserved by the way they have treated us. As He Himself says (Deut. 23:55): “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” On the basis of this, St. Paul admonishes the Christians (Rom. 12:19): “Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God.” These words are not only instruction but also consolation, as if He were to say: Do not take it upon yourselves to avenge yourselves on one another or to speak curses and maledictions. The person that does you harm or injury is interfering with the office of God and sinning against God as gravely as this man has sinned against you. Therefore, keep your fist to yourself. Leave it to the charge of His wrath and punishing, for He will not let it remain unavenged, and His punishment is more severe than you would like. This man has not assailed you but God Himself, and has already fallen into His wrath. He will not escape this. No one ever has. So why get angry with him when the anger of God, immensely greater and more severe than the anger and punishment of the whole world, has already come upon him and has already avenged itself more thoroughly than you ever could? Besides, he has not injured you one tenth as much as he has injured God. When you see him lying under the severe condemnation, why so many curses and threats of vengeance? Rather you should take pity on his plight, and pray for him to be rescued from it and to reform. ~ Martin Luther, Sermon on the Mount and the Magnificat
Revenge holds another irony. It so often proves unnecessary. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” wrote an ancient Hebrew sage. No mere pious platitude. An axiom of human psychology that is too little understood. Substitute “Nature” for “the Lord,” if you desire. Those given to harming others bear within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. When a man injures you, it’s often better to let Nature take her course. That wise old lady is pretty sure to do a juster and more artistic job of punishment than you. ~ Garret Smith, Living Sparks of Life
When we take revenge against another, we lose some of our innocence. ~ Patrice Redd Vecchione
For the taking of revenge, a man locks himself up alone and thinks. His stomach must be empty for his head to be full. Vengeance comes a little from the heart and a lot from the mind; one must take oneself apart from the noise of men and of things, even from what resembles them; only the voices of bells and of thunder are allowed. Let the room in which you meditate be dark, narrow and warm. ~ Xavier Forneret
Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. ~ Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence. ~ Vittorio Alfieri
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green. ~ Francis Bacon
In revenge and in love woman is more barbaric than man is. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
When you have the power to screw people over and you don’t, well, that’s when you get to show who you really are. ~ Joseph Finder, Paranoia
To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is the sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue. ~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Revenge is a fervor in our own blood, to be cured only by letting the blood of another; but the remedy too often produces a relapse, which is remorse, a malady far more dreadful than the first disease, because it is incurable. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
Our revenge will be the laughter of our children. ~ Bobby Sands
Just Above Sunset 