PHRASES ABOUT REVENGE, THAT DESIRE FOR JUSTICE DUE TO RANCOR

Paying back with the same coin someone who has wronged us or perhaps inflicting worse damage on him: for centuries revenge has been the privileged way to get justice. Whether it was a wrong of love, economic or any other entity, revenge was considered the only way to ensure that one's honor was not harmed. Over time, however, the legitimacy of revenge has failed, indeed it has been condemned for its immorality.

Even today there are episodes that make us want to take revenge, but history and the values of the present teach us how forgiveness and understanding are to be preferred, even if only to be superior to those who have descended so low as to harm us morally.

A subject as delicate as revenge did not go unnoticed by the greatest contemporary and past authors, who treated it from different perspectives. We have collected their most powerful and most famous phrases.

The most famous aphorisms about what revenge is

A gesture, a desire, an irreparable act: the definition of revenge is not univocal and various authorial quotes testify to it. Here are a few sentences that try to describe what the act of revenge consists of.

Revenge is a kind of primitive justice to which, the more human nature resorts, the more the law should put an end.
Francis Bacon

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
Revenge is an act of passion; revenge of justice.
Samuel Johnson

Revenge remains a horrible urge even when it is swollen with reasons.
Massimo Gramellini

Taking revenge is often like biting your dog because he bit you.
Austin O'Malley

One takes revenge on one cowardice by committing another.
Petrus Borel

Vendetta, the sweetest bite that has ever been cooked in hell.
Walter Scott

Revenge - they say - is a dish to be served cold. As long as you still have an appetite.
Roberto Gervaso

Revenge is somehow an instinctive justice that comes from the primitive gods of the unconscious. It aims to restore equality based on mutual inflicted suffering.
Jean Monbourquette

Right is revenge that renounces.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno

Revenge is a lazy form of suffering.
From the movie The Interpreter

Revenge is the duel of the poor.
Prosper Mérimée

Revenge is the bitter cup of a wrong suffered.
Marco Trevisan

The most beautiful phrases about revenge and forgiveness

The relationship between revenge and forgiveness can be seen as that existing between two sides of the same coin. Compared to a more or less serious wrong one can answer in only two ways, one the polar opposite of the other: by taking revenge or by forgiving, letting time and life autonomously bring true justice. These are the most beautiful quotes that reflect in this sense.

Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is only equal to his enemy, but by ignoring him he is superior because to forgive is like a prince.
Francis Bacon

The human soul never appears so strong and noble as when it renounces revenge and dares to forgive a wrong.
Harry Chapin

"Forgiveness is the best revenge". The reversal of the sentence highlights an unusual but true meaning: forgiveness derives from the lack of consideration in which the offended person takes the offender.
Carlo Gragnani

Forgiveness is often just a form of revenge.
Paul-Jean Toulet

Take revenge on someone! Do as if you forgive him - abandon him to the vengeance of life. There is no passing of time that does not inflict by itself, without being pushed by the injured party, atrocious things to everyone.
Cesare Pavese

The best revenge is forgiveness.
Brazilian proverb

Man must develop a method for every human conflict that refuses revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Martin Luther King

The wise man does not seek revenge on his enemies at all, but leaves this cure to life.
Paul Courty

The door must always be kept open to reconciliation with enemies; and let it be the door of courtesy, which is the safest. Revenge, once accomplished, often torments the soul, and the joy that was felt for the harm that was done to the enemy becomes painful.
Baltasar Gracián y Morales

Do you want to be happy for a moment? Get revenge! Do you want to be happy forever? Forgive!
Tertullian

I do not speak of revenge or of forgiveness; forgetfulness is the only revenge and the only forgiveness.
Jorge Luis Borges

Revenge is followed by repentance.
Italian proverb

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
There is no such complete revenge as forgiveness.
Josh Billings

Quotes and aphorisms about the need for revenge

However, forgiveness has not always been seen as the right answer to a wrong suffered. Several authors have shown how sometimes the need for revenge is relentless by giving voice to their characters. From William Shakespeare to the mysterious V for Vendetta: here are the phrases where there is no mercy.

If you prick us, don't we bleed? If you tickle us, don't we laugh? If you poison us, don't we die? And if you do us wrong, won't we have to take revenge?
William Shakespeare

Whoever says that the best revenge is forgiveness has never been wronged.
Roberto Gervaso

Facilius est fine facere molitus est bonum; quod gratia aliquod ultionem prouectus.
It is much easier to repay the offense than the benefit; because gratitude weighs, while revenge brings profit.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus

No more tears, it's time to think about revenge.
Maria Stuart

If one injures his neighbor, it will be done to him as he did to the other: fracture by fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the same injury will be done to him that he did to the other.
Leviticus, Old Testament

A little revenge is more human than no revenge.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The human spirit arose as a weapon of death and as a tremendous instrument of revenge, not as the phlegm of the Democrats: it served in the fight against the crocodiles of the prehistoric seas and the scaly reptiles of the caves - not as a powder puff!
Gottfried Benn

Revenge - they say - is a dish to be served cold. As long as you still have an appetite.
Roberto Gervaso

Do you know why revenge is so good? Because it is sweet and does not make you fat!
Alfred Hitchcock

I am the fruit of what has been done to me. It is the fundamental principle of the universe: to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
From the movie V for Vendetta

Revenge is a need, the most intense and profound that exists, and everyone must satisfy it, if only in words. If we suffocate it, we expose ourselves to serious disturbances. More than one imbalance - perhaps even all imbalances - stems from a revenge that we have delayed for too long. We dare to explode! Any malaise is healthier than that caused by accumulated anger.
Emil Cioran

When luck smiles at a violent and vile thing like revenge, it seems to be absolute proof not only that God exists, but that you are doing his will.
From the movie Kill Bill

As we age, we realize that revenge is still the surest form of justice.
Henry Becque

The days of forgetting are over. The days I remember are about to begin.
From the movie pulp Fiction

Revenge may be evil, but it is natural.
William Makepeace Thackeray

In my womb I have fed my revenge!
From the movie Alexander

My name is Massimo Decimo Meridio, commander of the northern army, general of the Felix legions, loyal servant of the only true emperor Marcus Aurelius, father of a murdered son, husband of a murdered wife, ... and I will have my revenge, in this life or the other.
From the movie Gladiator

It is much easier to forgive an enemy after you take revenge on him.
Olin Miller

The best phrases on the danger and ineffectiveness of revenge

The great characters eager for revenge are answered by thinkers and writers who highlight all the negative aspects of it, among which both the dangerousness and the ineffectiveness stand out.

If you spend your time hoping that someone will suffer the consequences of what they did to your heart, then you are allowing that person to hurt you a second time.
Shannon L. Alder

If you take the path of vengeance, start digging two graves: one for your enemy, and one for you.
Confucius

It is wrong to take revenge on a woman who has wronged you, but nothing prevents you from reflecting that she is aging every minute.
Ambrose Bierce

Hate is blind, anger is deaf, and he who takes revenge on it is in danger of drinking a bitter drink.
Alexandre Dumas

An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi

Oh God! what torturing ecstasies he endures who is consumed by a single unsatisfied desire for revenge! He sleeps with clenched fists; and wakes up with his nails full of blood piercing his palms.
Herman Melville

The feeling of revenge is so grateful, that often one wishes to be insulted in order to be able to avenge himself, and I am not saying only by an habitual enemy, but by an indifferent one, or even, especially in certain moments of a dark mood, by a friend. .
Giacomo Leopardi

In revenge and in love the woman is more barbaric than man.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Semper et infirmi est animi exiguique voluptas ultio.
Revenge is the abject pleasure of an abject mind.

Pleasure and revenge are more deaf than snakes to the voice of a just decision.
William Shakespeare

To be angry is to avenge the faults of others on ourselves.
Alexander Pope

The water does not remain in the mountains, nor does the revenge in a big heart.
Chinese proverb

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being humiliated.
George Bernard Shaw

Just vendettas do not exist.
Miguel de Cervantes

Revenge is as vulgar as resentment.
Oriana Fallaci

The most beautiful quotes on which is the best revenge

Finally, we conclude with a series of sentences that reflect on which is the best revenge. For some it is time, for others it is success and for still others it is happiness. Each aphorism, however, has one thing in common: the best way to take revenge is to look nothing like those who have inflicted pain and suffering.

The best revenge is massive success.
The best revenge is a great success.
Frank Sinatra

The best revenge is to be different from someone who has wronged us.
Marcus Aurelius

The cruelest revenge is the contempt of every possible revenge.
Goethe

The best revenge is a good night's sleep.
Anonymous

The best revenge? Happiness. There is nothing that drives people more crazy than seeing you happy.
Alda Merini

Sit on the river bank and wait. You will see the corpse of your enemy pass by.
Chinese proverb

There is no more beautiful revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. It even has the advantage of leaving you the part of the generous.
Cesare Pavese

Learn to play the indifference card. It is the most cunning of vendettas. There is no revenge that is as good as oblivion, since it is enough to bury the enemy in the dust of his nothingness.
Baltasar Gracián

The best way to take revenge is not to look like the one who has offended us.
Jane Porter

Living well is the best revenge.
Living well is the best revenge.
George Herbert