Revenge - Quotes

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green. - Francis Bacon

A man who desires revenge should dig two graves. - Unknown

Ah, 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

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. - Confucius 

He that has revenge in his power, and does not use it, is the greater man. - Wellins Calcott

He who plots to hurt others often hurts himself. - Aesop

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior. - Francis Bacon

It is commonly said that revenge is sweet, but to a calm and considerate mind, patience and forgiveness are sweeter. - Isaac Barrow

It is useless to meet revenge with revenge: it will heal nothing. - J. R. R. Tolkien

Men are more prone to revenge injuries than to requite kindness. - Thomas Fuller

Revenge has no more quenching effect on emotions than salt water has on thirst. - Walter Weckler 

Revenge is a fervour 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

Revenge is a recklessness towards the future in a vain attempt to make the present abolish a suffering which is already past. - Bernard Crick

Revenge is a virus which eats into the very vitals of the mind and poisons the entire spiritual being. - James Allen

Revenge is for children and the emotionally retarded. - Frank Herbert

Revenge is like a ghost. It takes over every man it touches. Its thirst cannot be quenched until the last man standing has fallen. - Vladmir Makarov

Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim. - Emil Cioran

Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you. - Austin O’Malley

Revenge is private and personal, and so readily gets out of hand. - Ernest Lucas

Revenge is the law of the outlaws. - Laura Blumenfeld

Revenge is the most worthless weapon in the world. It ruins the avenger while more firmly confirming the enemy in his wrong. It initiates an endless flight down the bottomless stairway of rancour, reprisals, and ruthless retaliation. - Tim Lahaye & Bob Phillips

Revenge is the raging fire that consumes the arsonist. - Max Lucado

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. - Unknown

Revenge, at first though sweet, bitter ere long back on itself recoils. - John Milton

Revenge, the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell. - Walter Scott

Revenge, we find, the abject pleasure of an abject mind. - Juvenal 

Revenge... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion. - Albert Schweitzer

The best revenge is always to just happily move on and let karma do the rest. - Unknown

The best sort of revenge is not to be like him who did the injury. - Marcus Antoninus

The man who seeks revenge is like the man who shoots himself in order to hit his enemy with the kick of the gun's recoil. - Tim Lahaye & Bob Phillips

The pleasure of revenge is like the pleasure of eating chalk and coals. - Jeremy Taylor

The impulse to revenge is an impulse to justice, but it is a primitive one, and although its intention is to restore balance, its personal and emotional basis always threatens to make it too harsh and punitive, therefore inviting further revenge. - A. C. Grayling

The very design of revenge is troublesome, and puts the spirits into an unnatural fermentation and tumult. The man that meditates it is always restless, his very soul is stung, swells and boils, is in pain and anguish, hath no ease, no enjoyment of itself, so long as this passion reigns. The execution of it may perhaps be attended with some present pleasure, but that pleasure is unreasonable and brutish, momentary and short, like a flash of lightning, which vanisheth in the twinkling of an eye. - Isaac Barrow

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

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well. - Francis Bacon
Those who plot the destruction of others often fall themselves. - Phaedrus

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

Universal though the instinct for revenge may be, it is much stronger in some of us than others. And those who have it in abundance apparently pay something of a price. - Ellis Cose

Very often actual revenge is beyond our means, and we are driven to indulge in prospective, circuitous, and imaginary retaliations, from thence deriving a few drops of satisfaction in the ideal form. - Alexander Bain

Very often when people speak of justice, they are not referring to some abstract concept of law, or an ethereal vision of divine justice, but rather the more earthly idea of responding to a temporal wrong. They simply want to make sure that he who has caused suffering ends up suffering himself. The only way for the wrongdoer to know the pain that he has caused is by experiencing his own pain. That's why the seeking of revenge is an understandable human impulse, precisely because, to the revenge-seeker, the result feels like justice. It speaks to the underlying raw hurt, the primal sense that some life-altering event had taken place, and that the perpetrator must be made to feel the same sense of deprivation and loss. - Thane Rosenbaum

We live today in a world wracked by revenge. Nations at sword's point. Peoples against peoples. Hate brewing in men's hearts. And yet we hear it said "Revenge is sweet." We everyday folk are often infected by that hoary sophism. But it misstates the dangerous side of a fundamentally noble trait of human nature, self-defence. Unbridled revenge is about the bitterest thing on earth. - Garret Smith

When violence hurries on too fast, and caution does not keep pace with revenge, people generally do themselves more harm than the enemy. - Wellins Calcott

When we take revenge against another, we lose some of our innocence. - Patrice Redd Vecchione