Apology Quotes



I hope you find this collection of apology quotes helpful!

I’ve even included an article on "How to Apologize to Someone" to assist you.

If hard pressed for an apology, check out our "I'm Sorry" video.

Apology Quotes Index

About Apologies
Amends
Benefits of Apologies
Forgiveness
Good Advice
How to Apologize
Humorous
I’m Sorry
Insightful
Jaded
Profound
Repentance
When NOT to Apologize
Wrong Ways to Apologize

About Apologies

"Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out."
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast-Table

"Apologies only account for that which they do not alter."
~ Benjamin Disraeli

"An apology might help, but you can change your life without one."
~ Robin Quivers

"Friends are God’s apology for relations."
~ Hugh Kingsmill

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Amends

"When you realize you've made a mistake, make amends immediately. It's easier to eat crow while it's still warm."
~ Dan Heist

"The ability of a person to atone has always been the most remarkable of human features."
~ Leon Uris

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Benefits of Apologies

"An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything."
~ Lynn Johnston

"Apology is a lovely perfume; it can transform the clumsiest moment into a gracious gift."
~ Margaret Lee Runbeck

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Bible Verses

"So watch yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, 'I repent,' forgive him."
~ Bible Luke 17:3–4 (NIV)

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."
~ Bible - James 5:16 (NIV)

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Forgiveness

"Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge."
~ Isaac Friedmann

"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future."
~ Paul Boese

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."
~ William Blake

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Good Advice

"It's easier to apologize than ask for permission."
~ Author Unknown

"Never make a defense or an apology until you are accused."
~ King Charles I

"Never apologize when you are right unless it is to your wife."
~ Byron Pulsifer

"The best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words."
~ John Milton

"Play fair. Don't hit people. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody."
~ Unknown

"Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past."
~ Tryon Edwards

E"very minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again."
~ Evelyn Underhill

"Keep your words soft and tender because tomorrow you may have to eat them."
~ Unknown

"It is best and easiest not to discredit others but to prepare oneself to be as good as possible."
~ Socrates

"It will never do to plead sin as an excuse for sin, or to attempt to justify sinful acts by pleading that we have an evil heart. This instead of being a valid apology, is the very ground of our condemnation."
~ Archibald Alexander

"Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don't go well."
~ Jim Rohn

"Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave."
~ Martin Luther

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How to Apologize

I’ve included an article on "How to Apologize to Someone" to assist you.

"It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize."
~ Walt Whitman

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Humorous

"The only good thing about punctuality is that it usually gets you an apology."
~ Author Unknown

"My mother could make anybody feel guilty - she used to get letters of apology from people she didn't even know."
~ Joan Rivers

"An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be."
~ Steve Martin

"If God doesn’t destroy Hollywood Boulevard, he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology."
~ Jay Leno

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I’m Sorry

I've even included an "I'm Sorry" video complete with music by Brenda Lee singing "I'm Sorry". Check this out!

"If I've done anything I'm sorry for, I'm willing to be forgiven."
~ Edward N. Westcott

"In some families, please is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was sorry."
~ Margaret Laurence

"Doomed are the hotheads! Unhappy are they who lose their cool and are too proud to say, 'I’m sorry'."
~ Unknown

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Insightful

"Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths."
~ Lois Wyse

"True remorse is never just a regret over consequence; it is a regret over motive."
~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

"You can make up a quarrel, but it will always show where it was patched."
~ Edgar Watson Howe

"The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be."
~ William James

"When armies are mobilized and issues joined, the man who is sorry over the fact will always win."
~ Lao Tzu

"Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results."
~ William James

"There is a strength in the union of very sorry men."
~ Homer

"Saying sorry doesn’t mean there isn’t guilt and forgiving doesn’t mean the pain is gone."
~ Unknown

"More men are sorry for speaking, than keeping silence."
~ Unknown

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Jaded

"The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology."
~ Red Auerbach

"No sensible person ever made an apology."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We inadvertently bombed the Chinese Embassy. But Clinton now is working very hard. He has sent a letter of apology to the Chinese. And, he's also given them a gift certificate for future nuclear secrets."
~ David Letterman

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Profound

"An apology is a good way to have the last word."
~ Author Unknown

"You can't win an argument. You can't because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it."
~ Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends and Influence People

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for wordsleft unsaid and for deeds left undone."
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, Little Foxes, 1865

"A relationship becomes easier when you realize that you don't have to be the one at fault to be the one who's sorry."
~ Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

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Repentance

"From listening comes wisdom and from speaking, repentance."
~ A proverb/saying

"Repentance is but want of power to sin."
~ John Dryden

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When NOT to Apologize

"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for truth."
~ Benjamin Disraeli

"Never apologize when you are right unless it is to your wife."
~ Byron Pulsifer

"It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them."
~ P.G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs

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Wrong Ways to Apologize

"A stiff apology is a second insult.... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt."
~ G.K. Chesterton

"Never ruin an apology with an excuse."
~ Kimberly Johnson

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