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

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it doth singe yourself.

If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

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 rancor, reprisals, and ruthless retaliation.

Revenge is the raging fire that consumes the arsonist.

Revenge is the infliction of pain, in consequence of the neglect or violation of duty.

On him that takes revenge, revenge shall be taken, and by a real evil he shall dearly pay for the goods that are but airy and fantastical; it 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.

Revenge is the law of the outlaws.

Revenge is barren of itself; itself is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its satiety, despair.

The way of revenge lies in simply forcing ones way into a place and being cut down. There is no shame in this. By thinking that you must complete the job you will run out of time. By considering things like how many men the enemy has, time piles up; in the end you will give up. No matter if the enemy has thousands of men, there is fulfillment in simply standing them off and being determined to cut them all down, starting from one end. You will finish the greater part of it.

There is nothing so urgent as the desire for revenge, when real or perceived injury has been done to oneself or one's community, and there is nothing so sweet as the angry pleasure it gives once enacted. Connoisseurs of revenge might applaud Emile Gaboriau's remark that "revenge is a luscious fruit which you must leave to ripen", but it is rare for revenge to be patient. We hurry to avenge whereas we dawdle to pay other kinds of debts--most notably those of gratitude--and failure to achieve revenge is painful and mortifying in ways that not discharging other debts rarely is. 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.

Revenge commonly hurts both the offerer and sufferer; as we see in a foolish bee, which in her anger invenometh the flesh and loseth her sting, and so lives a drone ever after.

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

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.

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-defense. Unbridled revenge is about the bitterest thing on earth.

Revenge is the prime ingredient in the fountain of youth.

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

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

Far from being a psychological trait, the spirit of revenge is the principle on which our whole psychology depends.

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

Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge had stomach for them all.

He that thinks he shows boldness or height of mind by a scurrilous reply to a scurrilous provocation measures himself by a false standard, and acts not the spirit of a man, but the spleen of a wasp.

There is no truer saying than "Revenge is a dish best eaten cold." It is so much sweeter for the waiting, and my only regret is that I cannot broadcast my triumph to the world.

To admit wanting revenge is to admit you have been crushed and need to be rebuilt. Few are comfortable admitting that, even to themselves.

The instinct of revenge is the force which constitutes the essence of what we call psychology, history, metaphysics and morality. The spirit of revenge is the genealogical element of our thought, the transcendental principle of our way of thinking.

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.

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.

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.

Revenge is a boomerang.

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