50 Wise & Wicked Quotes About Revenge

They say the best revenge is living well. I say it's acid in the face—who will love them now? —Mindy Kaling

By Lorenzo Jensen III

Updated 10 years ago, March 26, 2015

1.

They say the best revenge is living well. I say it’s acid in the face—who will love them now?

—Mindy Kaling

2.

I’m going to get even, I swear I will. Mark my words, I’m a pregnant cranky woman with insomnia. I have time to plot my revenge.

—Kim Gruenenfelder

3.

I was performing my ritual of sipping tea, shooting flirtatious glances and planning murder.

—Mingmei Yip

4.

Harry was left to ponder in silence the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge.

—J. K. Rowling

5.

My former bullies pay extra to come backstage and meet me after shows, and I pretend not to know them in front of their friends. It is the most divine pleasure to exact the revenge of the brutalized child that resides within.

—Margaret Cho

6.

Revenge is a confession of pain.

—Latin Proverb

7.

But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

—Exodus 21:23-25

8.

Treat all fairly or they will seek revenge.

—Christopher Paolini

9.

‘Tis more noble to forgive, and more manly to despise, than to revenge an Injury.

—Benjamin Franklin

10.

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

—Mahatma Gandhi

11.

I’m a fighter. I believe in the eye-for-an-eye business. I’m no cheek turner. I got no respect for a man who won’t hit back. You kill my dog, you better hide your cat.

—Muhammad Ali

12.

An eye for an eye is never enough. Never, never, never.

—Adrian Phoenix

13.

While seeking revenge, dig two graves—one for yourself.

—Douglas Horton

14.

So revenge is obviously a deeply messed-up expression of vindictiveness. It is hard to even call it evil. It is just plain insanity. A result of deeply messed-up thinking.

—Venkatesh G. Rao

15.

Revenge proves its own executioner.

—John Ford

16.

Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.

—Anne Lamott

17.

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

—Francis Bacon

18.

We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.

—Heinrich Heine

19.

Gorgeous hair is the best revenge.

—Ivana Trump

20.

God is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his impossible standards.

—Walt Whitman

21.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

22.

If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you’re allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.

—Shannon L. Alder

23.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries—for heavy ones they cannot.

—Niccolo Machiavelli

24.

Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.

—William Makepeace Thackeray

25.

The problem with revenge is that it never evens the score. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain. Both are stuck on the escalator as long as parity is demanded, and the escalator never stops.

—Lewis B. Smedes

26.

Stronger than lover’s love is lover’s hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.

—Euripides

27.

Living well is the best revenge.

—George Herbert

28.

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.

—Sacha Guitry

29.

To exact revenge for yourself or your friends is not only a right, it’s an absolute duty.

—Stieg Larsson

30.

Weak people revenge
Strong people forgive
Intelligent people ignore

—Anonymous

31.

Revenge is not a noble sentiment, but it is a human one.

—Rudy Giuliani

32.

There’s always enough retribution to be dealt.

—Amber Silvia

33.

Funny thing about revenge. It could make a killer out of a nun.

—Kevis Hendrickson

34.

Choose old people for enemies. They die. You win.

—Jacob M. Appel

35.

Revenge writing is a female genre. Men who have been left by women or made cuckolds by rivals either lick their wounds in humiliated silence or start the Trojan Wars. Having no other power or public voice, the betrayed woman reaches for her pen.

—Frances Wilson

36.

Revenge is sweet and not fattening.

—Alfred Hitchcock

37.

Vengeance is a monster of appetite, forever bloodthirsty and never filled.

—Richelle E. Goodrich

38.

Revenge can only be found on the road to self-destruction.

—Wayne Gerard Trotman

39.

I’m pretty Sicilian if I’ve been crossed. I don’t seek revenge, but I never forget. And I make it hard to repair, which is not a great quality because if people held me to that standard, no one would be around me—ever.

—Amy Adams

40.

No one messes around with a nerd’s computer and escapes unscathed.

—E.A. Bucchianeri

41.

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

—Emile M. Cioran

42.

Revenge is not worthy of you. If you concentrate on revenge, you will keep those wounds fresh that would otherwise have healed.

—Adeline Yen Mah

43.

For the longest time I studied revenge to the exclusion of all else. I built my first torture chamber in the dark vaults of imagination. Lying on bloody sheets in the Healing Hall I discovered doors within my mind that I’d not found before, doors that even a child of nine knows should not be opened. Doors that never close again. I threw them wide.

—Mark Lawrence

44.

Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY, says the Lord.

—Romans 12:19

45.

Revenge is what I want. Nothing but pure unadulterated revenge. But my mother brought me up to be a lady.

—J. P. Donleavy

46.

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.

—Paul Gauguin

47.

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