It appears online, of course, but a pre-Internet source of propagation was probably the mass-circulation magazine Reader’s Digest. Although daily newspapers had previously published variants of the quotation, the Digest had a longer shelf life because it was a handy monthly journal, and It was often kept as reading matter in public waiting rooms.
In its June 1954 issue, the Digest printed the quotation in a form verbatim to the one given above. It was stated to be by Oscar Wilde, but this was probably an attribution provided by a reader, because the Digest paid for contributions, a practice which made them particularly susceptible to the propagation of myth.
WHERE IT PROBABLY ORIGINATED
In the New York magazine The International (November, 1911 ) in an article titled ‘The Cool Philosopher’ by Felix Grendon, in this variant form:
“I always forgive my enemies; nothing enrages them more.”
SOURCE OF CONFUSION
On April 13, 1949 the British newspaper The Sketch featured a “list of precepts for the young” by Percy Colson. Among them was this close variant:
“Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so intensely.”
The confusion arises because of two adjacencies to Wilde; — because Wilde himself had issued a similar list of aphorisms under the rubric of ‘Phrases and Philosophies For Use of the Young’. [1]
— because Colson, as noted in the same article, was the co-author of a forthcoming book about Wilde and the Queensberry family titled “Oscar Wilde and the Black Douglas”.
Again the Quote Investigator has chapter and verse. Read more at the link below:
[1] First published in the first and only issue of the Oxford undergraduate student magazine, The Chameleon (December 1894).
WHAT DID OSCAR WILDE SAY ABOUT FORGIVENESS?
De Profundis: referencing Christ:
When he says, “Forgive your enemies,' it is not for the sake of the enemy, but for one's own sake that he says so, and because love is more beautiful than hate”.
The Soul of Man Under Socialism: "Society often forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer"
An Ideal Husband:
Lord Goring: "Women are not meant to judge us, but to forgive us when we need forgiveness. Pardon, not punishment, is their mission.
Sir Robert: "All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive." Also "Why should she not forgive?"
A Woman of No Importance:
Lord Illingworth: “Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them."
