"I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one"
About this Quote
Beecher goes for the throat of a phrase that lets people cosplay as morally evolved while keeping the weapon loaded. "I can forgive, but I cannot forget" sounds gentle, even prudent. He hears the bookkeeping behind it: a promise to keep the grievance on file, ready to be reintroduced as evidence the next time the offender needs to be put in their place. The line is a social maneuver disguised as virtue, a way to preserve the emotional leverage of injury while claiming the spiritual credit of mercy.
The cancelled-note metaphor is doing heavy rhetorical work. A note is a debt, not just a hurt feeling. To forgive, Beecher insists, is to erase the obligation itself - not to mark it "paid" and stash it in a drawer. "Torn in two, and burned up" is deliberately theatrical because he understands how attractive it is to retain receipts. The image also exposes a quiet power dynamic: the forgiver becomes a creditor, the forgiven a permanent debtor. Beecher wants to abolish that hierarchy. If the note can "be shown against one", forgiveness has become conditional, a threat masquerading as charity.
Context matters: as a 19th-century American clergyman, Beecher is preaching a Protestant moral seriousness that treats forgiveness not as mood but as act - a chosen relinquishment of claims. He is also, implicitly, disciplining a community: if forgiveness is real, it must be socially uncollectible. Anything less is just vengeance with good manners.
The cancelled-note metaphor is doing heavy rhetorical work. A note is a debt, not just a hurt feeling. To forgive, Beecher insists, is to erase the obligation itself - not to mark it "paid" and stash it in a drawer. "Torn in two, and burned up" is deliberately theatrical because he understands how attractive it is to retain receipts. The image also exposes a quiet power dynamic: the forgiver becomes a creditor, the forgiven a permanent debtor. Beecher wants to abolish that hierarchy. If the note can "be shown against one", forgiveness has become conditional, a threat masquerading as charity.
Context matters: as a 19th-century American clergyman, Beecher is preaching a Protestant moral seriousness that treats forgiveness not as mood but as act - a chosen relinquishment of claims. He is also, implicitly, disciplining a community: if forgiveness is real, it must be socially uncollectible. Anything less is just vengeance with good manners.
Quote Details
| Topic | Forgiveness |
|---|---|
| Source | Attributed to Henry Ward Beecher; quotation appears on the Wikiquote page for Henry Ward Beecher (no clear primary work cited there). |
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