“Now we come to forgiveness. Don’t worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don’t let them suffer too much.”
Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 30 (pp. 194-195)
Context: (She is reciting the Lord’s prayer) Now we come to forgiveness. Don’t worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don’t let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.
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Margaret Atwood 348
Canadian writer 1939Related quotes
“We don’t forgive being as we are.”
Voces (1943)
“Forgive me, Marie. I was suffering too much. I wanted to be done with it.”
Source: Andre Cornelis (1886), Ch. 13
Context: I seized the sheet of paper; the lines were written upon it in characters rather larger than usual. How it shook in my hand while I read these words: "Forgive me, Marie. I was suffering too much. I wanted to be done with it." And he had had the strength to affix his signature!
So then, his last thought had been for her. In the brief moments that had elapsed between my blow with the knife, and his death, he had perceived the dreadful truth, that I should be arrested, that I would speak to explain my deed, that my mother would then learn his crime — and he had saved me by compelling me to silence.
Source: Letters and Papers from Prison
Greeting 300 of his women workers he had saved from Auschwitz, on their return to his factory, as quoted in "Schindler : Why did he do it?" (2010) by Louis Bülow
“Forgiveness is for anyone who needs safe passage through my mind.”
"Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars"
Poetry
