Meaning & Analysis
Choosing to forbear, delay, or tolerate an offense or debt does not erase or absolve the underlying obligation or wrongdoing.
Insights
Deferred Consequences
Symbolizes the principle that postponing action—whether forgiveness, justice, or repayment—does not nullify what is owed or deserved. The underlying debt or grievance remains unresolved, merely delayed.
Justice Versus Mercy
Highlights the distinction between showing patience or restraint (mercy) and granting actual pardon or discharge (justice). Forbearance may stay retribution or payment, but it does not equate to true forgiveness or settlement.
Psychological Denial
Reflects how individuals or societies may psychologically defer uncomfortable confrontations, mistaking delay or silence for genuine resolution, yet the core issue persists, awaiting eventual reckoning.
Historical Symbolism
The language of quittance and acquittance draws from historical practices of debt and contract law, where a written acquittance (receipt) alone absolved obligations. Forbearance without formal acquittance left debts legally and morally intact.
Literary and Cultural Resonance
Shakespeare and Milton both evoke this proverb to challenge false equivalences between delay and forgiveness, embedding the notion in English literary consciousness. The Latin legal maxim 'Quod differtur non aufertur' ('What is deferred is not taken away') and similar proverbs across Europe emphasize the universal awareness that unaddressed wrongs endure.
Psychological Dimensions
The proverb exposes a common cognitive bias: the tendency to confuse postponement or tolerance with absolution. Psychologically, this can lead to festering resentments or unresolved debts, both interpersonal and societal.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
Juxtaposes 'forbearance' and 'quittance' to sharply delineate the gap between patience and resolution, intensifying the proverb's cautionary tone.
Legal Diction
Employs precise legal and financial terms—'quittance', 'acquittance'—to reinforce the seriousness and universality of moral and social obligations.
Paradox
Suggests the counterintuitive truth that acts of mercy or patience, though virtuous, do not themselves fulfill the requirements of justice or closure.
Transcription
Quotations
But souffrance is no quittance in this dayment.
Forbearance is no payment.
[As in 1578 Flor.].
But forberance is no acquittance, another time wele do it I warrant thee.
I learne that reuenge deferd is not quittanst: that though God suffer the wicked for a time yet hee paies home at length.
But to forbeare doth not forgiue the det.
You haue most learnedly prouerbde it, commending the uertue of patience or forbearance, but yet you knowe forbearance is no quittance.
But will you haue me say my fantasie, Quod differtur, non aufertur. For assuredly the Gentleman will neuer hold himselfe quiet, Till once more he come to taste of this dyet.
(acquittance).
(acquittance).
Ther is a saying Quod differtur non aufertur.
[Man] soon shall find Forbearance no acquittance ere day end.
(acquittance).
(Acquittance).
Shakespeare Citations
But that's all one: omittance is no quittance.
Cross References
- See St., no. 2312.
- T150 The thing that is fristed is not forgiven.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.