Heinrich Heine on Forgiveness

Blinded by its brilliant exterior, some poor souls will choose tyranny, and only when it is too late will they discover that they are devouring their own children and committing a great number of other atrocities. They will whine and cry and extol their misery, but this will all be for naught: their choice is irrevocable, and the demon into whose power they have fallen will not fail to order all affairs so as to assure that the children in fact are eaten and the other horrors are done, no matter how great the disgust that penetrates them over the accomplishment of their unhappy lot.

–Christoph Martin Wieland, Aristipp and Some of His Contemporaries: A Novel in Letters, bk 4, ch 8, sec iv (1800)(S.H. transl.)