• There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world,--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blowpipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his fault into him; and when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then--they forgive him.

    Henry Ward Beecher: There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world,--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blowpipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his fault into him; and when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then--they forgive him.
    Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.72