1A prince usually punishes for one of two reasons: if he is avenging either himself or another. 1I shall first discuss the part which concerns himself; 1for it is harder to be moderate when vengeance is owed to resentment than when it is owed to example. 2It is superfluous at this point to warn him not to believe readily, to sift out the truth, to favour innocence, and to know, so that it may be plain, that the matter at stake is no less the defendant's than the judge's; 2for this belongs to justice, not to clemency; 2now we urge him, when he has been clearly wronged, to keep his mind under his control, and to remit the penalty if he can do so safely, or if not, to moderate it, and to be far more easily entreated in wrongs done to himself than in those done to others.
3For just as it is not the man who is generous with another's property who is great-souled, but the one who takes from himself what he gives to another, so I shall call clement not the man who is easy-going about another's pain, but the one who, though goaded by stings of his own, does not leap forward, who understands that it is the mark of a great soul to bear injuries when in supreme power, and that nothing is more glorious than a prince wronged with impunity.