How few men are presiding in criminal trials who would not be convicted under the very law they cite in such trials? How few prosecutors are free from blame? And I should not be surprised if the greatest reluctance to grant pardon is shown by the one who again and again has had reason to ask for it. We have all done wrong, some in serious things, some in trifling, some out of deliberate intention, some by chance impulse or because another’s wickedness carried us away. Some of us have not stood strongly enough by good intentions, and against our will have lost our innocence, still trying to hold onto it. And not only have we done wrong but we shall continue to do so, right to the end of our days. Even if a man exists who has so completely cleansed his mind now that nothing can confound or betray him any more, it is still through doing wrong that he has reached his state of blamelessness.

From Seneca’s “On Mercy” in Dialogues and Essays, translated by John Davie, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 194.