
Pittacus, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 1: The Seven Sages
As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius in Life of Pittacus, i. 76, citing Heraclitus as his source.
Pittacus made this remark to justify his release of his captured enemy Alcaeus.
According to William Shepard Walsh, in Handy-book of Literary Curiosities (1892), p. 392, Epictetus, quoting from the same source, gives the phrase thus: "Forgiveness is better than punishment; for the one is proof of a gentle, the other of a savage, nature."
Pittacus, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 1: The Seven Sages
“There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”
Source: Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873), p. 235 https://books.google.com/books?id=HJUIXmDzqPcC&pg=PA235
“Forgiveness is too easy. I can forget by indifference, but not forgive. I prefer revenge.”
“When a man steals your wife there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.”
Book of Humorous Quotations, ed. Connie Robertson (1998), page 83
“It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.”
Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1011
Sunni Hadith
“If you betray me, can I take a better revenge
Than to love the person you hate?”
Me puis-je mieux venger, si vous me trahissez,
Que d'aimer à vos yeux ce que vous haïssez?
Domitien, act IV, scene iii.
Tite et Bérénice (Titus and Berenice) (1670)