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Aesop's Fables, translated by Laura Gibbs (2002)

582. THE BALD MAN AND THE FLY
Perry 525 (Phaedrus 5.3)

A bald man was bitten on the head by a fly and when he tried to swat the fly he gave himself a serious slap on the head. Then the fly laughed at the man and said, 'You wanted to avenge the sting of a tiny little insect by committing murder: what are you going to do to yourself now that you have added insult to your injury?' The man replied, 'I can easily forgive myself since I know that I did not try to hurt myself on purpose. As for you, you worthless creature, spawn of a loathsome race of insects who delight in drinking human blood, I would be glad to get rid of you even if it required an even greater inconvenience to myself!'
This shows that a person who commits an accidental crime should be pardoned, while the person who injures someone else on purpose should, in my opinion, be punished as fully as possible.

Source: Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura Gibbs. Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.