At the time when there was a council of a certain man, the council members were at the point of deciding that promotion was useless because of the fact that the man had previously been involved in a drunken brawl. But someone said, "If we were to cast aside every man who had made a mistake once, useful men could probably not be come by. A man who makes a mistake once will be considerably more prudent and useful because of his repentance. I feel that he should be promoted."
Someone else then asked, "Will you guarantee him?"
The man replied, "Of course I will."
The others asked, "By what will you guarantee him?"
And he replied, "I can guarantee him by the fact that he is a man who has erred once. A man who has never once erred is dangerous." This said, the man was promoted.
- Yamamoto Tsunetomo, The Hagakure (ch. 1 of the William Scott Wilson translation)
