(no subject)

So natural is it for most men to be more galled by bitter words than hostile acts; since insolence is harder for them to bear than injury. Besides, defensive acts are tolerated in an enemy as a necessary right, but insults are thought to spring from an excess of hatred or baseness.

--- Plutarch, the Lives. Timolean 32.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Timoleon*.html