If a bee stings you, will you go to the hive and destroy it? Would not a thousand come upon you? If you receive a trifling injury, do not go about proclaiming it, or be anxious to avenge it. Let it drop. It is wisdom to say little respecting the injuries you may have received.
—Anonymous
Slight small injuries, and they will become none at all.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
No man is hurt but by himself.
—Diogenes Laertius (f.3rd Century CE) Biographer of the Greek Philosophers
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
—Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist
To live is to hurt others, and through others, to hurt oneself. Cruel earth! How can we manage not to touch anything? To find what ultimate exile?
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
When a man’s life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men’s actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
Christianity commands us to pass by injuries; policy, to let them pass by us.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries!—what worthy man does not keep those in mind?
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
The injuries we do, and those we suffer, are seldom weighed in the same balance.
—Charles Simmons (1924–2017) American Editor, Novelist
Where there is injury let me sow pardon.
—Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) Italian Monk, Founder of the Franciscan Order
The public has more interest in the punishment of an injury than the one who receives it.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Sympathy for victims is always counter-balanced by an equal and opposite feeling of resentment towards them.
—Ben Elton (b.1959) English Comedian, Writer
He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
If men wound you with injuries, meet them with patience: hasty words rankle the wound, soft language dresses it, forgiveness cures it, and oblivion takes away the scar. It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.
—Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) English Dramatist
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
—Marcus Aurelius (121–180) Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher
There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds—not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but—a hatred of all injury.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
The injuries of life, if rightly improved, will be to us as the strokes of the statuary on his marble, forming us to a more beautiful shape, and making us fitter to adorn the heavenly temple.
—Cotton Mather (1662–1728) American Clergyman
Don’t agonize. Organize.
—Florynce Kennedy (1916–2000) American Lawyer, Civil Rights Leader, Feminist, Activist
An injury unanswered, in time grows weary of itself and dies away in voluntary remorse. In bad dispositions, capable of no restraint but fear, it has a different effect; the silent digestion of one wrong provokes a second.
—Laurence Sterne (1713–68) Irish Anglican Novelist, Clergyman
The purpose of an injury is to vex and trouble me.—Now, nothing can do that to him that is truly valiant.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
The troubles of the young are soon over; they leave no external mark. If you wound the tree in its youth the bark will quickly cover the gash; but when the tree is very old, peeling the bark off, and looking carefully, you will see the scar there still. All that is buried is not dead.
—Olive Schreiner (1855–1920) South African Writer, Feminist
Everyone suffers wrongs for which there is no remedy.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
The marks you receive in the school of experience are mostly bruises.
—Unknown
Once victim, always victim—that’s the law.
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English Novelist, Poet
No one likes having offended another person; hence everyone feels so much better if the other person doesn’t show he’s been offended. Nobody likes being confronted by a wounded spaniel. Remember that. It is much easier patiently—and tolerantly—to avoid the person you have injured than to approach him as a friend. You need courage for that.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
To willful men, the injuries that they themselves procure, must be their schoolmasters.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us, than the powerful whom we have injured. That conduct will be continued by our fears which commenced in our resentment. He that has gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion will not feel himself quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist