Someone will say you spoke badly about them. Think about whether you spoke badly about them first. Think about how many people you've talked badly about yourself. Let's not assume that others are wronging us. Maybe they're just paying us back for something we did to them. Some people act with good intentions. Some act because they have to. Some act because they don't know better. Even the person who hurts us on purpose — let's believe he didn't do it just to hurt us. Maybe he was trying to be clever or funny. Maybe he did what he did not because he hates us, but because he couldn't succeed without pushing us down.
Some one will be said to have spoken ill of you: think whether you did not first speak ill of him: think of how many persons you have yourself spoken ill. Let us not, I say, suppose that others are doing us a wrong, but are repaying one which we have done them, that some are acting with good intentions, some under compulsion, some in ignorance, and let us believe that even he who does so intentionally and knowingly did not wrong us merely for the sake of wronging us, but was led into doing so by the attraction of saying something witty, or did whatever he did, not out of any spite against us, but because he himself could not succeed unless he pushed us back.