What matters is not how someone hurts you, but how you handle it. I don't see why moderation should be so hard to practice. Even tyrants — whose success and freedom from punishment make them incredibly arrogant — have sometimes held back their savage impulses. There's a story about Pisistratus, the ruler of Athens. A drunk guest at his table started attacking him viciously for his cruelty. Many people there offered to grab the man and punish him. They said different things to try to make Pisistratus angry. But he stayed calm. He told the people urging him on that he was no more angry with this man than he would be with someone who bumped into him while wearing a blindfold.
It does not so much matter how an injury is done, as how it is borne; and I do not see how moderation can be hard to practise, when I know that even despots, though success and impunity combine to swell their pride, have sometimes restrained their natural ferocity. At any rate, tradition informs us that once, when a guest in his cups bitterly reproached Pisistratus, the despot of Athens, for his cruelty, many of those present offered to lay hands on the traitor, and one said one thing and one another to kindle his wrath, he bore it coolly, and replied to those who were egging him on, that he was no more angry with the man than he should be with one who ran against him blindfold.