Whichever of these you wish to use, as you do elsewhere, to speed on your arrows in a contest of insults exchanged between us, choose the language that you prefer, for I am equally happy with them all, since I have learned them for exactly this purpose. And so will you, for you may fall, beaten, wishing you had not insulted me. Yet I'm not able to hope that the opposite had not occurred. Perhaps I would have been happy and glad if I could have enjoyed you to my heart's content, and perhaps I'd have been unhappy instead. So heaven refused to make my hours joyful and serene, to avoid reducing me soon after to the worst, most bitter pain.
Silence is bad, but action is worse.
Then indeed in my silence I saw him grow more and more insolent, and I'd almost say that it was I who made him that way. But if he has bones that withstand every test and any number of heavy club strokes, so his opponent finally tires of hitting him without having got what he deserves, at last he might so tire me out that I'd have armed myself for my despair. Silence is bad, but action is worse. Give me, my lord, your advice. And it's with great delight that I talk with those who know, so as to have further chances to learn, for if my fate allowed, I would gladly spend my entire life and pass all my time in the academies of talented men.