C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Abuse
Abuse is the weapon of the vulgar.
It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.
The weak resort of cowardice.
The bitter clamour of two eager tongues.
It is the wit, the policy, of sin to hate those men whom we have abused.
A calumnious abuse, too often repeated, becomes so familiar to the ear as to lose its effect.
There is a time when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will neither draw reverence nor obtain protection.
Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence. His name, like a shuttlecock, must be beat backward and forward, or it falls to the ground.
There are more people abusive to others than lie open to abuse themselves; but the humor goes round, and he that laughs at me to-day will have somebody to laugh at him to-morrow.
I never yet heard man or woman much abused, that I was not inclined to think the better of them; and to transfer any suspicion or dislike to the person who appeared to take delight in pointing out the defects of a fellow-creature.
Remember that it is not he who gives abuse or blows who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting. When, therefore, any one provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you.
It has been shrewdly said, that when men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve; and still more rare to despise praise which we do.