Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“How far better is it to heal an injury than to avenge it?”
- Source
- Of Anger, Book III
- Date
- c. 45
- English wording
- Aubrey Stewart — Translator · from Latin
Meaning of “How far better is it to heal an…”
The question contrasts repair with retaliation: vengeance keeps attention fixed on the original wound, whereas healing aims to end the chain of injury rather than reproduce it.
Where does it come from?
On Anger, Book III, section XXVII, Aubrey Stewart’s 1889 translation in Minor Dialogues Together with the Dialogue on Clemency, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #64576 and the complete Wikisource Book III transcription. “How far better is it to heal an injury than to avenge it?” opens section XXVII on printed page 146, immediately introducing Seneca’s argument that revenge prolongs and multiplies injury. The passage remains historical Stoic moral philosophy rather than a clinical claim about trauma or treatment.
