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Who really said it

He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself

Not William Shakespeare — actually Seneca the Younger Seneca the Younger c. 4 BC – AD 65 · Roman Stoic philosopher & statesman
Disputed Free to reuse

This is not Shakespeare. It comes from the Roman Stoic Seneca the Younger, in his essay On Anger (De Ira), Book III, ch. 5, where he argues that revenge only admits you were wounded. The much-shared “thee … thyself” wording is an older English rendering of Seneca’s Latin; the standard scholarly translation by Aubrey Stewart (1900) reads “He who has hurt you must be either stronger or weaker than yourself. If he be weaker, spare him: if he be stronger, spare yourself ↗.”

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself” Seneca the Younger, On Anger (De Ira), Book III, ch. 5 — not William Shakespeare.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to William Shakespeare. Use the credit shown above instead.

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In context

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Provenance

The real source

Work
On Anger (De Ira), Book III, ch. 5
Author
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – AD 65)
Written
c. AD 41–52 (Latin)
Translation
Popular “thee/thyself” wording is an older, pre-1931 English rendering; cf. Aubrey Stewart, 1900

“He who has hurt you must be either stronger or weaker than yourself. If he be weaker, spare him: if he be stronger, spare yourself.”

Aubrey Stewart’s 1900 translation of the passage. The circulating “He who has injured thee … spare thyself” version is an older English rendering of the same Latin sentence (“si inbecillior, parce illi, si potentior, tibi”).

Seneca, Of Anger, Book III (Aubrey Stewart trans., Wikisource)

How we verified this

Public domain

Seneca’s Latin De Ira (1st century AD) is long in the public domain, and the archaic “thee/thyself” English wording is an old (pre-1931) translation. The standard scholarly English translation quoted here, Aubrey Stewart’s 1900 version, is also public domain in the United States.

Fact-check

How Shakespeare got the credit

This is a genuine Seneca line that has drifted onto Shakespeare’s name on quote sites and social media — a classic case of a wise-sounding aphorism migrating to the most famous name available.

William Shakespeare Misattributed

Numerous quote aggregators file the line under Shakespeare with no play, sonnet or line reference — e.g. Quotefancy ↗ and Quotes.net ↗. It appears in none of Shakespeare’s works; the archaic “thee/thyself” diction is from a translation of Latin, not Elizabethan English verse.

The words are Seneca’s, from On Anger (De Ira), Book III, ch. 5 ↗ — a Stoic argument against revenge, rendered into older English and later mis-tagged to Shakespeare.

Context

Why it mattered

In On Anger, Seneca urges that retaliation is beneath a person of real magnitude: to avenge an insult is to concede you were hurt by it. The line sits inside his larger case that anger is a voluntary, ruinous passion best refused outright.

The logic is deliberately tidy: whoever wronged you was either weaker or stronger; the weak deserve mercy, and against the strong, restraint spares you the greater damage of escalation.

If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Of Anger, Book III (Wikisource)en.wikisource.org

Aubrey Stewart’s public-domain translation containing the passage.
Seneca, Dialogues (Standard Ebooks)standardebooks.org

Clean full text of Seneca’s dialogues, including On Anger, in the Stewart translation.
De Ira (Wikipedia)en.wikipedia.org

Background on Seneca’s essay On Anger and its three books.
Seneca the Younger (Wikiquote)en.wikiquote.org

Sourced collection of Seneca quotations for cross-checking.
WIST — Seneca the Youngerwist.info

Sourced quotation database crediting the line to On Anger.
Minor Dialogues (Project Gutenberg)gutenberg.org

Full public-domain text of Seneca’s minor dialogues including On Anger.

The author

About Seneca the Younger

Seneca the Younger

c. 4 BC – AD 65 · Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman & dramatist

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and tragedian who served as tutor and adviser to the emperor Nero. His moral essays and Letters to Lucilius are cornerstones of practical Stoicism. De Ira (“On Anger”), the three-book dialogue this line comes from, is his sustained argument that anger is a destructive and avoidable passion.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

On Anger (De Ira), Book III

Seneca, “On Anger” (De Ira), Book III, ch. 5, in Minor Dialogues Together with the Dialogue On Clemency, trans. Aubrey Stewart (London: George Bell and Sons, 1900). Popular “thee/thyself” wording is an older, unattributed English rendering.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/he-who-has-injured-thee-was-either-stronger-or-weaker-than

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