544.) For man cannot endure the insolence of those who praise themselves and repeat their own exploits, unless the company desires it and they are forced to a relation; therefore it tickles them to be asked about their embassies and administrations of the commonwealth, if they have done anything notable in either.

And upon this account the envious and ill-natured start very few questions of that they sort; that thwart and hinder all such kind of motions, being very unwilling to give any occasion or opportunity for that discourse which shall tend to the advantage of the relater.

In short, we please those to whom we put them, when we start questions about those matters which their enemies hate to hear.
Ulysses says to Alcinous, You bid me tell what various ills I bore, That the sad tale might make me grieve the more.
(Sophocles, "Oedipus at Colonus," 510.) And Oedipus says to the chorus, 'Tis pain to raise again a buried grief.
("Odyssey," ix.

12.) But Euripides on the contrary, How sweet it is, when we are lulled in ease, To think of toils!--when well, of a disease! (Euripides, "Andromeda," Frag.

131.) True indeed, but not to those that are still tossed, still under a misfortune.