War & Peace Quote by Francis Bacon

Revenge, Bacon implies, is bookkeeping: it restores a balance sheet, not a soul. “Even with his enemy” reduces retaliation to arithmetic, a grim little commerce that keeps you tethered to the person who wronged you. The jab is quiet but pointed: if your satisfaction comes from symmetry, you’re still letting your enemy set the terms of your emotional life.

Then comes the real flex: “passing it over” isn’t passive, it’s hierarchical. Bacon frames forgiveness (or, at least, restraint) as an assertion of rank. You don’t just refuse the blow-back; you demonstrate you’re not governed by the same compulsions, not forced into the predictable script of insult-and-response. It’s an argument for self-mastery dressed up as moral counsel, and it flatters the reader into choosing the nobler option by making it sound like power.

Context sharpens the edge. Bacon wrote as a court operator as much as a philosopher, in an England where vendettas, honor culture, and factional politics could ruin careers or end lives. In that world, revenge isn’t merely unethical; it’s strategically stupid. Public retaliation advertises wounded pride, escalates conflict, and invites counter-revenge. “Passing it over” reads like prudence for the ambitious: keep your hands clean, let time and institutions do the dirty work, and preserve the aura of authority.

The subtext is chillingly modern: the superior person isn’t the one who feels less anger, but the one who can afford not to act on it - and knows that composure itself is a form of dominance.