Laudator Temporis Acti

John Andrews, To The Detracted, lines 1-8, from The Anatomy of Baseness (1615), as printed in Norman Ault, Elizabethan Lyrics from the Original Texts (1949; rpt. New York: Capricorn Books, 1960), p. 461:

Though wolves against the silver moon do bark,
  They blemish not her brightness; nor the spite
Of bawling curs, which she disdains to mark,
  Can any whit eclipse her of her light.
So may'st thou slight the railing of ill tongues
  If a clear shining conscience be thy guard,
Which, to defend thee from the worst of wrongs,
  Will, as a wall of brass, be found as hard.

Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus 1.25.29 (tr. W.A. Oldfather):

Why, what is this matter of being reviled? Take your stand by a stone and revile it; and what effect will you produce? If, then, a man listens like a stone, what profit is there to the reviler? But if the reviler has the weakness of the reviled as a point of vantage, then he does accomplish something.

ἐπεὶ τί ἐστιν αὐτὸ τὸ λοιδορεῖσθαι; παραστὰς λίθον λοιδόρει: καὶ τί ποιήσεις; ἂν οὖν τις ὡς λίθος ἀκούῃ, τί ὄφελος τῷ λοιδοροῦντι; ἂν δ᾽ ἔχῃ τὴν ἀσθένειαν τοῦ λοιδορουμένου ὁ λοιδορῶν ἐπιβάθραν, τότε ἀνύει τι.