"'Let us examine brothers, how it is that at one time a man hears disparaging remark and passes it by without being disturbed, as if he had hardly heard it, and at another time he hears it and is immediately disturbed. What is the reason for such a difference? Is there only one reason for this difference or are there many? I see many proximate causes for this state of affairs, but there is one thing, one might say, which is the basic generating cause of them all. First, it happens when a man is at prayer or spiritually at rest and being, as one might say, in a good disposition he bears with his brother and is not disturbed. Again it may happen that he has a special affection for the someone who attacks him and for this he will suffer without difficulty anything that person does to him. Then there is the person who disdains the one who wants to cause him pain and despises what he does, and does not treat him as a man or attribute any meaning to what. is said or done by him."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dorotheus_of_Gaza