Didymus the Blind : The end of words is more likely to be good than their beginning.… A speech is given in order to actualize something.… Oftentimes someone who teaches has with patience led someone who is not highly intelligent to learning. He does not give up after the first or second admonition but tries to heal him in every case. Such a patient teacher is better than an arrogant one, or someone proud in spirit. — COMMENTARY ON Ecclesiastes 204:22 Jerome : "Surely oppression makes a wise man mad; and a gift destroys the heart. "Now see the wise man as if regarding profit, according to that passage which says, "accuse the wise and he will love you" [Prov. 9, 8.]. Wise, or even having completed his training, he knows no accusation, and is perturbed by no disaster. We should use this verse if we see disaster befall a righteous and wise man, and he is perturbed by the unlawfulness of the judgement, and in that case when God does not come to his mind readily. Instead of this though the Septuagint, and Aquila and Theodotion interpret the phrase "destroys the heart" as "eutonias" "autou "that is 'his strength', or 'his vigour'. Symmachus says, "and "matthana" destroys his heart' (that is 'a gift'), using the Hebrew word in his interpretation, and making the same meaning as is written elsewhere: "gifts, too, blind the eyes of the wise". [Deut. 16, 19.] — Commentary on Ecclesiastes