Defiance provokes an enemy. [ Proverb ]

Every sin provokes its punishment. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

Beauty provokes thieves sooner than gold. [ William Shakespeare ]

The crow, stript of its stolen colours, provokes our ridicule. [ Horace ]

While his off-heel, insidiously aside. Provokes the caper which he seems to chide. [ Sheridan ]

If anger is not restrained, it is frequently more hurtful to us, than the injury that provokes it. [ Seneca ]

Remember that it is not he who gives abuse or blows who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting. When, therefore, any one provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you. [ Epictetus ]

His tongue, like the tail of Samson's foxes, carries firebrands, and is enough to set the whole field of the world on a flame. Himself begins table-talk of his neighbor at another's board, to whom he bears the first news, and adjures him to conceal the reporter; whose choleric answer he returns to his first host, enlarged with a second edition; so as it used to be done in the fight of unwilling mastiffs, he claps each on the side apart, and provokes them to an eager conflict. [ Bishop Hall ]