מוסר אויף משלי 17:14

And this is a great principle: if there is contention between people or between husband and wife, and one was the one who “opened the waters” initiating the argument [i.e. opened the floodgates for further contention] (Proverbs 17:14), and went out of line and opened his mouth without restraint, even if he can overpower his opponent, he should not say a word at the time of his anger, whether good or bad. Rather, wait until the time passes, and after a day or two admonish him in-person peacefully and fairly and with calm language, and say to him: why have you done this? What is my crime or sin that you have pursued me with more and more anger though I have no violence in my hands? Is this good in the eyes of G-d? And similar good words. One who does this loves peace and pursues peace [see Pirkei Avot 1:12] , and “there was peace in his army and tranquility in his palaces” [see Psalms 122:7]. They are the pillars of the world. As our Rabbis of blessed memory say (Chullin 89a) on the verse (Job 26:7) “he hangs the world on nothing [blima]”, that the world stands on he who restrains [bolem] his mouth during an argument, for by this the argument will be barren, not giving birth [to further conflict].

One must make great efforts to avoid personal strife. If a quarrel is in the offing, one must immediately strive to remove the cause of such quarrel, as our sages said in Sanhedrin 7 when commenting on Proverbs 17,14: פוטר מים ראשית מדון, "Starting a quarrel is like opening a sluice." Abraham demonstrated this virtue when he said to Lot: "let there not develop a quarrel between us." I detect a special meaning in Abraham employing the feminine form for the word strife, i.e. מריבה, although the Torah had already reported a "strong" quarrel, ריב, having occurred between their respective shepherds (Genesis 13,7). Abraham considered מריבה as a development of ריב. He considered the "fruit" of ריב to be מריבה. The latter word is akin to מתרבה, "constantly increasing." Since women produce children, he used the female form of the word ריב, i.e מריבה, in order to allude to the peculiarity of quarrels which keep increasing. He viewed ריב as something masculine, unable to give birth.