What is clever and what it stupid?

I guess that's the question on any sane and intelligent human being's mind these days. What do they say what's the clever thing to do when someone is baiting you?

St Isaac the Syrian wrote in the Seventh Century: "It is not the way of the compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction in punishment for things of which He knew even before they were fashioned, aware how they would turn out when He created them, and whom nonetheless He created."