The Stoics thought anger was one of the most damaging of the passions, and they wrote about it at length. Seneca gave it a whole book, On Anger. Marcus Aurelius kept coming back to it in his notebook. Epictetus argued that most of it rests on a mistake about what can harm us. Below are 18 of their lines on anger, each checked word for word against a public-domain translation, with the work and section so you can read them in context.
For the practical side, Seneca's techniques are laid out step by step in How to Let Go of Anger: Seneca's 16 Stoic Techniques. This page is the source lines themselves.
Seneca on anger
Some of the wisest of men have in consequence of this called anger a short madness: for it is equally devoid of self control, regardless of decorum, forgetful of kinship, obstinately engrossed in whatever it begins to do, deaf to reason and advice
Seneca, On Anger 1.1 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
Next, if you choose to view its results and the mischief that it does, no plague has cost the human race more dear
Seneca, On Anger 1.2 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
The best plan is to reject straightaway the first incentives to anger, to resist its very beginnings, and to take care not to be betrayed into it
Seneca, On Anger 1.8 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
This is why Socrates said to the slave, “I would strike you, were I not angry.” He put off the correction of the slave to a calmer season; at the moment, he corrected himself.
Seneca, On Anger 1.15 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
One of Seneca's most useful distinctions is between the first jolt you feel and the anger that follows it. The jolt is not yet anger. Anger is what happens when you accept the jolt as true and act on it:
the first confusion of a man’s mind when struck by what seems an injury is no more anger than the apparent injury itself: it is the subsequent mad rush, which not only receives the impression of the apparent injury, but acts upon it as true, that is anger
Seneca, On Anger 2.3 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
To avoid being angry with individuals, you must pardon the whole mass, you must grant forgiveness to the entire human race.
Seneca, On Anger 2.10 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
especially if he silently says to himself when each offence is committed: “I have done this very thing myself.”
Seneca, On Anger 2.28 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
The greatest remedy for anger is delay: beg anger to grant you this at the first, not in order that it may pardon the offence, but that it may form a right judgment about it
Seneca, On Anger 2.29 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
Anger will cease, and become more gentle, if it knows that every day it will have to appear before the judgment seat.
Seneca, On Anger 3.36 (trans. Aubrey Stewart), introducing his nightly review of the day
Let us rather pass the little remnant of our lives in peace and quiet: may no one loathe us when we lie dead.
Seneca, On Anger 3.43 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
Marcus Aurelius on anger
Marcus was an emperor dealing with difficult people every day. Several of his notes are reminders to himself about how to meet them.
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1 (trans. George Long)
nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1 (trans. George Long)
The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like [the wrong-doer].
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.6 (trans. George Long)
When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him, and wilt neither wonder nor be angry.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.26 (trans. George Long)
When thou art offended with any man’s shameless conduct, immediately ask thyself, Is it possible, then, that shameless men should not be in the world? It is not possible. Do not, then, require what is impossible.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.42 (trans. George Long)
consider how much more pain is brought on us by the anger and vexation caused by such acts than by the acts themselves, at which we are angry and vexed
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.18 (trans. George Long)
Epictetus on anger
Remember that foul words or blows in themselves are no outrage, but your judgement that they are so. So when any one makes you angry, know that it is your own thought that has angered you.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 20 (trans. P. E. Matheson)
Why, then, are we angry? Because we admire the goods of which these men rob us.
Epictetus, Discourses 1.18.11 (trans. W. A. Oldfather)
One way to use these
- Catch the jolt. Seneca's point in On Anger 2.3 is that the first flash is not yet anger. Notice it and name it: "That is the jolt." That small gap is where the choice sits.
- Buy time. "The greatest remedy for anger is delay" (On Anger 2.29). Do not send the message, make the call or say the thing until you have slept on it, or at least walked round the block.
- Ask Marcus's question. What did this person think was good when they did it (Meditations 7.26)? You do not have to agree with them. Seeing their reasoning usually turns anger into something closer to pity.
- Review it at night. Seneca reviewed his whole day every evening and asked where he had gone wrong (On Anger 3.36). One honest line in a notebook is enough.
For more sourced lines on every theme, see the main collection of Stoic quotes.
Sources
- Seneca, On Anger 1.1, 1.2, 1.8, 1.15, 2.3, 2.10, 2.28, 2.29, 3.36, 3.43, trans. Aubrey Stewart (1889).
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1, 6.6, 7.26, 9.42, 11.18, trans. George Long (1862).
- Epictetus, Enchiridion 20, trans. P. E. Matheson (1916); Discourses 1.18.11, trans. W. A. Oldfather (Loeb, 1925).
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