Stoic Books
Seneca’s On Anger
A sustained examination of anger’s beginnings, stories, delays, consequences, and remedies.
What this text offers
A sustained examination of anger’s beginnings, stories, delays, consequences, and remedies. Ask Stoics preserves this edition as a searchable public-domain source rather than presenting isolated quotations without context.
The library contains 100 passage records from this work, with locators and edition provenance.
How to study it
Begin with a live question, read more than the first matching excerpt, and compare the passage with its surrounding argument.
Then choose one existing practice that turns the distinction into a concrete act of attention, restraint, courage, justice, or review.
Questions to bring to the text
Search this work for anger, delay, revenge, and judgment. For each result, ask what claim is being made, what distinction supports it, and what kind of conduct follows.
Compare several passages before drawing a conclusion. The same word can serve a different part of an argument in another book, letter, or conversation.
From reading to practice
Write one sentence that preserves the author’s distinction in your own situation without turning the source into a slogan or an external promise.
Choose one act that remains yours—attention, assent, refusal, intention, speech, or conduct—and return afterward to the passage to test whether your reading held up.
Keep the locator beside your note. On the next reading, revise the note if the wider argument corrects or complicates your first interpretation.
Edition and provenance
Translation: Aubrey Stewart. Coverage: complete edition. Rights status: public domain in the launch territories.
The source link and locator attached to every excerpt let the reader return to the preserved edition.
Primary-text evidence
These excerpts are shown with their exact work locators. Read them as evidence for study, not as detached slogans.
“You have demanded of me, Novatus, that I should write how anger may be soothed, and it appears to me that you are right in feeling especial fear of this passion, which is above all others hideous and wild: for the others have some alloy of peace and quiet, but this consists wholly in action and the impulse of grief, raging with an utterly inhuman lust for arms, blood and tortures, careless of itself provided it hurts another, rushing upon the very point of the sword, and greedy for revenge even when it drags the avenger to ruin with itself. 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…”
“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: if it delays, it will come to an end. Do not attempt to quell it all at once, for its first impulses are fierce; by plucking away its parts we shall remove the whole. We are made angry by some things which we learn at second-hand, and by some which we ourselves hear or see. Now, we ought to be slow to believe what is told us. Many tell lies in order to deceive us, and many because they are themselves deceived. Some seek to win our favour by false accusations, and invent wrongs in order that they may appear angry at our having suffered them. One man lies out of spite, that he…”
“Instead of acting thus, why do you not rather draw together what there is of your short life, and keep it peaceful for others and for yourself? why do you not rather make yourself beloved by every one while you live, and regretted by every one when you die? Why do you wish to tame that man’s pride, because he takes too lofty a tone with you? why do you try with all your might to crush that other who snaps and snarls at you, a low and contemptible wretch, but spiteful and offensive to his betters? Master, why are you angry with your slave? Slave, why are you angry with your master? Client, why are you angry with your patron? Patron, why are you angry with your client? Wait but a little while. See, here comes death, who will make you all equals. We…”