Stoic Manuals
A Stoic Anger Practice Manual
Work from first heat to delay, examination, perspective, and repair.
What this manual is for
Work from first heat to delay, examination, perspective, and repair. Work with one actual situation at a time; the aim is to practise judgment and conduct, not to guarantee an external result.
Read the primary-source anchors first, then use the sequence as a repeatable course of attention and action.
The sequence
1. Postponement / Time-Out. Let the involuntary first flash pass before you act. Use it when anger or urge.
2. Anger: The Ten Gifts. Run Marcus’s ten reminders before or after anger—not while obeying it. Use it when anger or resentment.
3. Making All People Your Teachers. Remove the sting from criticism and examine what is useful. Use it when criticism or defensiveness.
How to review the work
After the final step, record what belonged to your judgment and action, what remained outside your command, and what you would rehearse differently next time.
A review is evidence for the next practice, not a verdict on your worth.
Practice sequence
- 1Postponement / Time-Out
Let the involuntary first flash pass before you act.
- 2Anger: The Ten Gifts
Run Marcus’s ten reminders before or after anger—not while obeying it.
- 3Making All People Your Teachers
Remove the sting from criticism and examine what is useful.
Primary-text evidence
These excerpts are shown with their exact work locators. Read them as evidence for study, not as detached slogans.
“You ask me, whither does all this tend? To prove, I answer, that no one should imagine himself to be safe from anger, seeing that it rouses up even those who are naturally gentle and quiet to commit savage and violent acts. As strength of body and assiduous care of the health avail nothing against a pestilence, which attacks the strong and weak alike, so also steady and good-humoured people are just as liable to attacks of anger as those of unsettled character, and in the case of the former it is both more to be ashamed of and more to be feared, because it makes a greater alteration in their habits. Now as the first thing is not to be angry, the second to lay aside our anger, and the third to be able to heal the anger of others as well as our own, I…”
““But,” argues he, “against our enemies anger is necessary.” In no case is it less necessary; since our attacks ought not to be disorderly, but regulated and under control. What, indeed, is it except anger, so ruinous to itself, that overthrows barbarians, who have so much more bodily strength than we, and are so much better able to endure fatigue? Gladiators, too, protect themselves by skill, but expose themselves to wounds when they are angry. Moreover, of what use is anger, when the same end can be arrived at by reason? Do you suppose that a hunter is angry with the beasts he kills? Yet he meets them when they attack him, and follows them when they flee from him, all of which is managed by reason without anger. When so many thousands of Cimbri and…”
““Virtue,” argues our adversary, “ought to be angry with what is base, just as she approves of what is honourable.” What should we think if he said that virtue ought to be both mean and great; yet this is what he means, when he wants her to be raised and lowered, because joy at a good action is grand and glorious, while anger at another’s sin is base and befits a narrow mind: and virtue will never be guilty of imitating vice while she is repressing it; she considers anger to deserve punishment for itself, since it often is even more criminal than the faults which which it is angry. To rejoice and be glad is the proper and natural function of virtue: it is as much beneath her dignity to be angry, as to mourn: now, sorrow is the companion of anger, and…”