Stoic Meditations

While you are angry, you ought not to be allowed to do anything. Why?, do you ask? Because when you are angry there is nothing that you do not wish to be allowed to do. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

It is said that Socrates when he was given a box on the ear, merely said that it was a pity a man could not tell when he ought to wear his helmet out walking. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Do something that relaxes you, change your environment to make it soothing, and most importantly don't engage in anything major if you are tired, stressed, or hungry. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

We should live with the quietest and easiest-tempered persons, not with anxious or with sullen ones: for our own habits are copied from those with whom we associate. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Anger pays a penalty at the same moment that it exacts one: it forswears human feelings. The latter urge us to love, anger urges us to hatred: the latter bid us do good, anger bids us do harm. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Other vices affect our judgment, anger affects our sanity. Its intensity is in no way regulated by its origin: for it rises to the greatest heights from the most trivial beginnings. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Men, frantic with rage, call upon heaven to slay their children, to reduce themselves to poverty, and to ruin their houses, and yet declare that they are not either angry or insane. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

If anyone is angry with you, meet their anger by returning benefits for it: a quarrel which is only taken up on one side falls to the ground: it takes two people to fight. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Revenge and retaliation are words which men use and even think to be righteous, yet they do not greatly differ from wrong-doing. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

People think some things unjust because they ought not to suffer them, and some because they did not expect to suffer them: we think what is unexpected is beneath our deserts. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Is it a good person who has wronged you? Do not believe it. Is it a bad one? Do not be surprised at this; by their sin they have already punished themselves. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Someone will be said to have spoken ill of you; think whether you did not first speak ill of them; think of how many persons you have yourself spoken ill. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

We are so foolish that we actually get angry at inanimate objects, who neither deserve nor feel our anger. But in fact, no one deserves our anger: not animals, not children, and not even adults. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Often the pretense of passion will do what the passion itself could not have done. Sometimes, it may be effective to fake anger. Just don't make the mistake of actually becoming angry. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

We need a long-breathed struggle against permanent and prolific evils; not, indeed, to quell them, but merely to prevent their overpowering us. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

To avoid being angry with individuals, you must pardon the whole mass, you must grant forgiveness to the entire human race. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

The Stoics’ opinion is that anger can venture upon nothing by itself, without the approval of mind. It follows that we are in charge, not whatever circumstances happen to trigger our initial reactions. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Reason wishes to give a just decision; anger wishes its decision to be thought just. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Seneca uses Aristotle's own analogy between negative emotions and weapons to show that it is flawed: we control our weapons, but destructive emotions control us. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

People who do wrong should be treated like sick patients. By all means, restrain them if they are liable to hurt others. But do not be angry with them. They need help. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support