SENECA ON ANGER
The wise man will not be angry with wrongdoers. Why? Because he knows that the wise man is not born but made, he knows that very, very few turn out wise in the whole expanse of time, because he has come to recognize the terms that define human life—and no sane man becomes angry with nature. That would be as pointless as choosing to wonder why fruit doesn’t hang on woodland briars, or why brambles and thorn bushes aren’t filled with some useful fruit. No one becomes angry when nature defends the vice. And so the wise man—calm and even-tempered in the face of error, not an enemy of wrongdoers but one who sets them straight— leaves his house daily with this thought in mind: “I will encounter many people who are devoted to drink, many who are lustful, many who are ungrateful, many who are greedy, many who are driven by the demons of ambition.” All such behavior she will regard as kindly as a doctor does his own patients. When a man’s ship is taking on a lot of water, as the joins buckle and gape on every side, he surely doesn’t become angry with the sailors and the ship itself, does he? Rather, he runs to help—keeping the water out here, bailing it out there, plugging the gaps he can see, working constantly to counter the unseen gaps that invisibly draw water into the bilge—and he doesn’t leave off just because more water takes the place of all the water he drains. Prolonged assistance is needed against constant and prolific evils, not so they cease, but so they don’t gain the upper hand.
An objection: “Anger is useful because it keeps you from being despised and frightens off the wicked.” In the first place, if anger is as powerful as it is threatening, it’s also hated, on account of the very fact that it arouses fear; but it’s more dangerous to be feared than to be despised. On the other hand, if it’s impotent, it’s more vulnerable to contempt and doesn’t escape mockery; for what’s more feeble than anger huffing and puffing to no purpose?In the second place, it’s not the case that certain things are more powerful for being frightening, and I wouldn’t want a wise man to be told that being feared, which is part of a wild beast’s armory, is also a weapon for the wise. Fever, the gout, a bad sore are all feared, aren’t they? But there’s not a drop of good in those things, is there? Quite the contrary, all things that are despised, disgusting, and base are for that very reason feared. Thus anger is ugly per se and not at all formidable, but it’s feared by many as an ugly mask is feared by infants.
(From Seneca, “On Anger,” in Lucius AnnaeusSeneca, Anger, Mercy, Revenge, translated by Robert A. Kaster and Martha C. Nussbaum [Chicago, IL: The University of Chicao Press, 2010], pp. 41-42.)
SENECA ON TRANQUILITY
. . . [P]erhaps you have fallen into some area of life that is difficult, and without your realizing it your public or private fortune has caught you in a noose which you can neither untie nor burst: reflect that prisoners at first find the weights and shackles on their legs hard to bear, but subsequently, once they have determined to endure them rather than chafe against them, necessity teaches them to bear them bravely, habit to bear them easily. In whatever sort of life you choose you will find there are delights and relaxations and pleasures, if you are willing to regard your evils as light rather than to make the objects of hatred. In no respect has Nature done us a greater service, who, as she knew into what tribulations we were born, devised habit as a means of alleviating disasters, swiftly making us grow accustomed to the worst sufferings. No one would endure adversity if throughout its duration it retained the same force as when it first struck. We are all chained to Fortune: for some of us the chain is of gold and loose-fitting, for others, tight and of base metal, but what does it matter? All men are held fast in the same captivity, even those who have bound others have themselves been bound, unless you happen to think that a chain on the left-hand wrist is lighter. One man is held fast by public office, another by wealth; some are weighed down by their aristocratic birth, others by their humble origins; some are subject to another's supreme authority, others to their own; some are kept in one place by exile, others by a priesthood: all life is servitude. A man should therefore grow accustomed to his state and complain about it as little as possible, seizing upon whatever good it may have: no condition is so distressing that a balanced mind cannot find some comfort in it. Small spaces often reveal many different uses when a planner exercises his skill, and careful arrangement will make a place quite habitable, however small its dimensions. Apply reason to difficulties: what is hard can be softened, what is narrow can be expanded, and heavy loads can be less of a burden on the shoulders when borne skilfully. We should not, moreover, dispatch our desires on some distant quest but should grant them access to what is near at hand, since they cannot tolerate being confined altogether. Let us abandon those things that either cannot be done or can only be done with difficulty, and let us pursue what lies close to us and mocks our hope, but let us realize that all of them are equally unimportant, different to look at externally but inside equally futile. And let us not envy those who stand on a higher station: what appeared as heights are precipices.
(From Seneca, “On the Tranquility of the Mind,” in Dialogues and Essays, translated by John Davie [New York: Oxford, 2007, pp. 127-28)