How do I stop being angry at people?

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Anger is a short madness, and you cannot argue with a madman while he is mad. So work on the interval. Each evening, as I did when my lungs let me sit up, review the day and find the one moment you flared. Ask what you expected of that person: that he be wiser than he is? Then tomorrow, before you leave the house, expect the fool in advance.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Why stop? Anger is a verdict that something mattered to you, and sometimes it is a good one. Ask instead what the anger is for. Spent at once, it clears the air like a thunderstorm. Hoarded, it turns to ressentiment, a slow poison you drink hoping the other falls ill. I carried my quarrel with Wagner for years. Let anger strike, then act or forget. Do not keep it as a pet.

Marcus Aurelius

Begin before the anger does, in the morning: today you will meet the meddler, the ungrateful, the liar. They do wrong because they do not know better. You have been the same. Avidius rose against me; I wished him no harm even then. Anger costs you more than the deed cost you. Take the wrong as it is, answer it rightly, and put down the heat.

Søren Kierkegaard

Anger is often a door we leave open so we need not enter the room behind it. In Copenhagen I could be furious at the whole street, the wit of the newspapers, the pious clergy, and the fury kept me from asking what I myself was failing to do. So I would not ask how to stop. Ask what the anger guards you from facing. That question is yours alone.

Michel de Montaigne

I never managed to stop, and I have given up thinking I should. What helped was smaller: I noticed anger is quickest when I am tired, hungry, or in pain from the stone. So I waited an hour. My servants, I confess, were spared a good many blows by my dinner arriving on time. Then I looked at the fellow again, and often found a man as muddled as myself, which is hard to stay angry at.

Questions people bring, and how Seneca, Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius, Kierkegaard and Montaigne answer them — each in his own way.

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