Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the importance of perspective in arguments, encouraging reflection on the consequences of rage.
Seneca the Younger urges individuals to consider the gravity of their anger in disputes by inviting them to imagine the potential finality of the situationβif the person they are quarreling with were to die. This perspective can foster empathy and a more measured response, reminding us that conflicts can overshadow the value of human life and relationships.
Themes
AngerPerspectiveDisputeEmpathyReflection
In practice
Example use cases
In a conflict resolution workshop, this quote can illustrate the need for calm reflection.
More from Seneca The Younger
All quotes βNo tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.
Seneca The YoungerRead
To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Similar quotes
The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
Oscar WildeRead
I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.
George WillRead
The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good.' It is true that capitalism does -- if that catch-phrase has any meaning -- but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification for capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice
Ayn RandRead
April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.
Edward TellerRead
What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour?
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead