On Anger, Book 1, Section 19 — In Plain English

Seneca — The Senator

Don't believe that anger makes you noble. What it gives you isn't true greatness — it's just empty pride. When disease makes a body swell up, that's not healthy growth. It's just bloating. People who let madness lift them above normal human concerns think they're having profound, elevated thoughts. But there's nothing solid underneath. What you build without a foundation will collapse. Anger has no ground to stand on. It doesn't rise from anything firm or lasting. It's just windy and hollow — as far from true nobility as recklessness is from courage, as bragging is from confidence, as moodiness is from discipline, as cruelty is from being strict. There's a huge difference, I'm telling you, between a mind that's genuinely great and one that's just proud. Anger never creates anything grand or beautiful.

Seneca — The Senator Original

Neither ought it to be believed that anger contributes anything to magnanimity: what it gives is not magnanimity but vain glory. The increase which disease produces in bodies swollen with morbid humours is not healthy growth, but bloated corpulence. All those whose madness raises them above human considerations, believe themselves to be inspired with high and sublime ideas; but there is no solid ground beneath, and what is built without foundation is liable to collapse in ruin. Anger has no ground to stand upon, and does not rise from a firm and enduring foundation, but is a windy, empty quality, as far removed from true magnanimity as fool-hardiness from courage, boastfulness from confidence, gloom from austerity, cruelty from strictness. There is, I say, a great difference between a lofty and a proud mind: anger brings about nothing grand or beautiful.

Seneca — The Senator

When dealing with crime, he remembers that punishment has two purposes. One is to make bad people better. The other is to remove them from society. Either way, he looks to the future, not the past. As Plato said, "No wise man punishes someone because they sinned, but so they won't sin again. You can't change what's already happened, but you can prevent what's coming." When he wants to make examples of criminals to show that wickedness doesn't pay, he executes them publicly. Not just so they die, but so their deaths warn others not to follow the same path. You can see how calm and undisturbed a person must be when they have to weigh all these factors. When someone holds the power of life and death, they need the utmost care. Justice's sword doesn't belong in the hands of an angry man.

Seneca — The Senator Original

In all dealing with crime he will remember that the one form of punishment is meant to make bad men better, and the other to put them out of the way. In either case he will look to the future, not to the past: for, as Plato says, “no wise man punishes any one because he has sinned, but that he may sin no more: for what is past cannot be recalled, but what is to come may be checked.” Those, too, whom he wishes to make examples of the ill success of wickedness, he executes publicly, not merely in order that they themselves may die, but that by dying they may deter others from doing likewise. You see how free from any mental disturbance a man ought to be who has to weigh and consider all this, when he deals with a matter which ought to be handled with the utmost care, I mean, the power of life and death. The sword of justice is ill-placed in the hands of an angry man.