¶20. If you want, or rather intend, to take a splinter out of another person, then do not hack at it with a stick instead of a lancet, for you will only drive it in deeper. And this is a stick - rude speech and rough gestures. And this is a lancet - tempered instruction and patient reprimand. ‘Reprove,’ says the Apostle, ‘rebuke, exhort,’ but he did not say ‘beat.’ And if even this is a required, do it rarely, and not with your own hand.
¶19. It is bad to disturb the eye of the heart by anger, according to him who said: ‘Through wrath is mine eye become troubled.’ But it is still worse to show in words the turmoil of the soul. And to come to blows is utterly inimical and alien to the monastic, angelic and divine life.
¶11. An angry person is a willing epileptic, who due to an involuntary tendency keeps convulsing and falling down.
¶12. Nothing is so inappropriate to those repenting as a spirit agitated by anger, because conversion requires great humility, and anger is a sign of every kind of presumption.
¶13. It is a mark of extreme meekness, even in the presence of one’s offender, to be peacefully and lovingly disposed towards him in one’s heart, then it is certainly a mark of hot temper when a person continues to quarrel and rage against his offender, both by words and gestures, even when by himself.
