Anger

"Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason."

"Anyone can become angry, that is easy...but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way... this is not easy."

"To seek to extinguish Anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics."

"Be angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. Anger must be limited and confined both in race and in time."

"We will first speak how the natural inclination and habit to be angry may be attempered and calmed. Secondly, how the particular motions of anger may be repressed, or at least refrained from doing mischief. Thirdly, how to raise anger or appease anger in another. For the first; there is no other way but to meditate and ruminate well upon the effects of anger, how it troubles man's life. And the best time to do this, is to look back upon anger when the fit is thoroughly over. Seneca saith well, That anger is like ruin, which breaks itself upon that it falls."

"The Scripture exhorteth us To possess our souls in patience. Whosoever is out of patience, is out of possession of his soul."

"Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns; children, women, old folks, sick folks. Only men must beware that they carry their anger rather with scorn than with fear; so that they may seem rather to be above the injury than below it; which is a thing easily done, if a man will give law to himself in it."

"Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor."

"You know what scares me the most? Is that when it happens, when it comes over me and I totally lose control. I like it."

"Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry."

"WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God," "the day of wrath," etc. Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agency of some god for its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest. The Greeks before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the frying-pan of the wrath of Cryses into the fire of the wrath of Achilles, though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor roasted. A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom paid the penalty with their lives. God is now Love, and a director of the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster."

"There is nothing like just indignation for fostering unreasoning hate."

"Iratus semper plus putat posse facere quam possit."

"Great, strong, spiritual love — which is always at the same time a genuine, unsentimental love of man — cannot be without wrath. … Anger can no more be separated from love than flame and heat can from fire. Love and anger are a single fire of the Spirit."

"By doing this you are like a man who wants to hit another and picks up a burning ember or excrement in his hand and so first burns himself or makes himself stink."

"Dangers by being despised grow great."

"Nursing her wrath to keep it warm."

"We had relieved our own pain by inflicting it on others."

"How will he see to cast out the mote from his brother's eye, who has the beam of anger in his own eye?"

"Wrath that is nursed in the heart, although it may not injure men who stand by, yet excludes the splendour of the radiance of the Holy Ghost, equally with wrath that is openly manifested."

"Is it possible to understand what God's love means for the oppressed without making wrath an essential ingredient of that love? What could love possibly mean in a racist society except the righteous condemnation of everything racist? ... A God minus wrath seems to be a God who is basically not against anything."

"When anger rises, think of the consequences."

"Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turn'd. Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."

"Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools."

"Her wrath is a devastating flood which no one can withstand. A great watercourse, she abases those whom she despises. The mistress, a hurin bird who lets no one escape. Inana, a falcon preying on the gods."

"Anger is one of the sinews of the soul; he that wants it hath a maimed mind."

"I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world."

"I take a deep breath. Relax. Let go of your anger. Right. That never works for me, either."

"The Prophet ... remains always a man apart, a narrow-minded extremist, zealous for his own ideal, and intolerant of every other. And since he cannot have all that he would, he is in a perpetual state of anger and grief; he remains all his life "a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth." [Jeremiah 15:10] Not only this: the other members of society, those many-sided dwarfs, creatures of the general harmony, cry out after him, "The Prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad" [Hosea 9:7]; and they look with lofty contempt on his narrowness and extremeness."

"When a man is wrong, and won't admit it, he always gets angry."

"I have a friend who, whenever he becomes agitated, enters the breathing room in his home. He sits down respectfully, breathes in and out three times, invites the bell to sound, and recites the gatha. Immediately he feels better. If he needs to sit longer, he stays there. From time to time, while his wife is preparing dinner, she hears the sound of the bell, and it reminds her to be mindful in her work. At such times, she deeply appreciates her husband. "He is so wonderful, quite different from others. He knows how to deal with anger." If she has been irritated, her own resentment subsides. Sometimes she stops cutting vegetables and goes into the breathing room to sit with him. This picture is so lovely, more beautiful than an expensive painting."

"Doing things in this way has a good effect on everyone, teaching by example, not just with words. When your child is agitated, you don't have to say, "Go to that room!" You can take his or her hand and walk together into the room for breathing, and sit quietly together. This is the best education for peace."

"When you understand the roots of anger in yourself and in the other, your mind will enjoy true peace, joy and lightness"

"When you feel anger arising, remember to return to your breathing and follow it. The other person may see that you are practicing, and she may even apologize."

"Mr. President, I think that if you could allow yourself to cry like I did this morning, you will also feel much better. It is our brothers that we kill over there. They are our brothers, God tells us so, and we also know it. They may not see us as brothers because of their anger, their misunderstanding, and their discrimination. But with some awakening, we can see things in a different way, and this will allow us to respond differently to the situation. I trust God in you; I trust Buddha nature in you."

"If people are determined to be outraged, they will be outraged."

"Ira furor brevis est: animum rege: qui nisi paret imperat."

"Within each of us, ofttimes, there dwells a mighty and raging fury."

"David Banner: Mr. McGee! Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

"Anger narrowed the vision and made for foolish choices."

"Above all he did not content himself with hurling invectives for emotional release and then to retire into smug, passive satisfaction. History had taught him it is not enough for people to be angry—the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force."

"Negroes will be mentally healthier if they do not suppress rage but vent it constructively and its energy peacefully but forcefully to cripple the operations of an oppressive society."

"When you are angry, it means you, yourself are unhappy. Even if you are wronged, you are still making yourself unhappy if you feel anger."

"Don’t become angry over little things: there are enough big ones."

"Women respond to racism. My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also."

"Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change. And when I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile or feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in those assumptions underlining our lives."

"Anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification, for it is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies."

"Anger is loaded with information and energy."

"Any discussion among women about racism must include the recognition and the use of anger. This discussion must be direct and creative because it is crucial. We cannot allow our fear of anger to deflect us nor seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard work of excavating honesty; we must be quite serious about the choice of this topic and the angers entwined within it because, rest assured, our opponents are quite serious about their hatred of us and of what we are trying to do here. And while we scrutinize the often painful face of each other’s anger, please remember that it is not our anger which makes me caution you to lock your doors at night and not to wander the streets of Hartford alone. It is the hatred which lurks in those streets, that urge to destroy us all if we truly work for change rather than merely indulge in academic rhetoric. This hatred and our anger are very different. Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change."

"Women of Color in america have grown up within a symphony of anger, at being silenced, at being unchosen, at knowing that when we survive, it is in spite of a world that takes for granted our lack of humanness, and which hates our very existence outside of its service. And I say symphony rather than cacophony because we have had to learn to orchestrate those furies so that they do not tear us apart. We have had to learn to move through them and use them for strength and force and insight within our daily lives. Those of us who did not learn this difficult lesson did not survive. And part of my anger is always libation for my fallen sisters."

"Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change."

"It is not the anger of other women that will destroy us but our refusals to stand still, to listen to its rhythms, to learn within it, to move beyond the manner of presentation to the substance, to tap that anger as an important source of empowerment. I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts."

"When we turn from anger we turn from insight, saying we will accept only the designs already known, deadly and safely familiar. I have tried to learn my anger’s usefulness to me, as well as its limitations."

"The angers of women can transform difference through insight into power. For anger between peers births change, not destruction, and the discomfort and sense of loss it often causes is not fatal, but a sign of growth."

"My anger has meant pain to me but it has also meant survival, and before I give it up I’m going to be sure that there is something at least as powerful to replace it on the road to clarity."

"It is not the anger of Black women which is dripping down over this globe like a diseased liquid. It is not my anger that launches rockets, spends over sixty thousand dollars a second on missiles and other agents of war and death, slaughters children in cities, stockpiles nerve gas and chemical bombs, sodomizes our daughters and our earth. It is not the anger of Black women which corrodes into blind, dehumanizing power, bent upon the annihilation of us all unless we meet it with what we have, our power to examine and to redefine the terms upon which we will live and work; our power to envision and to reconstruct, anger by painful anger, stone upon heavy stone, a future of pollinating difference and the earth to support our choices."

"Anger — a passion of displeasure that may be excessive or misplaced but not necessarily harmful. [...] Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does."

"Sometimes it seems that anger alone keeps me alive; it burns with a bright and undiminished flame. Yet anger, like guilt, is an incomplete form of human knowledge. More useful than hatred, but still limited. Anger is useful to help clarify our differences, but in the long run, strength that is bred by anger alone is a blind force which cannot create the future. It can only demolish the past. Such strength does not focus upon what lies ahead, but upon what lies behind, upon what created it — hatred. And hatred is a deathwish for the hated, not a lifewish for anything else."

"Anger has been excluded from the dominant group's profile of subordinates. When one gets angry, according to Spelman, one regards the person whose conduct one assesses as one's equal. So, we can understand why anger has been excluded from the personality profile of the subordinate. In excluding anger from their personality profile, dominant groups exclude subordinates from the category of moral agents, since to be angry is to make oneself a judge and to express a standard against which one assesses the person's conduct, both of which are marks of a moral agent. In becoming angry, subordinates signal that they take themselves seriously; they believe they have the capacity as well as the right to be judges of those around them."

"From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."

"Hamlet, being a little mad, feigned madness. It is when I am angry that I pretend to be angry, so as to present the truth in an obvious and intelligible form."

"Do you know how you make someone into a Dalek? Subtract Love, add Anger."

"Their anger in darkness turning, unreleased, unspoken, it's mouth a red wound, its eyes hungry...hungry for the moon."

"Find the match deep inside yourself. Light it and let the fire burn up your guts and boil your blood!"

"Henry Ducard: I know the rage that drives you. That impossible anger strangling the grief, until the memory of your loved ones is just poison in your veins. And one day, you catch yourself wishing the person you loved had never existed, so you'd be spared your pain. I wasn't always here in the mountains. Once I had a wife, my great love. She was taken from me. Like you, I was forced to learn that there are those without decency that must be fought without hesitation, without pity. Your anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you, as it almost did me."

"Put away from yourselves every kind of malicious bitterness, anger, wrath, screaming, and abusive speech, as well as everything injurious."

"You husbands, keep on loving your wives and do not be bitterly angry with them."

"Let there be no hostility Except to those Who practice oppression."

"שְׁמַע בְּנִי מוּסַר אָבִיךָ, וְאַל תִּטֹּשׁ תּוֹרַת אִמֶּךָ תִּתְנַהֵג תָּמִיד לְדַבֵּר כָּל דְּבָרֶיךָ בְּנַחַת, לְכָל אָדָם וּבְכָל עֵת, וּבַזֶּה תִּנָּצֵל מִן הַכַּעַס, שֶׁהִיא מִדָּה רָעָה לְהַחְטִיא בְּנֵי אָדָם... וְכַאֲשֶׁר תִּנָּצֵל מִן הַכַּעַס, תַּעֲלֶה עַל לִבְּךָ מִדַּת הָעֲנָוָה, שֶׁהִיא מִדָּה טוֹבָה מִכָּל מִדּוֹת טוֹבוֹת... לְמַעַן תַּצְלִיחַ בְּכָל דְּרָכֶיךָ, וְתִזְכֶּה לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא הַצָּפוּן לַצַּדִּיקִים."

"There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man."

"The active hatreds rend and snarl at one another; at the bottom, the sullen hatreds lie gurgling, unable even to express themselves for the rage that chokes them."

"The relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the relationship of anger to fear is not always so apparent. Anger always involves projection of separation, which must ultimately be accepted as one's own responsibility, rather than being blamed on others. Anger cannot occur unless you believe that you have been attacked, that your attack is justified in return, and that you are in no way responsible for it."

"Never anger made good guard for itself."

"If I had a thunderbolt in mine eye, I can tell who should down."

"Being once chaf'd, he cannot Be rein'd again to temperance; then he speaks What's in his heart."

"Anger's my meat; I sup upon myself, And so shall starve with feeding."

"What, drunk with choler?"

"Anger is like A full-hot horse; who being allowed his way, Self-mettle tires him."

"What sudden anger's this? How have I reap'd it? He parted frowning from me, as if ruin Leap'd from his eyes: So looks the chafed lion Upon the daring huntsman that has gall'd him; Then makes him nothing."

"You are yoked with a lamb, That carries anger as the flint bears fire; Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark. And straight is cold again."

"Touch me with noble anger! And let not women's weapons, water drops, Stain my man's cheeks."

"The brain may devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel, the cripple."

"It engenders choler, planteth anger; And better 'twere that both of us did fast, Since, of ourselves, ourselves are choleric, Than feed it with such over-roasted flesh."

"Come not within the measure of my wrath."

"A mild answer turns away rage, but a harsh word stirs up anger."

"The insight of a man certainly slows down his anger, and it is beauty on his part to pass over transgression."

"A man prone to anger stirs up strife; anyone disposed to rage commits many transgressions."

"Since, Zoilus, you rage like a mad dog, and dart out your viper's tongue against everybody, and can never be quiet, and are always swelling like the frog, I wonder you too don't burst."

"A man raising his hand in anger does not see clearly."

"Madame says when we focus on our anger, our vision begins to constrict. Soon we are caught up in fury, and we turn it upon everyone."

"Senseless, and deformed, Convulsive Anger storms at large; or pale, And silent, settles into fell revenge."

"The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life....The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. p. 25"

"Be the ever-alert guardian of your inner space. You need to be present enough to be able to watch the pain-body directly and feel its energy. It then cannot control your thinking. The moment your thinking is aligned with the energy field of the painbody, you are identified with it and again feeding it with your thoughts....For example, if anger is the predominant energy vibration of the pain-body and you think angry thoughts, dwelling on what someone did to you or what you are going to do to him or her, then you have become unconscious, and the pain-body has become "you." Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath. Or when a dark mood comes upon you and you start getting into a negative mind-pattern and thinking how dreadful your life is, your thinking has become aligned with the pain-body, and you have become unconscious and vulnerable to the pain-body's attack. "Unconscious," the way that I use the word here, means to be identified with some mental or emotional pattern. It implies a complete absence of the watcher. p. 29-30"

"Even such a seemingly trivial and “normal” thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong—defending the mental position with which you have identified—is due to the fear of death... So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. p. 32"

"Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry, or hard-done-by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane."

"All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another. All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two words are almost synonymous. Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal despair. Sometimes the resistance triggers the emotional pain-body, in which case even a minor situation may produce intense negativity, such as anger, depression, or deep grief. The ego believes that through negativity it can manipulate reality and get what it wants. It believes that through it, it can attract a desirable condition or dissolve an undesirable one."

"There are things that must evoke our anger to show we care. It is what we do with that anger. If we direct that energy we can use it positively or destructively."

"Usually, when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change."

"I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow."

"Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth, And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny, and youth is vain; And to be wrothe with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain."

"Beware the fury of a patient man."

"A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger."

"Anger seeks its prey,— Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw, Likes not to go off hungry, leaving Love To feast on milk and honeycomb at will."

"Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath."

"Craignez la colère de la colombe."

"Anger, which, far sweeter than trickling drops of honey, rises in the bosom of a man like smoke."

"Fœnum habet in cornu."

"Trahit ipse furoris Impetus, et visum est lenti quæsisse nocentem."

"Nemo me impune lacessit."

"Quamlibet infirmas adjuvat ira manus."

"Ut fragilis glacies interit ira mora."

"Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof who merit praise."

"He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."

"Anger wishes that all mankind had only one neck; love, that it had only one heart; grief, two tear-glands; and pride, two bent knees."

"Dem tauben Grimm, der keinen Führer hört."

"No pale gradations quench his ray, No twilight dews his wrath allay."

"Quamvis tegatur proditur vultu furor."

"Ne frena animo permitte calenti; Da spatium, tenuemque moram; male cuncta ministrat Impetus."

"Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole."

"Furor fit læsa sæpius patientia."

"Furor arma ministrat."

"Tantæne animis cœlestibus iræ."

"The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence."

"The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself."

"He submits himself to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion."

"There was a man here last night — you needn't be afraid that I shall mention his name — who said that his will was given up to God, and who got mad because the omnibus was full, and he had to walk a mile to his lodgings."

"When I had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance to anger, the like befell me that did the Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedemonians, never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them."

"An unsanctified temper is a fruitful source of error, and a mighty impediment to truth."

"Our passions are like convulsion fits, which make us stronger for the time, but leave us weaker forever after."

"If anger proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous."