quotations about anger
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
All too often, a feeling of anger manifests and is managed defensively, usually with insulting or insensitive behavior. For example, when another car suddenly cuts in front of your car on the road, adrenaline pumps into your bloodstream. Your heart rate jumps. Your blood pressure surges. But then, thoughts of indignation and animosity, toward the other driver overrun your mind. You honk your horn. You give a dirty look. You scream and curse. But none of this really solves the problem.
AARON KARMIN
"Who Taught You to Manage Anger?", PsychCentral, March 3, 2016
When you have been done an injustice, anger flares up before you have a chance to understand what has happened. It's as though someone else is looking out for you and letting you know immediately that you have been wronged. Anger gives you the impetus you need to change conditions that need to be changed. In this way, anger is like a dark guardian angel, a daimonic force--a daimon is an unnamed but felt invisible presence--that offers guidance and spiritual support.
THOMAS MOORE
Dark Nights of the Soul
I have been deeply troubled in these last months by many, perhaps most, of the presidential candidates on both sides. It's not their policies so much (well, actually, I'm also troubled by many of them), but rather the fact that anger has become their one shared, passionate position. Democrats and Republicans, moderates and extremists, almost all have preached anger. Be angry! Fan the flames of that anger! The non-stop focus on anger frankly scares me. Politicians who act and rule and evaluate and decide from a position of anger are liable to regret it all after the fact, but unlike my individual, private behavior fueled by anger, which may backfire on me and a few of those closest to me, the angry behavior of our nation's leaders may well backfire, in disastrous ways on all of us.
DAVID NELSON
"Anger Is Not The Noblest Of Sentiments", Shawangunk Journal, March 23, 2016
Anger is a brief madness.
HORACE
Epistles
Zero? Meet 60. That seems the rate at which we accelerate these days from being irked to outraged. The server was late with your salad, your boss breezed right by you, coach pulled your daughter in the third quarter, the grocery ran out of rotisserie chicken -- it doesn't take much to make people erupt. We used to get over it, maybe kvetch to our spouse, then move on. Now, though, there's a compulsion -- some call it an opportunity -- to share our outrage on Facebook, on Twitter, on Yelp, from behind the wheel or by unloading on a clerk. What's going on?
KIM ODE
"Ticked off on Twitter, yowling on Yelp: As a culture, why are we so darn mad?", Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 11, 2016
Anger may repast with you for an hour, but not repose with you for a night. The continuance of Anger, is hatred; the continuance of hatred becomes malice; that Anger is not warrantable that has suffered the sun to set on it.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Sometimes anger is referred to as "temper." And among many people to have a temper is considered creditable. It is in some way associated with power. Here is a common confusion of thought. Good qualities associated with a bad quality are likely to confer the bad quality on a false character. On the other hand, bad qualities associated with a good quality may completely destroy respect for the good quality. The pride that people take in having a temper often leads them to shameful indulgence in anger. And repeated indulgence tends to destroy the capacity for self-control. As a matter of fact, nearly every one has a capacity for temper, that is, for anger. It is associated with all our deepest qualities, with egotism, the instinct for self-preservation and for self-assertion. Anger, after all, is very largely an arrogant and violent assertion of oneself. It is a gross expression of tyranny.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Anger"
When anger walks it is strongest; let it rest and it gets weak.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Poetry = Anger x Imagination.
SHERMAN ALEXIE
One Stick Song
By all means give vent to your anger, let it out in nondestructive ways--if you are still deciding to have it. But begin to think of yourself as someone who can learn to think new thoughts when you are frustrated, so that the immobilizing anger can be replaced by more fulfilling emotions. Annoyance, irritation, and disappointment are feelings that you will very likely continue to experience, since the world will never be the way you want it. But anger, that hurtful emotional response to obstacles, can be eliminated.
WAYNE W. DYER
Your Erroneous Zones
The wrong that rouses our angry passions finds only a medium in us; it passes through us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have suffered.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
Fledgling
In Buddhist thought, anger is one of three poisons, the others being greed and ignorance. Together, they create a trance state overtaking the mind, causing delusion and suffering. The delusion is of a particular kind, believing we are separate from other living things and the physical earth that is our home.
ALAN BRISKIN
"How Demagogues Turn Anger Into Collective Poison: The Middle-Finger Party", Huffington Post, March 2, 2016
Anger is our reaction to the violation of our boundaries.
KATHLEEN DOWLING SINGH
The Grace in Dying
As anger is a passion, it is to be ruled; as it is a weak passion, he is weak who rules it not.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
When anger plays a dominant role in family traditions, it becomes a norm which follows a man into maturity, relationships and marriage. The effect of anger in families is usually visible in the way he relates to others, especially his spouse.
ELIZABETH BADEJO
"You can help your spouse overcome his anger", Punch, March 5, 2016
Anger is stupid, and stupidity will kill you more surely than your opponent's blade.
PATRICIA BRIGGS
Dragon Bones
Anger is not a sinful emotion. But how we act when we are angry may well be a sin.
DORIS MORELAND JONES
God's Gift of Anger
If a man be under the influence of anger his conduct will not be correct.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius