Thoughts on Anger
Friday, November 02, 2007
| Quote: | When someone attaches unkindness to criticism, she's angry. Angry people need to criticize as an outlet for their anger. That's why you must reject unkind criticism. Unkind criticism is never part of a meaningful critique of you. Its purpose is not to teach or to help, its purpose is to punish. |
| Author: | Barbara Sher |
| Quote: | Resentment or grudges do no harm to the person against whom you hold these feelings but every day and every night of your life, they are eating at you. |
| Author: | Norman Vincent Peale |
| Quote: | It is easy to fly into a passion--anybody can do that--but to be angry with the right person to the right extent and at the right time with the right object and in the right way--that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it. |
| Author: | Aristotle |
| Quote: | A soft answer turns away wrath. |
| Author: | King Solomon |
| Quote: | People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes. |
| Author: | Abigail Van Buren |
| Quote: | Sadly, some folks want others to feel their pain, to hurt as much as they do--or more. My grandmother once told me to avoid colds and angry people whenever I could. It's sound advice. |
| Author: | Walter Anderson |
| Quote: | From my experience, forgiving is the only way to survive. |
| Author: | Molly Ringwald |
| Quote: | Five great enemies to peace inhabit us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace. |
| Author: | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Quote: | Anger is a short madness. |
| Author: | Horace |
| Quote: | For all my good intentions, there are days when things go wrong or I fall into old habits. When things are not going well, when I'm grumpy or mad, I'll realize that I've not been paying attention to my soul and I've not been following my best routine. |
| Author: | Robert Fulghum from the essay "Pay Attention" |
| Quote: | It is the ignorant and childish part of man that is the fighting part. |
| Author: | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Quote: | Life is but short; no time can be afforded but for the indulgence of real sorrow, or contests upon questions seriously momentous. Let us not throw away any of our day upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity. It is best not to be angry; and best, in the next place to be quickly reconciled. |
| Author: | Samuel Johnson |
| Quote: | A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe. |
| Author: | Samuel Johnson |
| Quote: | Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. |
| Author: | Thomas à Kempis |
| Quote: | Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. |
| Author: | William Shakespeare (Henry IV) |
| Quote: | If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away...And now these things remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. |
| Author: | 1 Corinthians 13:1-8, 13 |
| Quote: | Every day you get many chances to become angry. For instance, a driver cuts in front of your car on the way to work. Someone else criticizes you. Another person doesn't return your call. All these are anger invitations. You could accept every one, in which case you'll be angry all the time. Instead, you have to be careful. The key is to ignore the less important invitations. You have to separate what is merely annoying from what is really serious. |
| Author: | Ron Potter-Efron, MSW, and Pat Potter-Efron, MS |
| Quote: | Hate starts as an anger that doesn't get resolved. Then it becomes a resentment, and then a true hatred that can go on indefinitely...hatred causes serious damage over time. Haters can't let go or get on with life. They become bitter and frustrated. Their lives become mean, small, and narrow. |
| Author: | Ron Potter-Efron, MSW, and Pat Potter-Efron, MS |
| Quote: | Keep violence in the mind Where it belongs. |
| Author: | Brian Aldiss, from Barefoot in the Head |
| Quote: | The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree. |
| Author: | William Shakespeare |
| Quote: | Anger and haste hinder good counsel. |
| Author: | English proverb |
| Quote: | Anger dies quickly with a good man. |
| Author: | English proverb |
| Quote: | Anger ends in cruelty. |
| Author: | Indian (Tamil) proverb |
| Quote: | Don't wait for your "ship to come in," and feel angry and cheated when it doesn't. Get going with something small. |
| Author: | Irene Kassorla |
| Quote: | A man is about as big as the things that make him angry. |
| Author: | Winston Churchill |
| Quote: | Anger hears no counsel. |
| Author: | German proverb |
| Quote: | Anger is like a thorn in the heart. |
| Author: | Yiddish proverb |
| Quote: | Anger is the only thing to put off till tomorrow. |
| Author: | Slovakian proverb |
| Quote: | Anger punishes itself. |
| Author: | English proverb |
| Quote: | Great anger is more destructive than the sword. |
| Author: | Indian (Tamil) proverb |
| Quote: | He who conquers his anger has conquered an enemy. |
| Author: | German proverb |
| Quote: | If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. |
| Author: | Chinese proverb |
| Quote: | If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. |
| Author: | Chinese proverb |
| Quote: | In proportion as anger comes, sense departs. |
| Author: | Turkish proverb |
| Quote: | Kill your anger while it is small. |
| Author: | Slovakian proverb |
| Quote: | The anger of the prudent never shows. |
| Author: | Burmese proverb |
| Quote: | When anger blinds the eyes, truth disappears. |
| Author: | Danish proverb |
| Quote: | He that is angry is seldom at ease. |
| Author: | Danish proverb |
| Quote: | We all boil at different degrees. |
| Author: | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Quote: | We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see. |
| Author: | Bishop Berkeley |
| Quote: | He who does not see the angels and devils in the beauty and malice of life will be far removed from knowledge, and his spirit will be empty of affection. |
| Author: | Kahlil Gibran |
| Quote: | Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself. |
| Author: | William Shakespeare (King Henry VIII) |
| Quote: | Every stroke our fury strikes is sure to hit ourselves at last. |
| Author: | William Penn |
| Quote: | The arrow that has left the bow never returns. |
| Author: | Iranian proverb |
| Quote: | For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind. |
| Author: | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Quote: | The greatest cure of anger is delay. |
| Author: | Seneca |
| Quote: | Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong. |
| Author: | Charlotte Bronte |
| Quote: | You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. |
| Author: | Indira Gandhi |
| Quote: | Hate is like acid. It can damage the vessel in which it is stored as well as destroy the object on which it is poured. |
| Author: | Ann Landers |
| Quote: | It's my rule never to lose me temper till it would be dethrimental to keep it. |
| Author: | Sean O'Casey, The Plough and the Starts |
| Quote: | 1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. 2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself. 3. Never spend your money before you have it. 4. Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will never be dear to you. 5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold. 6. Never repent of having eaten too little. 7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. 8. Don't let the evils which have never happened cost you pain. 9. Always take things by their smooth handle. 10. When angry, count to ten before you speak; if very angry, count to one hundred. |
| Author: | Thomas Jefferson |
| Quote: | Neither anger nor fear shall find lodging in your mind. |
| Author: | Dekanawidah |
| Quote: | A chip on the shoulder is too heavy a piece of baggage to carry through life. |
| Author: | John Hancock |
| Quote: | Envy and wrath shorten the life. |
| Author: | Ecclesiaticus 30:24 (Apocrypha) |
| Quote: | The only thing a heated argument ever produced is coolness. |
| Author: | American proverb |
| Quote: | What anger wants it buys at the price of soul. |
| Author: | Heraclitus |
| Quote: | If we don't forgive ourselves for our mistakes, and others for the wounds they have inflicted upon us, we end up crippled with guilt. And the soul cannot grow under a blanket of guilt, because guilt is isolating, while growth is a gradual process of reconnection to ourselves, to other people, and to a larger whole. |
| Author: | Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. |
| Quote: | Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.... |
| Author: | Robert Fulghum |
| Quote: | Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. |
| Author: | St. Francis of Assisi |
| Quote: | Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one. |
| Author: | Lord Halifax |
| Quote: | Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. |
| Author: | Robert Ingersoll |
| Quote: | To be angry is revenge the faults of others upon ourselves. |
| Author: | Alexander Pope |
| Quote: | Anger always thinks it has power beyond its power. |
| Author: | Publilius Syrus |
| Quote: | If people find fault with you and try to put you into bad light, wrongly slandering and vilifying you, just step back and observe yourself. Don't harbor any dislike, don't enter into it any contests, and don't get upset, angry, or resentful. Just cut right through it and be as if you never or saw it. Eventually malevolent pests will disappear of themselves. If you contend with them, then a bad name will bounce back and forth with never an end in sight. |
| Author: | Zen master Yuanwu |
| Quote: | If each of us can be helped by science to live a hundred years, what will it profit us if our hates and fears, our loneliness and our remorse will not permit us to enjoy them? |
| Author: | David Neiswanger |
| Quote: | Feel the feeling. Choose the behavior. |
| Author: | Charles Rumberg |
| Quote: | ...blame always begins with anger. |
| Author: | M. Scott Peck |
| Quote: | The biter is often bit. |
| Author: | French proverb |
| Quote: | If there's bitterness in the heart, sugar in the mouth won't make life sweeter. |
| Author: | Yiddish proverb |
| Quote: | You don't need to become perfect all at once. |
| Author: | Thomas E. Clarke, S.J. |
| Quote: | I always knew that fury was my natural enemy. It clotted my blood and clogged my pores. It literally blinded me. |
| Author: | Maya Angelou |
| Quote: | What gets in your way can take you to someplace new. |
| Author: | Sarah East Johnson |
| Quote: | If I should fail you, do not sorrow; I'll be a better man tomorrow. |
| Author: | Ogden Nash |
| Quote: | It is far easier to make war than to make peace. |
| Author: | George Clemenceau |
| Quote: | Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved. |
| Author: | Marcus Aurelius Antoninus |
| Quote: | When thou are above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary a man's life is. |
| Author: | Marcus Aurelius Antoninus |
| Quote: | How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. |
| Author: | Marcus Aurelius Antoninus |
| Quote: | A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green. |
| Author: | Francis Bacon |
| Quote: | If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. |
| Author: | Chinese proverb |
| Quote: | He is a fool who cannot be angry; but he is a wise man who will not. |
| Author: | English proverb |
| Quote: | Do not wade where you can see no bottom. |
| Author: | Danish proverb |
| Quote: | When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, 100. |
| Author: | Thomas Jefferson |
| Quote: | Anger is really disappointed hope. |
| Author: | Erica Jong |
| Quote: | The size of a man can be measured by the size of the thing that makes him angry. |
| Author: | J. Kenfield Morley |
| Quote: | No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched. |
| Author: | George Jean-Nathan |
| Quote: | Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. |
| Author: | Seneca |
| Quote: | The greatest remedy for anger is delay. |
| Author: | Seneca |
| Quote: | Anger is meant to be acted on. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us. |
| Author: | Julia Cameron |
| Quote: | When people express themselves verbally, they want feedback that they've been heard, and they also want to be understood. This is true even when they don't understand themselves, as is the case when an upset person tries to describe their feelings and thoughts. But when two or more people want to be heard and understood at the same time, and no one is willing to listen and understand, an argument or exit is almost inevitable. For this reason, a masterful communicator makes it his or her goal to listen and understand first, before attempting to be heard or understood. |
| Author: | Rick Brinkman and Rick Kirschner |
| Quote: | The offender never pardons. |
| Author: | George Herbert |
| Quote: | One enemy is too much. |
| Author: | George Herbert |
| Quote: | Anger is loaded with information and energy. |
| Author: | Audre Lourde |