ANGER QUOTES IV
quotations about anger
When anger is not trampling roughshod through our nervous system, it is sitting sullenly in some unspecified internal organ. "She's got a lot of anger in her," people will say (it nestles, presumably, somewhere in the gut), or, "He's a deeply angry man" (as opposed, presumably, to a superficially angry one). If anger isn't released, it "turns inward" and metamorphoses into another creature altogether.
CAROL TAVRIS
Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion
We often fixate on how negative anger can be--how it can take hold of us, how it can hurt others and ourselves. We talk about wanting to get rid of it. The thing is, it's not going anywhere. Anger is here to stay, no matter how happy you are, no matter how much you are in sync with the universe, no matter how much enlightenment has touched you. You are going to get angry. And thank goodness for that. Because anger can point the way. It can spring us to action; many forces of change are motivated by anger. If it were the only motivation, we'd be like 2-year-olds, but combine anger with a conscience and a sense of justice and you have the makings of a social movement.
JUSTIN LIOI
"The Misunderstood Emotion: Getting to Know Your Anger", Good Therapy, March 9, 2016
All anger is actually a vulnerable emotion in disguise. If someone insults you, underneath your anger is pain. If your teen walks in three hours past curfew, underneath your anger is fear and worry. If someone publicly chastens you, underneath your anger is embarrassment. These vulnerable emotions are what you need to communicate, not the anger.
JONATHAN DECKER
"Your Family Expert: Managing anger to connect more and fight less", The Independent, March 1, 2016
For the second point; the causes and motives of anger, are chiefly three. First, to be too sensible of hurt; for no man is angry, that feels not himself hurt; and therefore tender and delicate persons must needs be oft angry; they have so many things to trouble them, which more robust natures have little sense of. The next is, the apprehension and construction of the injury offered, to be, in the circumstances thereof, full of contempt: for contempt is that, which putteth an edge upon anger, as much or more than the hurt itself. And therefore, when men are ingenious in picking out circumstances of contempt, they do kindle their anger much. Lastly, opinion of the touch of a man's reputation, doth multiply and sharpen anger. Wherein the remedy is, that a man should have, as Consalvo was wont to say, telam honoris crassiorem. But in all refrainings of anger, it is the best remedy to win time; and to make a man's self believe, that the opportunity of his revenge is not yet come, but that he foresees a time for it; and so to still himself in the meantime, and reserve it.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Anger", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
To seek to extinguish anger utterly, is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: 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 attempted 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.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Anger"
If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.
EPICTETUS
Anger, in general, is healthy. Just like sadness or happiness, it's a normal emotion. Where people get into trouble is when anger becomes a behavior that is physically, verbally or emotionally inappropriate.
CAROLE D. STOVALL
Jet Magazine, May 1, 2000
The common theme in anger is that you don't know how to solve a problem.
AARON KARMIN
"Who Taught You to Manage Anger?", PsychCentral, March 3, 2016
Your anger is like a flower. In the beginning you may not understand the nature of your anger, or why it has come up. But if you know how to embrace it with the energy of mindfulness, it will begin to open. You may be sitting, following your breathing, or you may be practicing walking meditation to generate the energy of mindfulness and embrace your anger. After ten or twenty minutes your anger will have to open herself to you, and suddenly, you will see the true nature of your anger. It may have arisen just because of a wrong perception or the lack of skillfulness.
THICH NHAT HANH
Anger
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.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Anger"
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
MAYA ANGELOU
attributed, Women Know Everything!
Anger can be intoxicating. Think of a time you replayed an incident over and over in your mind. Perhaps something happened during your morning commute. You texted your girlfriend about it, called your mom, emailed your friend, and talked about it over lunch, yet you're still thinking about it as you try to go to sleep. You're not letting it go. You're practicing it. You're just getting better at being angry. It's not propelling you to change a social ill. It's not allowing you to move on by expressing it. It is keeping you stuck, perhaps nursing your own self-righteousness. You are suddenly at the mercy of a powerful and misunderstood emotion--one that gains more energy the more wood you throw on its fire.
JUSTIN LIOI
"The Misunderstood Emotion: Getting to Know Your Anger", Good Therapy, March 9, 2016
Imagine a pill you could take that instantly calms your temper when it's about to burst into a Herculean mess. That's what researchers might be on the brink of formulating after experiments helped them to identify the brain's anger centre. Scientists at New York University found that chemical changes in the brain's lateral septum made the mice attack other animals. It's a discovery that could lead to a calming drug. Meanwhile, the number of quiet seethers is growing. Research by PruHealth in the United Kingdom found that nearly half of us admit to snapping at colleagues, 28 per cent to shouting at people at work and one in four to slamming down phones and banging fists on desks. On social media, it takes very little to enrage the digital public into attack mode. But until the anger pill is a reality, our only option is self-management.
ISABEL CLARKE
"Ready to explode? Follow these five tips to curb your anger", Stuff, March 9, 2016
Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up. Anger is a bow that will shoot sometimes where another feeling will not.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
If anger is not restrained, it is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
SENECA
attributed, Day's Collacon
As a boy I used to observe certain grown-ups of my acquaintance with awe. They seemed to me to be wonderful people. Always they were kind and pleasant. And they were never patronizing, like some of the other grown-ups that I did not care for at all. I remember the shock I received when I saw one of those heroes of mine show anger. It was as if he had suddenly become a demon. Then I had my first realization of the extraordinary change that anger could create in a human being. I suppose that all children, consciously or unconsciously, go through the same experience. And yet, horrible as anger appears in their eyes, it doesn't keep them from showing anger themselves. On the contrary, it actually encourages them to express anger, according to nature's habit of teaching by imitation.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Anger"
I am angry nearly every day of my life, but I have learned not to show it; and I still try to hope not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do it.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
Angry people are not always wise.
JANE AUSTEN
Pride and Prejudice
You can learn to handle your anger well. First, recognize that anger is a normal part of life. Everybody feels angry from time to time. Like all feelings, anger is neither good nor bad, it just is.
RONALD & PATRICIA POTTER-EFRON
Letting Go of Anger
Like all passions, anger has degrees, ascending from slight vexation through deepening clouds to rage, and finally to fury, which is a black and horrible tempest. In its mid-region, where it is neither too little to be motive nor too furious to be ungovernable, it has usefulness. For all feeling is as fuel, and where there is none life has no fire, and then no flame of ascent.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays