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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Anger

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

Bible.

Temperate anger well becomes the wise.

Philemon.

Anger is practical awkwardness.

Colton.

Anger is a short madness.

Horace.

A temperate anger has virtue in it.

Haliburton.

Men in rage strike those that wish them best.

Shakespeare.

Abused patience turns to fury.

Quarles.

Anger manages everything badly.

Stadius.

Never anger made good guard for itself.

Shakespeare.

Anger, is self-immolation.

Phillips Brooks.

Keep cool, and you command everybody.

St. Just.

Their rage supplies them with weapons.

Virgil.

Like fragile ice anger passes away in time.

Ovid.

He that will be angry for anything will be angry for nothing.

Sallust.

Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

Burns.

When anger rushes, unrestrained, to action.

Savage.

He that would be angry and sin not must not be angry with anything but sin.

Secker.

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

W. R. Alger.

People hardly ever do anything in anger, of which they do not repent.

Richardson.

To be in anger is impiety, but who is man that is not angry?

Shakespeare.

Anger is like a ruin, which, in falling upon its victim, breaks itself to pieces.

Seneca.

Whatsoever is worthy of their love is worth their anger.

Sir J. Denham.

There is no affectation in passion, for that putteth a man out of his precepts.

Bacon.

Anger is a transient hatred; or at least very like it.

South.

You may forgive, and so will I; but I will not forget, though I control my anger.

Colton.

Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.

Pythagoras.

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.

Jefferson.

Anger is like a full hot horse; who, being allowed his way, self-mettle tires him.

Shakespeare.

Anger is like rain which breaks itself whereon it falls.

Seneca.

  • And to be wroth with one we love
  • Doth work like madness in the brain.
  • Coleridge.

    An angry woman is vindictive beyond measure, and hesitates at nothing in her bitterness.

    J. Petit-Senn.

    Anger causes us often to condemn in one what we approve of in another.

    Pasquier Quesnel.

  • Anger’s my meat; I sup upon myself
  • And so shall starve with feeding.
  • Shakespeare.

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

    Haliburton.

    He is a fool who cannot be angry; but he is a wise man who will not.

    Seneca.

    He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.

    Plato.

    A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

    Shakespeare.

    Heaven hath no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

    Congreve.

    To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.

    Pope.

    An angry man opens his mouth and shuts up his eyes.

    Cato.

    To abandon yourself to rage is often to bring upon yourself the fault of another.

    Agapet.

    To rule one’s anger is well; to prevent it is better.

    Edwards.

    When anger rises, think of the consequences.

    Confucius.

    Violence in the voice is often only the death-rattle of reason in the throat.

    J. F. Boyes.

    Anger is one of the sinews of the soul.

    Fuller.

    The angriest person in a controversy is the one most liable to be in the wrong.

    Tillotson.

    Anger is not only the prevailing sin of argument, but its greatest stumbling-block.

    Gladstone.

    Anger has some claim to indulgence, and railing is usually a relief to the mind.

    Junius.

    An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.

    Publius Syrus.

    When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

    It is he who is in the wrong who first gets angry.

    William Penn.

    A fit of anger is as fatal to dignity as a dose of arsenic is to life.

    J. G. Holland.

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

    George Eliot.

    Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth; but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.

    Sir W. Davenant.

    What most increases anger is the feeling that one is in the wrong.

    Richter.

    Anger turns the mind out of doors and bolts the entrance.

    Plutarch.

    Weak men are easily put out of humor. Oil freezes quicker than water.

    Auerbach.

    A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.

    Shakespeare.

  • Convulsive anger storms at large; or pale
  • And silent, settles into full revenge.
  • Thomson.

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

    Lavater.

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

    Swift.

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

    Bishop Hall.

    Scarce can I speak, my choler is so great. Oh! I could hew up rocks, and fight with flint.

    Shakespeare.

    He that contemns a shrew to the degree of not descending to words with her does worse than beat her.

    L’Estrange.

    Check and restrain anger. Never make any determination until you find it has entirely subsided.

    Lord Collingwood.

    If anger is not restrained, it is frequently more hurtful to us, than the injury that provokes it.

    Seneca.

    The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth.

    Dryden.

    Have you not love enough to bear with me, when that rash humor which my mother gave me makes me forgetful.

    Shakespeare.

    Lamentation is the only musician that always, like a screech-owl, alights and sits on the roof of any angry man.

    Plutarch.

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

    Bible.

    Anger is a noble infirmity, the generous failing of the just, the one degree that riseth above zeal, asserting the prerogative of virtue.

    Tupper.

    Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind upon the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge.

    Locke.

    Give not reins to your inflamed passions; take time and a little delay; impetuosity manages all things badly.

    Statius.

    Anger is the most impotent passion that accompanies the mind of man; it effects nothing it goes about; and hurts the man who is possessed by it more than any other against whom it is directed.

    Clarendon.

    The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.

    Hazlitt.

    Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

    Must I give way and room to your rash choler? Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?

    Shakespeare.

    In the same degree in which a man’s mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength.

    Marcus Antoninus.

    Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are bitterer than to feel bitter. A man’s venom poisons himself more than his victim.

    Charles Buxton.

  • My rage is not malicious; like a spark
  • Of fire by steel inforced out of a flint
  • It is no sooner kindled, but extinct.
  • Goffe.

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

    Richter.

    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.

    Jeremy Taylor.

  • There is not in nature
  • A thing that makes a man so deform’d, so beastly,
  • As doth intemperate anger.
  • Webster.

  • O that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth!
  • Then with a passion would I shake the world.
  • Shakespeare.

    Those passionate persons who carry their heart in their mouth are rather to be pitied than feared; their threatenings serving no other purpose than to forearm him that is threatened.

    Fuller.

  • 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.
  • Wm. Blake.

    Anger requires that the offender should not only be made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve for that particular wrong which has been done by him.

    Whately.

  • 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.
  • Shakespeare.

    An angry man who suppresses his passions thinks worse than he speaks; and an angry man that will chide speaks worse than he thinks.

    Bacon.

    Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm.

    R. G. Ingersoll.

    When anger rushes unrestrained to action, like a hot steed, it stumbles on its way. The man of thought strikes deepest and strikes safely.

    Savage.

    To be angry about trifles is mean and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils.

    Dr. Watts.

    Are you angry? Look at the child who has erred, he suspects no trouble, he dreams of no harm; you will borrow something of that innocence, you will feel appeased.

    Chateaubriand.

    There is no 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.

    Bacon.

    The “last word” is the most dangerous of infernal machines; and the husband and wife should no more fight to get it than they would struggle for the possession of a lighted bomb-shell.

    Douglas Jerrold.

    The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves, and we injure our own cause, in the opinion of the world, when we too passionately and eagerly defend it.

    Colton.

    Angry and choleric men are as ungrateful and unsociable as thunder and lightning, being in themselves all storm and tempest; but quiet and easy natures are like fair weather, welcome to all.

    Clarendon.

    As a conquered rebellion strengthens a government, or as health is more perfectly established by recovery from some diseases; so anger, when removed, often gives new life to affection.

    Fielding.

    Anger is like the waves of a troubled sea; when it is corrected with a soft reply, as with a little strand, it retires, and leaves nothing behind but froth and shells,—no permanent mischief.

    Jeremy Taylor.

    Anger is the most impotent passion that accompanies the mind of man. It effects nothing it goes about; and hurts the man who is possessed by it more than any other against whom it is directed.

    Clarendon.

    If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wrong, but the coals are.

    Beecher.

    The round of a passionate man’s life is in contracting debts in his passion, which his virtue obliges him to pay. He spends his time in outrage and acknowledgment, injury and reparation.

    Johnson.

    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.

    Beecher.

    Had I a careful and pleasant companion that should show me my angry face in a glass, I should not at all take it ill; to behold man’s self so unnaturally disguised and dishonored will conduce not a little to the impeachment of anger.

    Plutarch.

    Anger and the thirst of revenge are a kind of fever; fighting and lawsuits, bleeding,—at least, an evacuation. The latter occasions a dissipation of money; the former, of those fiery spirits which cause a preternatural fermentation.

    Shenstone.

  • For pale and trembling anger rushes in
  • With faltering speech, and eyes that wildly stare,
  • Fierce as the tiger, madder than the seas,
  • Desperate and armed with more than human strength.
  • Armstrong.

    I never work better than when I am inspired by anger. When I am angry I can write, pray, and preach well; for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.

    Luther.

    Anger is implanted in us as sort of sting, to make us gnash with our teeth against the devil, to make us vehement against him, not to set us in array against each other.

    Savage.

  • But curb thou the high spirit in thy breast,
  • For gentle ways are best.
  • Homer.

    Anger is an affected madness, compounded of pride and folly, and an intention to do commonly more mischief than it can bring to pass; and, without doubt, of all passions which actually disturb the mind of man, it is most in our power to extinguish, at least, to suppress and correct, our anger.

    Clarendon.

  • Full many mischiefs follow cruel wrath;
  • Abhorred bloodshed and tumultuous strife
  • Unmanly murder and unthrifty scath,
  • Bitter despite, with rancor’s rusty knife,
  • And fretting grief the enemy of life;
  • All these and many evils more, haunt ire.
  • Spenser.

    Be ye angry, and sin not; therefore all anger is not sinful; I suppose because some degree of it, and upon some occasions, is inevitable. It becomes sinful, or contradicts, however, the rule of Scripture, when it is conceived upon slight and inadequate provocation, and when it continues long.

    Paley.

  • 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 wroth with one we love
  • Doth work like madness in the brain.
  • Coleridge.

    There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction but revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; and should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient?

    Montaigne.

    When I myself had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance unto anger, the like befell me that did the Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedæmonians (who before that time had held themselves invincible), never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them.

    Plutarch.