They are fools who cannot
be angry;
but they are
wise people who will not.
Proverb
When I was a girl, my temper often got out of
bounds. But one day when I became angry at a friend over
some trivial matter, my mother said to me, "Elizabeth,
anyone who angers you conquers you."
-Sister Elizabeth Kenny
Getting
angry can sometimes be like leaping into a wonderfully
responsive sports car, gunning the motor, taking off at a high
speed and then discovering the brakes are out of order.
-Maggie
Scarf
The
source of peace is within us; so also the source of war.And the real enemy
is within us, and not outside.The source of war is not the existence of nuclear weapons
or other arms.It is the minds of human beings who decide to push the button
and to use those arms out of hatred, anger or greed.
-the Dalai Lama
Anger
is a symptom, a way of
cloaking and expressing feelings
too awful to
experience directly--hurt,
bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear.
-Joan
Rivers
Anger
is not only inevitable, it is necessary. Its absence
means indifference, the most disastrous of all human failings.
-Arthur
Ponsoby
Those who smile rather than rage are always the
stronger. -Japanese wisdom
No person can think clearly
when
his or her fists are clenched. -George Jean Nathan
How could I feel so
miserable in the midst of such splendor? The question flashed
through me all at once, not waiting for words to express it. The
answer came
more slowly: No one makes you angry. Anger,
like love, is something you choose. Stunned, I sat down in the
middle of the field I'd been walking through. I knew I needed to
look within myself, let go of my anger and have a quiet talk with God.
-Susan L.
Taylor
Anger destroys the angry person and all
those around him or her. The angry father
can cause fear and
terror among his children. The angry wife and mother
can
manipulate with a force and subtlety that can be felt for
years. Open anger roars through human relations with a
destructive force--a firestorm. The hidden anger that burns and attacks and manipulates
can last for years. It destroys the underbrush; it twists
and poisons the ground growth. And so with us. The ferocious exterior flame is
uncontrollable except over
a long period of work and time.
We must isolate our anger and allow it to burn itself out.
-Edward J. Lavin, S.J.
As long
as anger lives,
she continues to be
the
fruitful mother of
many
unhappy children. -St. John
Climacus
Anger
in its time and place,
May assume a kind of grace.
It must have some reason in it,
And not last beyond a minute.
If to further lengths it go,
It does into malice grow.
'Tis the difference we can see
'Twixt the serpent and the bee.
If the latter you provoke,
It inflicts a hasty stroke,
Put you to some little pain,
But it never stings again.
Close
in tufted bush or brake
Lurks the poison-swelled snake
Nursing up his cherished wrath;
In the purlieus* of his path,
In the cold, or in the warm,
Mean him good, or mean him harm,
Wheresoever fate may bring you
The vile snake will always sting you.
Charles
and Mary Lamb
*place
where one goes often
Anger
makes you smaller, while forgiveness
forces
you to grow beyond
what you were. -Cherie
Carter-Scott
If
you are patient in one moment of anger,
you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
-Chinese
saying
Speak
when you are angry and
you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
-Ambrose
Bierce
Ruby stepped
toward him. "Edward," she said softly. It was
the first time she had called him by name. "Learn this from me.
Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We
think that
hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to
ourselves.
"Forgive, Edward. Forgive.
Do you remember the lightness
you felt when you first arrived in heaven?"
Eddie did. Where is my pain?
"That's because no one is born with
anger. And when we die,
the soul is freed of it. But now, here, in order to move on, you must
understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer need to
feel it."
She touched his hand.
"You need to forgive your father."
Mitch Albom
from The Five People You Meet in Heaven
The
best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.
-Jacqueline
Schiff
People
are often very frightened of their anger. They feel it will
cause them to do
something harmful. If you have this fear, create a safe
situation where you can
express your anger, alone or with a trusted therapist or friend.
Allow yourself
to talk angrily, shout, hit pillows, whatever you feel like. Once
you've done this
in a safe environment, you will have released some of the charge, and
you can look
underneath the anger to find what you need to do to take better care
of yourself. Like any emotion, anger is a valuable tool, teaching us
who we are and how we feel. -Shakti
Gawain
The
greatest remedy for anger is delay.
-Seneca
Eugene Carman
Rhodes' slave! Selling shoes and gingham,
Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long
For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen
days
for more than twenty years.
Saying "Yes'm" and "Yes, sir" and
"Thank you"
A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month.
Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap "Commercial."
And compelled to go to Sunday School, and to listen
To the Rev. Abner Peet one hundred and four times a year
For more than an hour at a time,
Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church
As well as the store and the bank.
So while I was tying my neck-tie that morning
I suddenly saw myself in the glass:
My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie.
So I cursed and cursed: You damned old thing!
You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper!
You Rhodes' slave! Till Roger Baughman
Thought I was having a fight with someone,
And looked through the transom just in time
To see me fall on the floor in a heap
From a broken vein in my head.
Edgar Lee Masters
from Spoon River Anthology
The angry person reacts in anger and causes others to be
angry, and a cycle begins. My hope is that I'm able to be
a person who ends such a cycle, a person who reacts to
anger with love and understanding, because the angry
people need that more than anything else. Reacting in
anger is merely perpetuating these people's belief that
their anger is justified, but reacting in love may get
them to question whether or not their anger is justified,
effective, and/or helpful to them. . . .
When I'm tempted to react angrily myself, I try to
remember to ask myself this question: Am I contributing
to the anger in the world, or am I contributing to the
peace and love in the world? I need to contribute to the
love--we all do. Love is the only power that can cause a
permanent change. -Tom Walsh
Angry people are
insecure people. Anger becomes a
face-saving device to cover up deficiencies of another sort.
Don't be fooled by the domineering character of an angry person.
Know that during moments of anger there dwells a poor
self-image. -Shantidasa
Anger
is the most futile emotion one can experience. It is totally
negative
and feeds on one's irrational, vindictive, and punitive nature.
It accomplishes
nothing but a wider rift between persons, a growing dissatisfaction
with self,
and empty feeling where loving understanding ought to be.
-Louise
Doud
Anger is the wind which
blows out the lamp of the mind. -Robert Ingersoll
Frequent
fits of anger produce in the soul a propensity to be angry,
which often ends in a bad temper, bitterness and morosity;
then the mind becomes ulcerated, peevish, and grumbling,
and is wounded by the least occurrence.
-Plutarch
Often anger is a sign
of engagement
with life. People who
are angry are touched deeply by the events of their lives
and feel strongly about them.
As an emotion, it has its
limitations
and it certainly has very bad press,
but my
experience with ill people
suggests there is something
healthy about it. Certainly the cancer studies
by Levy, Temoshak, and Greer suggest that many people who
recover become angry first. Anger is just a demand
for
change, a passionate wish for
things to be different. . . .
Anger
becomes a problem for people
only when
they become wedded
to it as a way of life.
-Rachel Naomi Remen
Anger is an alarm system, signaling the presence of
nothing
more than fear. It tells us we are working at cross-purposes
to our own happiness, fearing the loss of something
more than we enjoy the experience of having it.
-Jesse Jennings
There
is nothing wrong with anger. Anger is a beautiful emotion,
as valid and rich as joy or laughter. But you have been taught
to
repress your anger. Your anger has been condemned. If
anger
is unexpressed, it will slowly poison you. The key is to know
how
to express your anger. Do not throw it out onto any one.
No one
is responsible for your anger. Simply express your anger.
Beat
up a cushion. Go for a run. Express your anger to a tree.
Dance your anger. Enjoy it.
-Leonard Jacobson
There is no enemy more vicious than your own anger.
-Sathya Sai Baba
Anger is a powerful emotional energy that
constantly seeks an outlet. The tension
that surrounds anger is sometimes so volatile and unendurable that
catharsis appears
to be the only relief. Accusations and abuse directed at another
become a means
of relieving ourselves of the pain of our own anger. We insist
on being heard, on
making our point, yet in doing so we create an even deeper pain--the
pain of
separation and division. . . . It takes remarkable patience and
compassion to pause
before words of anger are hurled at another. At times this pause
is born of the
wisdom that recognizes that the only point we make in the impulsive
expression
of anger is that we may be a person to fear and avoid.
-Christina
Feldman
The angry person is never in the right even when
right. -Shantidasa
Beware of anger. It is the most
difficult to remove
of all the hindrances. But it is the alcohol of the body,
you know, and the devil of it is that it deadens the perceptions.
-Margery Allingham
Anger repressed can poison a relationship
as surely as the cruelest words.
-Joyce Brothers
Therapists
want to help us throw out what is unwanted and keep only
what is wanted.But what
is left may not be very much.If
we try
to throw away what we don’t want, we may throw away most of
ourselves.
Instead of acting as if we can dispose of parts of ourselves, we
should learn
the art of transformation.We
can transform our anger, for example,
into something more wholesome, like understanding.We do not need surgery
to remove our anger.If
we become angry at our anger, we will have two angers
at the same time.We only
have to observe it with love and attention.If we take care
of our anger this way, without trying to run away from it, it will
transform itself.
This is peacemaking.If
we are peaceful in ourselves, we can make peace
with our anger.We can
deal with depression, anxiety, fear,
or any unpleasant feeling in the same way.
-Thich
Nhat Hanh
Anger is a form of fear and evidence
of the need of defense. -Fred Van Amburgh
Anybody
can become angry-that is easy; but to be angry with
the right person, and to the right degree, and at
the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way--
that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.
-Aristotle
Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get
angry the next time, and a little more likely.
-Eknath Easwaran
Bobby
and I were married in 1954 and by now we know that
anger does not mean "I don't love you" or "I want a
divorce."
It means, "I am wounded and in need of love, and I feel safe
telling you about it because you are my family." Sometimes
our behavior with each other is no different
from the cry of an unattended baby.
-Bernie
Siegel
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