Anger quotes
931 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside anger — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns; children, women, old folks, sick folks. Only 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."
"If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven."
"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."
"People seem to fight about things very unsuitable for fighting. They make a frightful noise in support of very quiet things. They knock each other about in the name of very fragile things."
"I swear by the mighty power of Amon-Ra, whose anger can shatter the world, and by the dread power of Set, that I will never betray my trust as High Priest of Karnak."
"He always had a chip on his shoulder that he was ready to use to kindle an argument."
"I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk."
"As anger is a passion, it is to be ruled; as it is a weak passion, he is weak who rules it not."
"As anger is a passing storm, so it comes not gradually and with signs, but like a sudden sweep of wind or black squall."
"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."
"That's why I want you there, he said. You're unpredictable, and that can be the difference between success and failure. Most people make decisions in anger, fear, love, or obligation. You make decisions to irritate people."
"No reason to be angry. Anger just distracts from the all-encompassing sadness."
"The anger of a person who is strong, can always bide its time."
"Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please; But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex."
"When I am angry I can pray well and preach well."
"I have sometimes wondered also whether in people like me who come to the boil fast (soupe au lait, the French call this trait, like a milk soup that boils over) the tantrum is not a built-in safety valve against madness or illness. ... The fierce tension in me, when it is properly channeled, creates the good tension for work. But when it becomes unbalanced I am destructive. How to isolate that good tension is my problem these days. Or, put in another way, how to turn the heat down fast enough so the soup won't boil over!"
"To be angry is very good. It burns out things and leaves nutrients in the soil. You should always be ready to be angry at injustice and cruelty."
"To behave rightly, we ourselves should never lay a hand on our servants as long as our anger lasts. Things will seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down."
"How often, being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defense and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself?"
"People have said I'm the candidate of anger. Well, we have a right to be angry. We lost 3 million jobs. We lost our place as the moral leader of the world."
