SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: ANGER

  • “He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.”

    —Michel de Montaigne

  • “There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself – an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly.”

    —Antisthenes

  • “Why hate the person who grieved you? It is the devil, not he, who grieved you. Hate the illness, not the person who is ill.”

    —Amma Syncletica

  • “We take others to task for small mistakes, and overlook greater ones in ourselves.”

    —Thomas à Kempis

  • We are quick enough to feel and brood over the things we suffer from others, but we think nothing of how much others suffer from us.

    —Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

  • And therefore God, the Creator of all, caring above everything for the restoration of His handiwork, and knowing that the root and cause of offenses lie not in others but in our own selves, has bade us not to separate ourselves from consort with the brethren, nor to avoid those whom we think that we have injured or that they have injured us, but rather to soothe their feelings, knowing that a perfect heart is acquired, not by drawing apart from men, but by the virtue of patience. This virtue, when it is firmly held, will make us to hold to the love of peace even with them that hate peace, and when we possess it not, our lack thereof makes us constantly at enmity with those who may be perfect and higher in virtue than we. For it needs must be that, in the course of human intercourse, occasions of perturbation will arise which will make us hurry to quit the company of those to whom we are bound, and for this reason, when we leave one set of companions for another, we are not ridding ourselves of causes of sadness, but only changing them.

    +St. John Cassian, Selected Writings of St. John Cassian the Roman

  • “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”

    —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

  • Anger squanders knowledge,
    Forbearance gathers it in.

    —Evagrius Ponticus

  • So should the one inflamed with anger not pray at all? By no means! But instead of reaching for what is unattainable and even dangerous on account of his passionate condition, he should resort to those “short and intense” invocations of Christ, mentioned everywhere in the early monastic literature: those “short prayers” (as Augustine calls them), out of which the well-known “Jesus Prayer” developed.

    If you want to put the enemy to flight, pray without ceasing.

    These “concise,” “terse,” “repeated,” indeed “ceaseless” short prayers are the daily bread of whoever is tempted—even of him who is tempted directly by the demon of anger.

    Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread: The Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus on Anger and Meekness
    Gabriel Bunge

  • You lash out at other people for enjoying indulgences that you will never let yourself enjoy.

    —Heather Havrilesky, Ask Polly: ‘I’ve Lost My Joy and I Want It Back!’