Sermon quotes on Anger
Aristotle
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.
Louisa May Alcott
I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so.
Little Woman
Henry Ward Beecher
A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.
William Blake
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.
H.G. Bohn
Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.
Frederick Buechner
Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past … to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
G.K. Chesterton
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
Charles Caleb Colton
The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves. We injure our own cause in the opinion of the world when we too passionately defend it.
George Herbert
If a donkey brays at you, don’t bray at him.
Horace
Anger is a short madness.
Epistles
Thomas a Kempis
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
John of Kronstadt
A man who is wrathful with us is a sick man; we must apply a plaster to his heart – love; we must treat him kindly, speak to him gently, lovingly. And if there is not deeply-rooted malice against us within him, but only a temporary fit of anger, you will see how his heart, or his malice, will melt away through your kindness and love – how good will conquer evil.
Charles Lamb
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.
Martin Luther
I never work better than when I am inspired by anger; for 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.
Publilius Syrus
Anger always thinks it has power beyond its power.
Sententiae
R.C. Sproul
Anger is not in itself sinful, but…it may be the occasion for sin. The issue of self-control is the question of how we deal with anger. Violence, tantrums, bitterness, resentment, hostility, and even withdrawn silence are all sinful responses to anger.
John Stott
So there is such a thing as perfect hatred, just as there is such a thing as righteous anger. But it is a hatred for God’s enemies, not our own enemies. It is entirely free of all spite, rancor and vindictiveness, and is fired only by love for God’s honor and glory.
Carol Tavris
The contemporary ventilationist view, that it is always important to express anger so that it won’t clog your arteries or your friendships . . . tends to overlook . . . the consequences of anger. If your expressed rage causes another person to shoot you, it won’t matter that you die with very healthy arteries.
Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Touchstone Publishing.
Mark Twain
When angry count four; when very angry, swear.
Pudd’nhead Wilson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We boil at different degrees.
Society and Solitude
Winston Churchill
A man is as big as the things that make him angry.
Thomas A Kempis
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Source Unknown
He who angers you, conquers you.
C.S. Lewis
The absence of anger . . . can, in my opinion, be a most alarming symptom . . . If the Jews cursed more bitterly than the Pagans this was, I think, at least in part because they took right and wrong more seriously.
Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958), 30.
P.J. O’Rourke
Never fight an inanimate object.
Giovanni Frazzetto
Anger is also fear with an armour. It works as a defensive, pre-emptive reaction before something hurtful can be done to us.
Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love, Penguin Publishing Group, 2014, p. 7.
George Carlin
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
Aristotle
Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—this is not easy.
The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p.36.
Mark Twain
The spirit of wrath—not the words—is the sin; and the spirit of wrath is cursing. We begin to swear before we can talk.
Following the Equator (1897)
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