Anger - Quotes

A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control. - Proverbs 29:11

A man can’t eat anger for breakfast and sleep with it at night and not suffer damage to his soul. - Garrison Keillor

A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air. - Henry Ward Beecher

A mild answer calms wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. - Proberbs 15:1 

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough. - Bruce Lee

All anger is not sinful, because some degree of it, and on some occasions, is inevitable. But it becomes sinful and contradicts the rule of Scripture when it is conceived upon slight and inadequate provocation, and when it continues long. - Wilson Mizner

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

An angry man is always a stupid man. - Chinua Achebe

An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes. - Cato The Elder

And there is nothing more dangerous in this world, in any world, than someone calm, clear and angry. - Audrey Hart

Anger arises for specific and understandable reasons, just like any other emotions, such as happiness and sadness. Emotions are an essential part of being a human being, so if your goal is to completely eliminate anger from your life, forget it! First of all, this would be an impossible task. Second, you wouldn't want to do that, even if you could, any more than you would want to eliminate love, joy, or fear. All emotions have their proper place in a man's life; the experience of emotion is what makes life rich. And there are times when anger is an appropriate reaction to events and people. - Thomas Harbin

Anger at lies lasts forever. Anger at truth can’t last. - Greg Evans

Anger begins in folly, and ends in repentance. - Pythagoras

Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. - Robert Ingersoll

Anger can serve a useful purpose if it is justified and directed appropriately. But when it's only a substitute for self-loathing and a justification for cruelty to others, the trigger in your brain can become horribly destructive and addicted to that emotion. It's like a tornado that blows away all of your pleasure and replaces it with emotional poison. - Frank Lawlis

Anger comes sometimes upon us, but we go oftener to it, and, instead of rejecting it, we invite it: Yet it is a vice that carries with it neither pleasure nor profit, neither honour nor security. - Wellins Calcott

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools. - Albert Einstein

Anger is a choice, as well as a habit. It is a learned reaction to frustration, in which you behave in ways that you would rather not. In fact, severe anger is a form of insanity. You are insane whenever you are not in control of your behaviour. Therefore, when you are angry and out of control, you are temporarily insane. - Wayne W. Dyer

Anger is a condition in which the tongue works faster than the mind. - Unknown

Anger is a form of madness. The words we apply to it show that human beings have long recognized its character. We still speak of angry people as mad. We sometimes say that they are "furious" or "in a fury." Some people are led by anger into the most violent excesses. Anger is one of the commonest causes of murder and it often leads to the infliction of blows, mental or physical, that might easily occasion murder. Oftener still it commits murder without loss of life, by doing to minds and souls mischief irreparable. In one respect anger is like drunkenness. It tends to destroy prudence. Where the intoxication of anger is complete, prudence disappears altogether. Then the way is clear for infamy. There are some people who, when they have once yielded to anger, lose all control. They snatch any weapon within reach. If they cannot strike with things they will strike with words, often far more terrible in their effect. They will make statements that can never be atoned for, that will sting and burn to the end of life. - John Daniel Barry

Anger is a fuel. You need fuel to launch a rocket. But if all you have is fuel without any complex internal mechanism directing it, you don't have a rocket. You have a bomb. - Gil Schwartz

Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before – it takes something from him. - Louis L ‘Amour.

Anger is a prelude to courage. - Eric Hoffer

Anger is a self-imposed prison that keeps you caged with your past wounds and trauma, robbing you of joy in the now. - Unknown

Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to. - Harriet Lerner

Anger is a valid emotion. It’s only bad when it takes control and makes you do things you don't want to do. - Ellen Hopkins

Anger is a violent emotion, vindictive, and as dangerous to he who is driven by it as to anyone on whom it is turned. - Dean Koontz

Anger is a weed; hate is the tree. - Saint Augustine of Hippo

Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind. - Robert Ingersoll

Anger is a wound gone mad. - Vanna Bonta

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. - Mark Twain

Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp’s nest. - Pope Paul Vi  

Anger is brief madness. - Horace

Anger is energy, and energy must be transferred into activity. Anger comes from our passions, but it becomes sin when it is destructive, either to others or to ourselves. Pent-up anger will either explode uncontrollably or eat away at our hearts and souls until it takes up all of our interior space. Unless and until we deal with our anger, there is no room in us for anything else. - G. Porter Taylor

Anger is fuel. We feel it and we want to do something. Hit someone, break something, throw a fit, smash a fist into the wall, tell those bastards. But we are nice people, and what we do with our anger is stuff it, deny it, bury it, block it, hide it, lie about it, medicate it, muffle it, ignore it. We do everything but listen to it. Anger is meant to be listened to. Anger is a voice, a shout, a plea, a demand … We are meant to use anger as a fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us. - Julia Cameron

Anger is generally seen as an unwelcome presence in our midst, however natural it may be. Although each person, and each society, is charged with how anger is to be appropriately channelled, the denial of anger, or its continuous repression, is a deep source of our psychopathology and will invariably seek its expression in a less healthful fashion. - James Hollis

Anger is just anger. It isn’t good. It isn’t bad. It just is. What you do with it is what matters. It’s like anything else. You can use it to build or to destroy. You just have to make the choice. - Jim Butcher

Anger is like a flame blazing up and consuming our self-control, making us think, say, and do things that we will probably regret later. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Anger is like a volcano. Once it erupts, you can’t control it. - E. Fehmidakhan

Anger is most constructive when it is used to solve a problem, rather than merely to prove a point or vent your feelings. - Beverly Engel

Anger is neither legitimate nor illegitimate, meaningful nor pointless. Anger simply is. To ask, "Is my anger legitimate?" is similar to asking, "Do I have the right to be thirsty? After all, I just had a glass of water fifteen minutes ago. Surely my thirst is not legitimate. And besides, what's the point of getting thirsty when I can't get anything to drink now, anyway?" Anger is something we feel. It exists for a reason and always deserves our respect and attention. We all have a right to everything we feel – and certainly our anger is no exception. - Harriet Goldhor Lerner

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one. - Benjamin Franklin

Anger is not a sinful emotion. But how we act when we are angry may well be a sin. - Doris Moreland Jones

Anger is not the opposite of love, for the opposite of love is indifference. To be angry is to care tremendously. It is a signal that your caring extends beyond polite conversation, and that you are willing to risk a confrontation to share how you feel. - Doris Moreland Jones

Anger is often more hurtful than the injury that caused it. - English Proverb

Anger is one of the commonest causes of murder and it often leads to the infliction of blows, mental or physical, that might easily occasion murder. Oftener still it commits murder without loss of life, by doing to minds and souls mischief irreparable. There are some people who, when they have once yielded to anger, lose all control. They snatch any weapon within reach. If they cannot strike with things they will strike with words, often far more terrible in their effect. - John Daniel Barry

Anger is one of the most destructive forces that men and women permit themselves to indulge. It is closely related to fear, but the conspicuous difference is that fear seems to be freezing or paralyzing in its nature, while anger is heating and consuming. - Walter Matthews

Anger is only a natural reaction; one of the mind’s ways of reacting to things that it perceives to be wrong. While anger can sometimes lead people to do shocking things, it can also be an instinct to show people that something isn’t right. - Unknown

Anger is only one letter short of danger. - Unknown

Anger is our reaction to the violation of our boundaries. - Kathleen Dowling Singh

Anger is poison. You must purge it from your mind or else it will corrupt your better nature. - Christopher Paolini

Anger is sometimes unavoidable, as when we witness or hear of some outrageous act of injustice or cruelty. But if we must have it, let it be quick and soon over. For when it remains in us it is we who suffer, and not our adversary. It unnerves our hand, blinds our vision, impairs our judgment, and when it leaps to vengeance invariably overleaps, bringing to us regret and remorse in lieu of satisfaction. - Frank Crane

Anger is stupid, and stupidity will kill you more surely than your opponent’s blade. - Patricia Briggs

Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed. - Carl Sandburg

Anger is what makes a clear mind seem clouded. - Kazi Shams

Anger itself does more harm than the condition which aroused anger. - David McKay

Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you are. - Cherie Carter-Scott

Anger should never be an overnight guest. - Neal Maxwell

Anger so clouds the mind, that it cannot perceive the truth. - Cato The Elder

Anger ventilated often hurries toward forgiveness; and concealed often hardens into revenge. - Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten. - The Buddha

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. - Seneca

Anger, in general, is healthy. Just like sadness or happiness, it's a normal emotion. Where people get into trouble is when anger becomes a behaviour that is physically, verbally or emotionally inappropriate. - Carole D. Stovall

Angry people are not always wise. - Jane Austen

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

As anger is a passing storm, so it comes not gradually and with signs, but like a sudden sweep of wind or black squall. - James Vila Blake

As anger is a passion, it is to be ruled; as it is a weak passion, he is weak who rules it not. - James Vila Blake

At the core of all anger is a need that is not being fulfilled. - Marshall B. Rosenberg

At the moment you become angry, you tend to believe that your misery has been created by another person. You blame him or her for all your suffering. But by looking deeply, you may realize that the seed of anger in you is the main cause of your suffering. Many other people, confronted with the same situation, would not get angry like you. They hear the same words, they see the same situation, and yet they are able to stay calm and not be carried away. Why do you get angry so easily? You may get angry very easily because your seed of anger is too strong. And because you have not practiced the methods for taking good care of your anger, the seed of anger has been watered too often in the past. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury. - Francis Quarles

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean. - Maya Angelou

By all means give vent to your anger, let it out in non-destructive ways – if you are still deciding to have it. But begin to think of yourself as someone who can learn to think new thoughts when you are frustrated, so that the immobilizing anger can be replaced by more fulfilling emotions. Annoyance, irritation, and disappointment are feelings that you will very likely continue to experience, since the world will never be the way you want it. But anger, that hurtful emotional response to obstacles, can be eliminated. - Wayne W. Dyer

Do not allow yourself to be blinded by fear and anger. Everything is only as it is. - Yuki Urushibara

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others. - Socrates

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you. - Joel Osteen

Every present anger derives from past weakness. - Glen Duncan

Every time you get angry, you poison your own system. - Alfred A. Montapert

Every time you get upset at something, ask yourself if you were to die tomorrow, was it worth wasting your time being angry? - Robert Tew

Explain your anger instead of expressing it, and you will find solutions instead of arguments. - Ritu Ghatourey

Explain your anger, don’t express it, and you will immediately open the door to solutions instead of arguments. - Unknown

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

He overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger. - Aristotle

He that strives not to stem his anger's tide, does a wild horse without a bridle ride. - Colley Cibber

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

He who angers you conquers you. - Elizabeth Kenny 

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. - Mitch Albom

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned. - The Buddha

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. - Marcus Aurelius

I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world. - Mahatma Gandhi

If a man be under the influence of anger his conduct will not be correct. - Confucius

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size? - Sydney J. Harris

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

If the angry and revengeful person would only govern his passions and light the lamp of affection in his heart, that it might stream out in his features and actions, he would soon discover a wide difference in his communion with the world. A kind word, an obliging action, even if it be a trifling one, has a power superior to the harp of David in calming the billows of the soul. - Nicias Ballard Cooksey

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. - Unknown

If you are right then there is no need to get angry, and if you are wrong, then you don't have any right to get angry. - Unknown

If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase. - Epictetus

If you kick a stone in anger you will hurt your foot. - Korean Proverb

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves. - The Buddha

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action. - Pythagoras

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly just as it is to be angry with a car that won’t go. - Bertrand Russell

It is important to feel the anger without judging it, without attempting to find meaning in it. It may take many forms: anger at the health-care system, at life, at your loved one for leaving. Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Anger is a natural reaction to the unfairness of loss. - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either. - Wayne Dyer

It is wise to direct your anger towards problems – not people; to focus your energies on answers – not excuses. - William Arthur Ward

It’s important for people to keep in mind that while anger is a feeling that everybody has, aggression is a choice. - Carole D. Stovall

It’s so important to realize that every time you get upset, it drains your emotional energy. Losing your cool makes you tired. Getting angry a lot messes with your health. - Joyce Meyer

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. - Mitch Albom

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. - James Thurber

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. - James Vila Blake

Many circumstances arise in the experience of every one to excite anger, and doubtless the average man and woman has little idea of its destructive nature. No matter how great the aggravation no one is justified in indulging fits of anger. It never helps, but always hurts. Rage, fury, hate, wrath and revenge are extremely destructive. They not only injure the one against whom they are hurled, but react back against the individual who indulges them by exciting trouble and disease of various kinds in the body. They are intensely consuming, and the action in the body is very rapid. Anger often results in complications which may bring misery and unhappiness into the lives of relatives and friends. The conditions resulting from fits of anger may continue throughout the life of all the individuals affected by it. - Walter Matthews

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. - Henry Ward Beecher

Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people. - Mario Puzo

Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it. Don’t allow his anger to become your anger. - Bohdi Sanders

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched. - George Jean Nathan

Not to be provok'd is best: But if mov'd, never correct till the fume is spent; for every stroke our fury strikes, is sure to hit ourselves at last. - William Penn

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savour 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. - Frederick Buechner

Others don’t make us angry. There is no force involved. Becoming angry is a conscious choice, a decision. Therefore, we can make the choice not to become angry. We choose! - Lynn G. Robbins

Pent-up anger will either explode uncontrollably or eat away at our hearts and souls until it takes up all of our interior space. Unless and until we deal with our anger, there is no room in us for anything else. - G. Porter Taylor

People who habitually yield to anger are likely to acquire an erroneous notion of their own power. For there is no doubt that in anger there is a good deal of power. It often gets what it wants, like every form of self-assertion and tyranny. And what it loses may not be apparent on the surface. Nevertheless what it loses may be so vast as to be incalculable. For, great as the power of anger may be in some cases, it is pitifully small compared with the power of its opposite quality, self-control. And just as self-control may often seem to be weakness, anger may seem to be strength. The truth is, of course, that real strength lies not in anger, but in the control of anger. - John Daniel Barry

People with a healthy attitude concerning anger understand the difference between constructive and destructive anger. Anger is constructive when your anger expression affirms and acknowledges your integrity and boundaries without intending to threaten or violate another person's integrity or boundaries. Destructive anger is when your expression of anger is a defensive and rigid attempt to protect your vulnerability and boundaries by intending to threaten or violate another's integrity and boundaries (whether the intention is conscious or not). If you have a healthy relationship with anger, you have learned how to transform anger from a weapon that wounds others and yourself to a tool that promotes understanding and healthy change in relationships. Anger is most constructive when it is used to solve a problem, rather than merely to prove a point or vent your feelings. - Beverly Engel

Postpone today's anger until tomorrow. - Tagalog Proverb

Sometimes anger is referred to as "temper." And among many people to have a temper is considered creditable. It is in some way associated with power. Here is a common confusion of thought. Good qualities associated with a bad quality are likely to confer the bad quality on a false character. On the other hand, bad qualities associated with a good quality may completely destroy respect for the good quality. The pride that people take in having a temper often leads them to shameful indulgence in anger. And repeated indulgence tends to destroy the capacity for self-control. As a matter of fact, nearly everyone has a capacity for temper, that is, for anger. It is associated with all our deepest qualities, with egotism, the instinct for self-preservation and for self-assertion. Anger, after all, is very largely an arrogant and violent assertion of oneself. It is a gross expression of tyranny. - John Daniel Barry

Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done. - Lee Ang

Stay away from anger. It hurts only you and nobody else. If you are right, then there is no need to get angry. If you are wrong, then you don't have any right to get angry. - Buddhist Quote

The anger of the prudent never shows. - Burmese Proverb

The greatest remedy for anger is delay. - Seneca

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves. - John Dryden 

The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of living in the present. - Barbara De Angelis 

The right to be angry does not mean the right to be cruel. - Unknown

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. - George Eliot

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot. - Plato

There is no psychological reward for anger. Anger is debilitating. In the physiological realm, it can produce hypertension, ulcers, rashes, heart palpitations, insomnia, fatigue and even heart disease. In the psychological sense, anger breaks down love relationships, interferes with communication, leads to guilt and depression and generally just gets in your way. You may be sceptical, since you've always heard that expressing your anger is healthier than keeping it bottled up inside of you. Yes, the expression of anger is indeed a healthier alternative than suppressing it. But there is an even healthier alternative than suppressing it – not having the anger at all. In this case you won't be confronted with the dilemma of whether to let it out or keep it in. - Wayne W. Dyer

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves. - Alexander Pope

To rule one's anger is well; to prevent it is still better. - Tryon Edwards

You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger. - Buddha

We occasionally hear of "righteous anger." We mean anger that is justified by circumstances. But, in a sense, all anger is righteous. That is, all anger justifies itself in the mind of the person who feels the anger. In another sense, there is no such thing as righteous anger. For no anger can really justify itself. - John Daniel Barry

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame. - Benjamin Franklin

When anger is not trampling roughshod through our nervous system, it is sitting sullenly in some unspecified internal organ. "She's got a lot of anger in her," people will say (it nestles, presumably, somewhere in the gut), or, "He's a deeply angry man" (as opposed, presumably, to a superficially angry one). If anger isn't released, it "turns inward" and metamorphoses into another creature altogether. - Carol Tavris

When anger rises, think of the consequences. - Confucius

When anger walks it is strongest; let it rest and it gets weak. - Edward Counsel

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

When faced with anger, senseless drama, spiteful criticisms, and misguided opinions, walking away is the best way to stand up for yourself. To respond with anger is an endorsement of their attitude. - Dodinsky

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life. - Marcus Aurelius

When we are angry, our anger is our very self. To suppress or chase away our anger is to suppress or chase away ourselves. When anger is born, we can be aware that anger is an energy in us, and we can change that energy into another kind of energy. If we want to transform it, first we have to know how to accept it. - Thich Nhat Hanh

When you are tempted to get angry and feel frustrated with those around you, take a moment to think about your own faults and shortcomings. This will help you to be patient with others. - Unknown

When you have been done an injustice, anger flares up before you have a chance to understand what has happened. It's as though someone else is looking out for you and letting you know immediately that you have been wronged. Anger gives you the impetus you need to change conditions that need to be changed. In this way, anger is like a dark guardian angel, a daemonic force – a daemon is an unnamed but felt invisible presence – that offers guidance and spiritual support. - Thomas Moore

When you look deeply into  your anger, you will see that the person you call your enemy is also suffering. As soon as you see that, the capacity for accepting and having compassion for them is there. - Thich Nhat Hanh

When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing. - Octavia E. Butler

Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror and look at yourself. When you are angry, you are not very beautiful. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath. - Eckhart Tolle

Whining is anger through a small opening. - Stuart Smalley

You can learn to handle your anger well. First, recognize that anger is a normal part of life. Everybody feels angry from time to time. Like all feelings, anger is neither good nor bad, it just is. - Ronald & Patricia Potter-Efron

Your anger is like a flower. In the beginning you may not understand the nature of your anger, or why it has come up. But if you know how to embrace it with the energy of mindfulness, it will begin to open. You may be sitting, following your breathing, or you may be practicing walking meditation to generate the energy of mindfulness and embrace your anger. After ten or twenty minutes your anger will have to open herself to you, and suddenly, you will see the true nature of your anger. It may have arisen just because of a wrong perception or the lack of skilfulness. - Thich Nhat Hanh