Anger

You have demanded of me, Novatus, that I write on how anger may be soothed, and it seems to me not without reason that you have dreaded this passion above all others as the most hideous and frenzied.

and when I command the neck of a guilty man to be struck off, when I sew up parricides in the sack, when I send a man to a soldier's punishment, when I set a traitor or a public enemy upon the Tarpeian Rock, I shall be without anger and with the same look and mind with which I strike serpents and venomous creatures.

Again, if anger were a good, would it not attend every most perfect man?

That is, when someone comes at you rashly with folly and anger and gross blundering, and you answer him as a jester answers who wishes him well, with a broad breast, an open face, and steadiness of speech.

the cause of ruin is anger;

Nothing raises a man up out of anger like the offering of an excuse.

And of enemies, when I had put them to the test — I saw no enemy to a man's reason more hostile than anger.

And do not give your anger sovereignty over your soul, to carry you out of balance into inconsistency;

Anger rusts the intellect.

Anger is a psychic state (*ḥāl nafsānīyah*) by which harms are repelled, and appetite is a psychic state by which what is beneficial is drawn toward that which suits it.

the soul is like the king, the intellect is his vizier who attends to his benefits, the appetitive faculty is the preparer of his food, and the irascible is the keeper of his house.

the soul is a king, the body is his town, the senses are his soldiers, the organs are his subjects, and the appetitive and the irascible faculties are his enemies who quarrel with him to take his kingdom from him.

How greatly worth it is that some such example should enter the memory of a man already mastered by anger!

" Rather one must, above all, not rouse oneself to anger at all;

But in what way, if anger were natural, would one be more irascible than another, or would the lust of avenging have an end before it was avenged, or would anyone repent of what he had done through anger?

For what is there to which anger does not advance, to the same point as fury?

Well, then, did our countrymen, when all vices were in the morals, because none was fouler than irascibility, call the irascible alone \"morose\" (morosi).

that it is not anger that is manly, but that gentleness and mildness, as they are more human, so are they more manly;

For the movement toward wrongdoing and licence, toward anger and grief and fear, is nothing but that of one departing from nature.

For dwelling on this you will quickly forget your anger, when it also occurs to you that he is under compulsion;

the outcome of a mighty anger is madness, and therefore anger is to be avoided, not for the sake of moderation, but for the sake of sanity.

"Excessive anger begets madness.

Thereupon the Lord, openly enlarging the law, sets anger against a brother above murder.

And the intentness of prayer ought to be free not only from anger, but from every disturbance of mind whatsoever, sent forth from such a spirit as is the Spirit to which it is sent.

For at once that impatience, conceived from the seed of the devil, by the fruitfulness of malice brought forth a son, Anger, and when he was born trained him in its own arts.