Through anger, the truth looks simple.

Jane McCabe

I was so obsessed and consumed with my grievances that I could not get away from myself and think things out in the light. I was in the grip of that blinding, destructive, terrible thing — righteous indignation.

Anzia Yezierska

People in a temper often say a lot of silly, terrible things they mean.

Penelope Gilliatt

He was really very fond of his temper, and rather enjoyed referring to it with tolerant regret as being a bad one and beyond his control — with a manner which suggested that the attribute was the inevitable result of strength of character and masculine spirit.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

When I was little I had a mood swing set.

Steven Wright

Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, had some trouble with a major general who accused him, in abusive terms, of favoritism. Stanton complained to Lincoln, who suggested that he write the officer a sharp letter. Stanton did so, and showed the strongly worded missive to the president, who applauded its powerful language: “What are you going to do with it?” he asked. Surprised at the question, Stanton said, “Send it.” Lincoln shook his head. “Put it in the stove. That’s what I do when I have written a letter while I am angry. It’s a good letter and you had a good time writing it and feel better. Now burn it and write another.”

Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Malachy McCourt

The anger she felt within her acted like yeast on bread dough. She felt its rapid rising, flowing into every last recess of her body; like yeast in a small bowl, it spilled over to the outside, escaping in the form of steam through her ears, nose, and all her pores.

Laura Esquivel

I am no longer afraid of anger. I find it to be a creative, transforming force; anger is a stage I must go though if I am ever to get to what lies beyond.

Mary Kaye Medinger

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.

Phyllis Diller

Whining is anger through a small opening.

Al Franken (as Stuart Smalley)

At the core of all anger is a need that is not being fulfilled.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

You taught me to be nice, so nice that now I am so full of niceness, I have no sense of right and wrong, no outrage, no passion.

Garrison Keillor

The admonitions to be happy, voiced in concert by the . . . sanatorium director and the . . . propaganda chiefs of the entertainment industry, have about them the fury of the father berating his children for not rushing joyously downstairs when he comes home irritable from his office. It is part of the mechanism of domination to forbid recognition of the suffering it produces, and there is a direct line of development between the gospel of happiness and the construction of camps of extermination so far off in Poland that each of our own countrymen can convince himself that he cannot hear the screams of pain.

Theodor Adorno

The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn’t angry enough.

Bede Jarrett

Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others.

Harriet Lerner

There do in fact exist creators, seers, sages, saints, shakers, and movers . . . even if they are uncommon and do not come by the dozen. And yet these very same people can at times be boring, irritating, petulant, selfish, angry, or depressed. To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it.

Abraham Maslow

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.

Pema Chödrön

To be angry at people means that one considers their acts to be important. It is imperative to cease to feel that way. The acts of men cannot be important enough to offset our only viable alternative: our unchangeable encounter with infinity.

Carlos Castaneda