Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

The man who gives way to anger, or hatred, or any other passion, cannot work; he only breaks himself to pieces, and does nothing practical. It is the calm, forgiving, equable, well-balanced mind that does the greatest amount of work.

He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

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.

Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately.

To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: 'Be angry, but sin not.' 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.'

I know, to banish anger altogether from one's breast is a difficult task. It cannot be achieved through pure personal effort. It can be done only by God's grace.

Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

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

My humour has always come from anger, but I have to make sure I don't just get angry and jump on a soapbox.

A man must fortify himself and understand that a wise man who yields to laziness or anger or passion or love of drink, or who commits any other action prompted by impulse and inopportune, will probably find his fault condoned; but if he stoops to greed, he will not be pardoned, but render himself odious as a combination of all vices at once.

Indulge not thyself in the passion of anger; it is whetting a sword to wound thine own breast, or murder thy friend.

To rule one's anger is well; to prevent it is better.

Anger does not solve problems - anger only makes things worse. I go by the old saying, 'Don't make important decisions when you're angry.'

I can be quite fiery. I was worse when I was younger but even now, when there is a bad decision from... it doesn't matter who, I sometimes want to scream.

I was never big on rage.' 'Why?' "It's so much more angry in my head than it could ever be outside.

Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation.

[..] and there are tons of people I hate so much that I wouldn't mind taking them out. But killing them wouldn't get me anywhere - that's the conclusion I always come to. If I'm going to pay for it in the end, I might as well let them live.

If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wrong, but the coals are.

I wish that strife would vanish away from among gods and mortals, and gall, which makes a man grow angry for all his great mind, that gall of anger that swarms like smoke inside of a man's heart and becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping of honey.

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.

It's not about being mad at everything. It's about being really mad at the right things.

We think that we do well to be angry with the rebellious, and so we prove ourselves to be more like Jonah than Jesus.

Do not plunge thyself too far in anger.

Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein.