50 Anger Quotes and How to Let it Go
Anger is something that we can internalize or externalize, but no matter how we deal with it, it will eventually come out. Anger can impact every aspect of our lives. It can make us depressed, isolated, bitter, and unforgiving of others. Learning to effectively manage our anger can have a profound effect on the quality of our lives, our level of success, and how far we go in our personal and professional lives.
Here are some thoughts on anger that might help you in learning to let it go.
1. “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” - Joe Klaas, Twelve Steps to Happiness
2. “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.” - Phyllis Diller
3. “Angry people are not always wise.” - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
4. “I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.” - Simone de Beauvoir
5. “Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.” - Maya Angelou
6. “The best fighter is never angry.” - Lao Tzu
7. “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
8. “Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” - Ambrose Bierce
9. “When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.” - Mark Twain
10. The strong person is not the good wrestler. Rather, the strong person is the one who controls himself when he is angry. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 73, #135)” - Anonymous
11. “If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.” - Shannon L. Alder
12. “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
13. “Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.” - Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation
14. “I want to say somewhere: I've tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in.” - Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
15. “Anger is like flowing water; there's nothing wrong with it as long as you let it flow. Hate is like stagnant water; anger that you denied yourself the freedom to feel, the freedom to flow; water that you gathered in one place and left to forget. Stagnant water becomes dirty, stinky, disease-ridden, poisonous, deadly; that is your hate. On flowing water travels little paper boats; paper boats of forgiveness. Allow yourself to feel anger, allow your waters to flow, along with all the paper boats of forgiveness. Be human.” - C. JoyBell C.
16. “Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling - I don't think it's any of that - it's helpless ... it's absence of control - and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that - I have no use for it whatsoever." [Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]” - Toni Morrison
17. “Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.” - Malcolm X
18. “A heart filled with anger has no room for love.” - Joan Lunden, Wake-Up Calls
19. “Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, "What else could this mean?” - Shannon L. Alder
20. “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." Constructive anger," the demon said, her voice dripping sarcasm. Also known as passion," I said quietly. "Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful.” - Jim Butcher, White Night
21. “Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn't change the heart of others-- it only changes yours.” - Shannon L. Alder, 300 Questions to Ask Your Parents Before It's Too Late
22. “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, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
23. “Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghost of yesterday. Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people...but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us.” - Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
24. “Transformation is my favorite game and in my experience, anger and frustration are the result of you not being authentic somewhere in your life or with someone in your life. Being fake about anything creates a block inside of you. Life can’t work for you if you don’t show up as you.” - Jason Mraz
25. “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, Warrior Wisdom: Ageless Wisdom for the Modern Warrior
26. “A void in my chest was beginning to fill with anger. ?Quiet, defeated anger that guaranteed me the right to my hurt, that believed no one could possibly understand that hurt.” - Rachel Sontag, House Rules
27. “My mother's psychologist says I have an overactive anger switch, but people just keep pissing me off.” - Meg Cabot, Darkest Hour
28. “It is wise to direct your anger towards problems -- not people; to focus your energies on answers -- not excuses.” - William Arthur Ward
29. “So you try to think of someone else you're mad at, and the unavoidable answer pops into your little warped brain: everyone.” - Ellen Hopkins
30. “Most hatred is based on fear, one way or another. Yeah. I wrapped myself in anger, with a dash of hate, and at the bottom of it all was an icy center of pure terror.” - Laurell K. Hamilton, Guilty Pleasures
31. “Don't hold to anger, hurt or pain. They steal your energy and keep you from love.” - Leo Buscaglia
32. “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
33. “It is important not to suppress your feelings altogether when you are depressed. It is equally important to avoid terrible arguments or expressions of outrage. You should steer clear of emotionally damaging behavior. People forgive, but it is best not to stir things up to the point at which forgiveness is required. When you are depressed, you need the love of other people, and yet depression fosters actions that destroy that love. Depressed people often stick pins into their own life rafts. The conscious mind can intervene. One is not helpless.” - Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
34. “Poetry = Anger x Imagination” - Sherman Alexie, One Stick Song
35. “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” - Anonymous
36. “But she wished she had had the guts to go up to him and say hello. Or possibly break his legs, she wasn't sure which.” - Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire
37. “Don’t waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.” - Roy T. Bennett
38. “I love you. I hate you. I like you. I hate you. I love you. I think you’re stupid. I think you’re a loser. I think you’re wonderful. I want to be with you. I don’t want to be with you. I would never date you. I hate you. I love you…..I think the madness started the moment we met and you shook my hand. Did you have a disease or something?” - Shannon L. Alder
39. “Anger is stupid, and stupidity will kill you more surely than your opponent's blade.” - Patricia Briggs, Dragon Bones
40. “Conquer the angry one by not getting angry; conquer the wicked by goodness; conquer the stingy by generosity, and the liar by speaking the truth. [Verse 223]” - Gautama Buddha, The Dhammapada
41. “I'm not really sure why. But... do you stop loving someone just because they betray you? I don't think so. That's what makes the betrayal hurt so much - pain, frustration, anger... and I still loved her. I still do.” - Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire
42. “If you try to get rid of fear and anger without knowing their meaning, they will grow stronger and return.” - Deepak Chopra, The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore
43. “Men in rage strike those that wish them best.” - William Shakespeare, Othello
44. “The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable, Is that which rages in the place of dearest love.” - Euripides, Medea and Other Plays
45. “Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.” - Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
46. “The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal.” - Criss Jami, Killosophy
47. “I am convinced that the jealous, the angry, the bitter and the egotistical are the first to race to the top of mountains. A confident person enjoys the journey, the people they meet along the way and sees life not as a competition. They reach the summit last because they know God isn’t at the top waiting for them. He is down below helping his followers to understand that the view is glorious where ever you stand.” - Shannon L. Alder
48. “You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner." (Elizabeth Bennett)” - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
49. “Anger, Tessa thought, was satisfying in its own way, when you gave in to it. There was something gratifying about shouting in a blind rage until your words ran out.” - Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
50. “And if one day,' she said, really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to that is was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud.” - Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls