These passages treat anger as a passion to be judged or governed. Homer begins with Achilles’s anger and its cost. Aristotle praises anger felt at the right things and in due measure; Cicero, naming the Peripatetics, rejects it: anger is always to be rooted out, above all in punishment. Horace and Marcus Aurelius give practical counsel for curbing it. The Psalm allows anger without sin, St Matthew puts the angry man in danger of judgement, and Dante places the wrathful in the Styx.
Chosen by hand, not counted: a passage is here when it is plainly about the topic, and the list is not every mention. Each is shown in the order the books were written, and each links to the section it is in.
The psalmist says: be angry, and sin not; repent on your beds of what your hearts say.
Be ye angry, and sin not: the things you say in your hearts, be sorry for them upon your beds. Psalm 4 →The poem opens on the anger of Achilles, which brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.
… Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another. … Book 1 →Aristotle makes meekness the mean in anger: anger at the right things, in the right way and measure.
… Meekness is a mean state, having for its object-matter Anger: and as the character in the mean has no name, and we may almost say the same of the extremes, we give the name of Meekness (leaning rather to the defect, which has no name either) to the character in the mean. The excess may be called an over-aptness to Anger: for the passion is Anger, and the producing causes many and various. … Book 4 →Cicero says punishment must be given without anger, which is always to be rooted out.
… In administering punishment it is above all necessary to allow no trace of anger. For if anyone proceeds in a passion to inflict punishment, he will never observe that happy mean which lies between excess and defect. This doctrine of the mean is approved by the Peripatetics--and wisely approved, if only they did not speak in praise of anger and tell us that it is a gift bestowed on us by Nature for a good purpose. … Book 1 →Horace calls wrath a short madness: rule your mind, or it will rule you.
… Who governs not his wrath will wish undone The deeds he did "when the rash mood was on." Wrath is a short-lived madness: curb and bit Your mind: 'twill rule you, if you rule not it While the colt's mouth is soft, the trainer's skill Moulds it to follow at the rider's will. Soon as the whelp can bay the deer's stuffed skin, He takes the woods, and swells the hunters' din. … Part 3 →Jesus teaches that whoever is angry with his brother is in danger of the judgement.
But I say to you, that whosoever is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council. And whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Matthew 5 →Marcus lists considerations for curbing anger at those who offend, beginning with men’s common nature.
[If any have offended against thee, consider first]: What is my relation to men, and that we are made for one another; and in another respect I was made to be set over them, as a ram over the flock or a bull over the herd. But examine the matter from first principles, from this. … Book 11 →In the Styx, Dante sees the souls of the wrathful striking and tearing one another in the mud.
… Said the good Master: “Son, thou now beholdest The souls of those whom anger overcame; And likewise I would have thee know for certain Beneath the water people are who sigh And make this water bubble at the surface, As the eye tells thee wheresoe’er it turns. Fixed in the mire they say, ‘We sullen were In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened, Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek; … Inferno 7 →