O VENENO ARDENTE DO DESGOSTO. THE WHITE HOT POISON OF ANGER. When others make us angry at them- at their shamelessness, injustice, inconsideration- then they exercise power over us, they proliferate and gnaw at our soul, then anger is like a white-hot poison that corrods all mild, noble and balanced feelings and robs us of sleep. Sleepless, we turn on the light and are angry at the anger that has lodged like a succubus who sucks us dry and debilitates us. We are not only furious at the damage, but also that it develops in us all by itself, for while we sit on the edge of the bed with aching temples, the distant catalyst remains untouched by the corrosive force of the anger that eats at us. On the empty internal stage bathed in the harsh light of mute rage, we perform all by ourselves a drama with shadow figures and shadow words we hurl against enemies in helpless rage we feel as icy blazing fire in our bowels. And the greater our despair that is only a shadow play and not a real discussion with the possibility of hurting the other and producing a balance of suffering, the wilder the poisonous shadows dance and haunt us even in the darkest catacombs of our dreams. (We will turn the tables, we think grimly, and all night long forge words that will produce in the other the effect of a fire bomb so that now he will be the one with the flames of indignation raging inside while we, soothed by schadenfreude, will drink our coffee in cheerful calm.) What could it mean to deal appropriately with anger? We really don't want to be soulless creatures who remain thoroughly indifferent to what they come across, creatures whose appraisals consist only of cool, anemic judgments and nothing can shake them up because nothing really bothers them. Therefore, we can't seriously wish not to know the experience of anger and instead persist in an equanimity that wouldn't be distinguished from tedious insensibility. Anger also teaches us something about who we are. Therefore this is what I'd like to know: What can it mean to train ourselves in anger and imagine that we take advantage of its knowledge without being addicted to its poison? We can be sure that we will hold on to the deathbed as part of the last balance sheet- and this part will taste bitter as cyanide- that we have wasted too much, much too much strength and time on getting angry and getting even with others in a helpless shadow theater, which only we, who suffered impotently, knew anything about. What can we do to improve this balance sheet? Why did our parents, teachers and other instructors never talk to us about it? Why didn't they tell something of this enormous significance? Not give us in this case any compass that could have helped us avoid wasting our soul on useless, self-destructive anger?
Pascal Mercier
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THOMAS HARRIS Nothing can survive without food. Everything we consume acts either to heal us or to poison us. We t... THICH NHAT HANH Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint ... HOMER So, tomorrow, I'm leaving. And I'm not going to let that happen again with anyone else. I'm going to... STEPHEN CHBOSKY Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. Anger - a beast within us that needs taming. SARU SINGHAL Anger is meant to be acted on. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are m... JULIA CAMERON The universe is so vast, so immense, we can never expect to explore it all. It is in effect, not so ... CHRISTINA ENGELA That's why we seize the moment try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it. EMINEM The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have. 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ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH A couple of customers interrupted [...] who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and ali... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer... WILLIAM HAZLITT Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we this way and not some other? What does it mean to be h... DR. CARL SAGAN One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us. The disappointmen... DEAN KOONTZ Shame evokes anxiety about what will happen if someone really knows is, but, because it is impossibl... WENDY J. MAHILL The events that happen in our lives make us who we are ,we can either give in to them and let them w... GARY F EVANS... The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves. ... CHARLES CALEB COLTON We all have thorns in our flesh. All of us. Love is when we stay and help someone pluck out their th... C. JOYBELL C. 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We are all capabl... ANGIE KARAN We may claim to believe in God, but we don't want to believe so much that it makes us different. CRAIG GROESCHEL So long as we do not know definitely what we want, our forces will be scattered, and so long as our ... CHRISTIAN D. LARSON We're all on our own, aren't we? That's what it boils down to. We come into this world o... LOIS LOWRY Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON [T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: W... SLAVOJ ŽIžEK I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown ma... THOMAS JEFFERSON When the challenges of mortality come, and they come for all of us, it may seem hard to have faith a... ROBERT BEVERLY HALE Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th... DEYTH BANGER We have to allow ourselves to be loved by the people who really love us, the people who really matte... C. JOYBELL C. Transcendental generosity is generally misunderstood in the study of the Buddhist scriptures as mean... CHöGYAM TRUNGPA It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may. We are never able to know ourselves ful... MOHANDAS GANDHI Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a we... MITCH ALBOM It was pivotal in making you but you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that ... DOUGLAS COUPLAND The season of the world before us will be like no other in the history of mankind. Satan has unleash... VAUGHN J. FEATHERSTONE In a world in which the common rule which binds and regulates what the general masses feel is underm... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility. Unlike memories, which are fossils, long ... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON A shadow is never created in darkness. It is born of light. We can be blind to it and blinded by it.... TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are... JAMES KAVANAUGH We are aberrations—beings born undead, neither one thing nor another, or two things at once … un... THOMAS LIGOTTI We are not perfect. The people around us are not perfect. People do things that annoy, disappoint, a... DIETER F. UCHTDORF Death frightens us. When we see another person die, we are reminded that we are also mortal, that so... R.C. SPROUL The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framewor... ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS There are moments of heartache and heartbreak, that we wonder how we did not drop dead in our pain. ... MISHI MCCOY What is Christ's joy in us, but that He deigns to rejoice on our account? And what is our Joy, which... ST. AUGUSTINE Most of us avoid telling the truth because it’s uncomfortable. We’re afraid of the consequences�... JACK CANFIELD (from chapter 20, "Bezalel") "We were getting it: worship was not so much what we did, bu... EUGENE H. PETERSON A proverb in the Old Testament states: 'He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he t... GORDON B. HINCKLEY Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks th... MITCH ALBOM We were pretty much upset with the fact that they called us a reform team. We are not a reform team.... MANNY LOPEZ Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attack... MITCH ALBOM Concluding a short series on prayer: He that seeks God in everything is sure to find God in everyt... WILLIAM LAW It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will... ALAIN DE BOTTON Healthy people understand that others have the capacity to choose to end relationships and it serves... WENDY J. MAHILL This is our Lord's will, ... that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large. For if we do not trust ... JULIANA OF NORWICH If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trus... RAINER MARIA RILKE I think that we live in a very timid age, and a part of our timidity arises from our unwillingness t... SALMAN RUSHDIE What I have learned lately is that people deal with death in all sorts of ways. Some of us fight aga... CARRIE JONES We believe because it gives us faith. It gives us the willingness to go through our day, to keep the... TARUN BETALA All people are, at heart, egocentric. We exist at the center of our own little universes. We believe... PETER DAVID Most of the time, we see only what we want to see, or what others tell us to see, instead of really ... SUZY KASSEM But even a vessel pulsates, beats and pumps in ecstasy and in rage! I wonder are the way ... QUIETSTORMPOET Spiritual mentors or peers who are mature in their relationship with God and whose present walk with... CRAIG KEENER We—all of us—want to feel special. We want to feel the glory that shines on us when we reach bey... J.E. LEIGH All the things people carry in their hearts, love, hatred, fears, and they had to be shared with a f... SHAIKH ASHRAF Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask... NORMAN MACLEAN He gave everything to everybody. Except to me. J.K. ROWLING There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity. We know quite... DIETRICH BONHOEFFER When we are wounded it's as if something is stolen from us. We adapt and accept a particular truth t... SHANNON L. ALDER Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As ch... 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More Pascal Mercier
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BLAISE PASCAL Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience. BLAISE PASCAL We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselv... BLAISE PASCAL The war existing between the senses and reason. BLAISE PASCAL Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without ... BLAISE PASCAL The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved... BLAISE PASCAL Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which is everything i... BLAISE PASCAL The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approach... BLAISE PASCAL One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of lif... BLAISE PASCAL Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts,... BLAISE PASCAL We like to be deceived. BLAISE PASCAL The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death. BLAISE PASCAL Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their... BLAISE PASCAL Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God. BLAISE PASCAL Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other. BLAISE PASCAL Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above,... BLAISE PASCAL It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the ... BLAISE PASCAL In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who d... BLAISE PASCAL Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience. BLAISE PASCAL The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways. BLAISE PASCAL Habit is the second nature which destroys the first. BLAISE PASCAL Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am... BLAISE PASCAL If you would have people speak well of you, then do not speak well of yourself. BLAISE PASCAL Evil is easy, and has infinite forms. BLAISE PASCAL I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still and quiet in ... BLAISE PASCAL Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason. BLAISE PASCAL The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory. BLAISE PASCAL I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the... BLAISE PASCAL If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. BLAISE PASCAL Ugly deeds are most estimable when hidden. BLAISE PASCAL If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation, that He exi... BLAISE PASCAL He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide. BLAISE PASCAL It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them. BLAISE PASCAL Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whate... BLAISE PASCAL It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obe... BLAISE PASCAL To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity. BLAISE PASCAL I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter. BLAISE PASCAL The gospel to me is simply irresistible. BLAISE PASCAL Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion. BLAISE PASCAL Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth. BLAISE PASCAL Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth. BLAISE PASCAL Our nature consist in motion; complete rest is death. BLAISE PASCAL There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think ... BLAISE PASCAL The only shame is to have none BLAISE PASCAL It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory. BLAISE PASCAL The stream is always purer at its source.
[Fr., Les choses valent toujours mieux dans leur source.... BLAISE PASCAL The vanity of the sciences. Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in th... BLAISE PASCAL Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of... BLAISE PASCAL It is in vain, 0 men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your insight o... BLAISE PASCAL All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room
alone. BLAISE PASCAL If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. BLAISE PASCAL Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do it for conscience's sake. BLAISE PASCAL What use is it to us to hear it said of a man that he has thrown off the yoke, that he does not beli... BLAISE PASCAL