The Hat that fits too tight

The Hatter
Originally uploaded by andebos.

Marcus Antonius
"Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved"
-Marcus Antonius

"There was never an angry man who thought his anger unjust"
-Sir Francis De Sales

"Beware the fury of a patient man"
-John Dryden

"Speak when you're angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret"
-Lawrence J. Peter

"Two things a man should never be angry at: what he can help, and what he cannot help."
-Thomas Fuller

"Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."
-Frederick Buechner

"Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be"
-Thomas a Kempis

A lot of quotes for you this evening...and naturally one of my favorite charaters, the Mad Hatter! I like many of these verses about anger...rage, bitterness, rage, anger - these are not words I associate with myself. I am rarely an angry person, I cannot think back to the last time I was truly angry. I suppose I have lucked out because of my temperment and my parents upbringing - anger is not an emotion I am prone too. However, I have noticed over the last year this growing sense of anger and bitterness that remains undealt with. It is like a cracked door you notice late at night, perhaps on your way to get a drink...no light peers from the crack, but from somewhere deep down you get the delirious sense that someone, something, is observing your every breath and thought. My anger is something like that - a silent foe that watches me...and waits. Granted, it will never do more than crack the door, but it is a terrifying idea and ghost. Getting over past hurst is difficult. I have been asked, or told I suppose, that it was a surprise I was not angry. I have come to realize that anger does no one any good...especially yourself. It is like a slow disease - a stranger behind the door, waiting for the moment to fulfill your nightmares in the dark. Needless to say, anger is a terrible thing. Many of the quotes above I truly love...but I never thougth about the anger of a patient man - beware them the most. I have learned now about my anger...one wrong, two wrongs, even three or four cause no deep wounds due to our patience and understanding. Yet in time, our patience strikes back...it was a disguise against dealing with our anger - until it becomes too much. Then we are caught again, forced to deal with this stranger, and confused as to how..."beware the anger of a patient man" the human heart is a perplexing and beautiful thing - who can handle their emotions? There is a strong spirit.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that, while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor. -Dickens