Anger in General, with the Danger and Effects of it

There is no surer argument of a great mind than not to be transported to anger by any accident; the clouds and the tempests are formed below, but all above is quiet and serene; which is the emblem of a brave man, that suppresses all provocations, and lives within himself, modest, venerable, and composed: whereas anger is a turbulent humor, which, at first dash, casts off all shame, without any regard to order, measure, or good manners; transporting a man into misbecoming violences with his tongue, his hands, and every part of his body. And whoever considers the foulness and the brutality of this vice, must acknowledge that there is no such monster in Nature as one man raging against another, and laboring to sink that which can never be drowned but with himself for company. It renders us incapable either of discourse or of other common duties. It is of all passions the most powerful; for it makes a man that is in love to kill his mistress, the ambitious man to trample upon his honors, and the covetous to throw away his fortune.

There is not any mortal that lives free from the danger of it; for it makes even the heavy and the good-natured to be fierce and outrageous: it invades us like a pestilence, the lusty as well as the weak; and it is not either strength of body, or a good diet, that can secure us against it; nay, the most learned, and men otherwise of exemplary sobriety, are infected with it. It is so potent a passion that Socrates durst not trust himself with it. “Sirrah,” says he to his man, “now would I beat you, if I were not angry with you!” There is no age or sect of men that escapes it. Other vices take us one by one; but this, like an epidemical contagion, sweeps all: men, women, and children, princes and beggars, are carried away with it in shoals and troops as one man.