Be not hasty in your spirit to be angry: for anger rests in the bosom of fools.
Read Chapter 7
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Speech. Hebrew, "thing. "The best projects often are seen to fail.
Beginning, as the auditor is on longer kept in suspense.
Presumptuous. Rashness must not be confounded with courage. (Calmet)
Hasty and immoderate anger is hurtful. (Worthington)
When a person does not put up with being disregarded in this world, he tries to display what good points he may have. And so impatience leads him on to arrogance, and being unable to tolerate contempt, he ostentatiously boasts in advertising himself. Wherefore it is written, “Better is the patient man than the presumptuous.” Indeed, the patient person suffers any evil rather than that his hidden good qualities become known through the evil of ostentation. On the contrary, the arrogant person prefers that good should be attributed to him even falsely, rather than that he should suffer the slightest evil.
When the peace of the mind is lashed with anger, torn and rent, as it were, it is thrown into confusion, so that it is not in harmony with itself and loses the force of the inward likeness. Let us consider, then, how great the sin of anger is, by which, while we part with mildness, the likeness of the image of the Most High is spoiled. By anger, wisdom is cast off, so that we are left wholly in ignorance of what to do and in what order to do it. .
The deadly poison of anger has to be utterly rooted out from the inmost corners of our soul. For as long as this remains in our hearts and blinds with its hurtful darkness the eye of the soul, we can neither acquire right judgment and discretion nor gain the insight which springs from an honest gaze, or ripeness of counsel. Nor can we be partakers of life, or retentive of righteousness, or even have the capacity for spiritual and true light, “for,” says one, “mine eye is disturbed by reason of anger.” Nor can we become partakers of wisdom, even though we are considered wise by universal consent, for “anger rests in the bosom of fools.”
