appease anger in another.
For the first, there is no other way but to meditate and ruminate well upon the effects of anger, how it troubles man’s life; and the best time to do this is, to look back upon anger when the fit is thoroughly over. Seneca saith well, “that anger is like ruin, which breaks itself upon that it falls.”523 The Scripture exhorteth us “to possess our souls in patience;”524 whosoever is out of patience, is out of possession of his soul. Men must not turn bees:—
Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns, children, women, old folks, sick folks. Only men must beware that they carry their anger rather with scorn than with fear; so that they may seem rather to be above the injury than below it; which is a thing easily done, if a man will give law to himself in it.
For the second point, the causes and motives of anger are chiefly three. First, to be too sensible of hurt, for no man is angry that feels not himself hurt; and therefore tender and delicate persons must needs be oft angry, they have so many things to trouble them, which more robust natures have little sense of: the next is, the apprehension and construction of the injury offered, to be, in the circumstances thereof, full of contempt; for contempt is that which putteth an edge upon anger, as much, or more, than the hurt itself; and therefore, when men are ingenious in picking out circumstances of contempt, they do kindle their anger much: lastly, opinion of the touch525 of a man’s reputation doth multiply and sharpen anger; wherein the remedy is, that a man should have, as Gonsalvo was wont to say, “Telam honoris crassiorem.”526 But in all refrainings of anger, it is the best remedy to win time, and to make a man’s self believe that the opportunity of his revenge is not yet come; but that he foresees a time for it,