Sunday, December 13, 2015 – The Politics of Resentment
Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can’t do, fear or even disgust at growing old. ~ Rowan Williams
Recognizing your talents doesn’t mean believing they’re limitless. Accepting your strengths doesn’t lead to pride, but instead to humility; you’re less likely to resent what others have if you understand your own bounty. ~ Gina Barreca
Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life. ~ Joan Lunden
At least in the United States, most economic resentment is not directed toward billionaires or high-roller financiers – not even corrupt ones. It’s directed at the guy down the hall who got a bigger raise. It’s directed at the husband of your wife’s sister, because he earns twenty percent more than you do. ~ Tyler Cowen
To show resentment at a reproach is to acknowledge that one may have deserved it. ~ Tacitus
Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but at the same time let them feel the steadiness of your resentment. ~ Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Resentment is not morally superior to earning money. ~ Paul Singer
We only do harm to ourselves when we harbor resentment and vitriol toward another. I do believe that everything is forgivable; some things are inexcusable but forgivable. ~ Linda Thompson
Be a kind person. Yes, even to jerks. Let them be a jerk. You be a kind person. ~ Karen Salmansohn
A long-simmering resentment against the world can burn off more calories than you might imagine. ~ Paul Russell
What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes? ~ Jean-Paul Sartre, Black Orpheus
Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. ~ Carrie Fisher
I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze. ~ D. H. Lawrence
Nobody really wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of them will hurt. ~ J. M. Barrie
He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that’s not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it… he is insane because when he loved you, you didn’t notice. ~ Donald Barthelme
Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius. ~ Sam Kean
My talent was the uncompromising ability to feel spite. ~ Natsuo Kirino
To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man. ~ Anton Chekhov
Nothing’s amusing that isn’t spiteful. ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing? ~ Iris Murdoch, Nuns and Soldiers
If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size? ~ Sydney J. Harris
There is nothing more galling to angry people than the coolness of those on whom they wish to vent their spleen. ~ Alexandre Dumas
In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer. ~ Mark Twain
Spite is never lonely; envy always tags along. ~ Mignon McLaughlin
Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before – it takes something from him. ~ Louis L’Armour
The worst-tempered people I’ve ever met were people who knew they were wrong. ~ Wilson Mizner
To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee. ~ William H. Walton
Two things a man should never be angry at: What he can help, and what he cannot help. ~ Thomas Fuller
Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart. ~ C. S. Lewis
Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom. ~ Karl Kraus
For seven days she lay in bed looking sullenly at the ceiling as though resenting the death she had cultivated for so many years. Like some people who cannot vomit despite horrible nausea, she lay there unable to die, resisting death as she had resisted life, frozen with resentment of process and change. ~ William S. Burroughs
It has always seemed strange to me… the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. ~ John Steinbeck
As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it. ~ Samuel Johnson
One cannot always keep an adder in one’s breast to feed one, nor rise up every night to sow thorns in the garden of one’s soul. ~ Oscar Wilde
Just Above Sunset 