(Via/more).
“Of Anger” by Francis Bacon
TO SEEK to extinguish anger utterly, is but a bravery of the Stoics. We have better oracles: Be angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. Anger must be limited and confined, both in race and in time. We will first speak how the natural inclination and habit to be angry, may be attempted and calmed. Secondly, how the particular motions of anger may be repressed, or at least refrained from doing mischief. Thirdly, how to raise anger, or 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. The Scripture exhorteth us to possess our souls in patience. Whosoever is out of patience, is out of possession of his soul. Men must not turn bees;
… animasque in vulnere ponunt.
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 touch of a man’s reputation, doth multiply and sharpen anger. Wherein the remedy is, that a man should have, as Consalvo was wont to say, telam honoris crassiorem. 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; and so to still himself in the meantime, and reserve it.
To contain anger from mischief, though it take hold of a man, there be two things, whereof you must have special caution. The one, of extreme bitterness of words, especially if they be aculeate and proper; for cummunia maledicta are nothing so much; and again, that in anger a man reveal no secrets; for that, makes him not fit for society. The other, that you do not peremptorily break off, in any business, in a fit of anger; but howsoever you show bitterness, do not act anything, that is not revocable.
For raising and appeasing anger in another; it is done chiefly by choosing of times, when men are frowardest and worst disposed, to incense them. Again, by gathering (as was touched before) all that you can find out, to aggravate the contempt. And the two remedies are by the contraries. The former to take good times, when first to relate to a man an angry business; for the first impression is much; and the other is, to sever, as much as may be, the construction of the injury from the point of contempt; imputing it to misunderstanding, fear, passion, or what you will.
Must we no longer believe in words? Since when do they express the contrary of what the organ that utters them thinks and wants?
Herein fies the great secret:Thought is made in the mouth
— Tristan Tzara, from Dada Manifesto of Feeble Love and Weak Love
(Via).
A rose is a rose is a rose.
The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!
The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Antimetabole. Repetition of two words or short phrases, but in reversed order to establish a contrast. It is a specialized form of chiasmus.
Sometimes a cigar.
Freedom from morality.
Epiphora. The repetition of a phrase or word at the end of several sentences or clauses.
Sisyphus was son of King Aeolus of Thessaly and Enarete, and the founder and first king of Ephyra.
Epizeuxis. Emphasizing an idea using one word repetition.
Everything becomes and recurs eternally – escape is impossible! – Supposing we could judge value, what follows?
Conduplicatio. The repetition of a word in various places throughout a paragraph.
So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going?
Inque tuo sedisti, Sisyphe, saxo.
Parachesis. Repetition of the same sound in several words in close succession.
New means against the fact of pain.
Epistrophe. The repetition of a word or phrase at the end of every clause.
Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition?
Antanaclasis. The repetition of a word or phrase to effect a different meaning
Tantalus was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink.
Anadiplosis. The repetition of the last word of a preceding clause.
The enjoyment of all kinds of uncertainty.
That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox?
Anaphora. The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of every clause.
Wu Gang, known for endlessly cutting down a self-healing Bay Laurel on the Moon.
Experimentalism, as a counterweight to this extreme fatalism.
Polyptoton. The repetition of a word or root in different cases or inflections within the same sentence.
Abolition of the concept of necessity. Abolition of the “will.”
The most famous facet of Naranath Branthan’s life is his apparently eccentric habit of rolling big stones up the hill and letting them roll down back, and laughing thunderously on seeing this sight
Polysyndeton. The repeated use of conjunctions within a sentence, particularly where they do not necessarily have to be used.
Abolition of “knowledge-in-itself.”
Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.
A rose is a rose is a rose.
Makes breakfast for his wife. Goes to the butcher. Goes to the post office. Goes to church. Goes to a chemist. Goes to a public bath. Goes to a funeral. Goes to a newspaper press. Goes to a locksmith to canvass an ad. Feeds some seagulls. Goes to a bar. Helps a blind man cross the street. Goes to the museum. Goes to to the library. Visits a bookseller. Window-shops. Goes to a restaurant. Listens to some live music. Writes a love letter. Goes to another bar. Nearly gets in a fight. Masturbates to a beautiful eighteen-year-old exhibitionist giving him a private show. Takes an alfresco nap. Takes up a collection for a widow. Goes to a hospital to visit a pregnant woman. Flits with a nurse. Feeds a stray dog. Goes to a whorehouse. Helps avert a row with the police. Goes to a cabman’s shelter and listens to a sailor tell stories. Breaks into his own house. Urinates under the stars with another man. Watches the sunrise. Kisses his wife on her arse.
It would have been the single busiest, most adventurous day of my life.
From Evan Lavender-Smith’s From Old Notebooks.
Biblioklept 