September 29
Whoever conquers his own anger has defeated a greater enemy than has the one who takes the strongest city.
Sentences (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Whoever conquers his own anger has defeated a greater enemy than has the one who takes the strongest city.
If you hold back a sharp remark, that does not make it disappear. On the way home you often keep working on it, more precise and more pointed than it could have been in the moment. In the evening you tell someone about it, and only then does it take on its full ring.
From outside it looked like self-control. Whether it was is hard to say. Sometimes the anger has only changed its place, sometimes its addressee as well. Then it hits someone who had nothing to do with the matter, in a tone you yourself barely notice.
And yet it was not groundless. Something really was unfair, and you sensed it rightly. Conquering it, then, cannot mean ruling that it was wrong. It means rather taking away its command without forbidding it to speak. That is more laborious than silence. At some point you have to say what bothered you, and say it calmly enough that the other person can hear it.
A remark like that usually sounds weaker than the one from the way home. But you say it to the person it concerns.
