Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Resentment

"Upon every hand we meet with those who have some secret resentment that is ever being nurtured within their hearts. They resent the success, or happiness of some one whom they think is less deserving than they are. They resent the just recognition that comes to others from work and long effort to excel. Or, they may resent being born poor - or resent the fact that they were even born!... Strive to excel, strive to achieve, where others have failed, and you will find no space within your mind to lodge resentment. Resentment is the child of selfishness, foolish envy, and inactivity... Our life upon this earth is too valuable for resentment of any kind. There is so much to do, so much to learn - so little time in which to live and work it all out." - George Matthew Adams

"Envy destroys peace of mind and happiness. An envious person’s life is full of suffering and resentment. He is never happy with what he himself has." - Michael Barenbaum

"The spirit of the world has four kinds of spirits diametrically opposed to charity - resentment, aversion, jealousy, and indifference." -

"Anger will never disappear so long as there are thoughts of resentment in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten." - Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

"A very small offence may be a just cause for great resentment: it is often much less the particular instance which is obnoxious to us than the proof it carries with it of the general tenor and disposition of the mind from whence it sprung." -

"Resentment is, in every stage of the passion, painful, but it is not disagreeable, unless in excess; pity is always painful, yet always agreeable; vanity, on the contrary, is always pleasant, yet always disagreeable." - Henry Home, Lord Kames

"He who will not curb his passion, will wish that undone which his grief and resentment suggested, while he violently plies his revenge with unsated rancor. Rage is a short madness. Rule your passion, which commands, if it do not obey; do not restrain it with a bridle, and with fetters." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"Guilt is anger directed at ourselves - at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others - at what they did or did not do." - John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

"Resentment gratifies him who intended an injury, and pains him unjustly who did not intend it." -

"Resentment is a union of sorrow with malignity; a combination of a passion which all endeavor to avoid with a passion which all concur to detest." -

"When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment." -

"Peace of mind is essential for obtaining many virtues. Its absence leads to all types of shortcomings. When you have peace of mind, you can use your mind constructively. Lack of peace of mind breeds anger and resentment. The quality of one’s prayers and blessings is dependent on the mastery of one’s thoughts... Only when a person has peace of mind can he really feel love for humanity. Lack of peace of mind leads to animosity towards others. Peace of mind leads to love." - Yeruchem Levovitz, aka The Mashgiach

"People become so used to being unhappy they are unaware of the needless misery they cause themselves. They imprison themselves by filling their minds with thoughts of resentment, hatred, envy, and desires. It is amazing how they tolerate living such a life. The only reason they do tolerate it is because they have become so used to living with such thoughts they fell it is the normal picture of life. They mistakenly think it is impossible for life to be any different." - Yeruchem Levovitz, aka The Mashgiach

"Nothing on earth consumes a man more completely than the passion of resentment." -

"He who bears reproach without resentment escapes a thousand grievances." - Babylonian Talmud

"A rattlesnake, if cornered, will become so angry it will bite itself. That is exactly what the harboring of hate and resentment against others is - a biting of oneself." - E. Stanley Jones, fully Eli Stanley Jones

"People vote their resentment, not their appreciation. The average man does not vote for anything, but against something." - William Bennett Munro

"There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred." - Thomas Paine

"The finest fruit of serious learning should be the ability to speak the word God without reserve or embarrassment. And it should be spoken without adolescent resentment, rather with some sense of communion, with reverence and with joy." - Nathan Marsh Pusey

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." -

"Joy has to do with seeing how big, how completely unobstructed, and how precious things are… Resentment, bitterness, and holding a grudge prevent us from seeing and hearing and tasting and delighting." -

"Prayer in action; it requires complete mobilization of heart, mind, and soul… For the soul, home is where the prayer is... Prayer calls for self-reflection, for contrition and repentance, examining and readjusting deeds and motivations, for recanting the ugly compulsions we follow, the tyranny of acquisitiveness, hatred, envy, resentment." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"In resentment there is no chance of release but only imprisonment in a painful past and the gradual stifling of all serenity, indeed, of all humanity." - Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

"Resentment is the refusal, out of fear, to cross the bridge of sadness and let ourselves back into the impermanent world of relationship." - Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

"Reason provides a means of escaping from the constraints of belief-systems backed by authority and from the resentment which clever people feel at the power of their own passions. Because reason--in admittedly varying degrees--is available to everybody, it has a potential advantage over the truth you feel and the truth you are told." - Felipe Fernández-Armesto

"Injuries must be committed all at once, so that, being savored less, they will arouse less resentment." -

"Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment." -

"If there is no ego who can feel anger or desire, resentment or frustration? This means that enquiry is not merely a cold investigation but a battle; every path is, in every religion." - Arthur W Osborn

"Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. It is then that he recognizes that he is empty, insufficient, dependent, ineffectual. From the depths of the soul now comes at once boredom, gloom, sorrow, chagrin, resentment and despair." - Blaise Pascal

"It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us, than the powerful whom we have injured. The conduct will be continued by our fears which commenced in our resentment." - Charles Caleb Colton

"He who demands much from himself and little from others avoids resentment." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"If we can't have all we want, let us not poison our days with worry and resentment. Let us be good to ourselves. Let us be philosophical. And philosophy, according to Epictecal, boils down to this: "The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things."" - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

"Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

"The sense of inferiority inherent in the act of imitation breeds resentment. The impulse of the imitators is to overcome the model they imitate." - Eric Hoffer

"Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It give bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity." - Joseph Addison

"It is often more necessary to conceal contempt than resentment; the former is never forgiven, but the latter is sometimes forgotten." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"A righteous person once asked, “On which day of your life did you experience the greatest amount of joy?” The righteous man replied, “It was the day when I traveled on a ship and someone greatly humiliated me. He treated me with ultimate disgrace. Nevertheless I did not feel even a drop of resentment. I experienced great joy that I reached such a level that no insult could cause me any pain.”" - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL

"Without forgiveness life is governed by… an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation." - Roberto Assagioli

"It must be a peace without victory... Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and common participation in a common benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"Almost all the trouble in the world is created by things people think, say and write. Words of anger, malice, hatred, resentment, jealously, like physical blows, cause people to hit back. Over-bearing, demanding words create determined resistance. And the attitudes of mind back of them, even though we do not speak the words, are sensed by others. For the telepathic power of thought is no longer merely a theory. Thoughts are things." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

"Rewarding the unworthy causes alienation; punishing the innocent causes resentment. Those whose appreciation or anger are unpredictable perish." - Zhuge Liang, courtesy name Kongming

"It is very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen." - John Henry Newman

"The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few. " - John L. Lewis, fully John Llewellyn Lewis

"Strength of character means the ability to overcome resentment against others, to hide hurt feelings, and to forgive quickly." - Lawrence G. Lovasik

"When we begin to observe ourselves sincerely our whole fate begins to change. But this means noticing, over a long period, the way we talk, the way we think, the criticisms we make, the resentment of what is said to us, the way we react to others, the opinions from which we argue, the way we are flattered, how we judge others, our vanity, cruelty, moods, emotions. Unless we detach ourselves from these things, we remain mechanical. We have to have an observing part and an observed part. When the observing I is established in us, it is from this I that everything else follows. Small to begin with, it is like a window to let in the light." - Maurice Nicoll

"If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which God would come to you." - Peter Marshall

"Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in. Fear and resentment of what is new is really a lament for the memories of our childhood. " - Peter Medawar, fully Sir Peter Brian Medawar

"Marriage isn't a love affair. It isn't even a honeymoon. It's a job. A long hard job, at which both partners have to work, harder than they've worked at anything in their lives before. If it's a good marriage, it changes, it evolves, but it does on getting better. I've seen it with my own mother and father. But a bad marriage can dissolve in a welter of resentment and acrimony. I've seen that, too, in my own miserable and disastrous attempt at making another person happy. And it's never one person's fault. It's the sum total of a thousand little irritations, disagreements, idiotic details that in a sound alliance would simply be disregarded, or forgotten in the healing act of making love. Divorce isn't a cure; it's a surgical operation, even if there are no children to consider. " - Rosamunde Pilcher, also pen name Jane Fraser

"To show resentment at a reproach is to acknowledge that one may have deserved it." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL

"The key is never, never work. Nothing is more aging than work. It's not only the strain of getting up in the morning for work, but it's the resentment that settles on your face." - Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt