Indignation

“ The malevolent affections are Anger, Resentment, Envy, Revenge, and Hatred.
Anger is the sense of indignation occasioned by real or imagined wrong. When excited by actual wrong-doing, and when contained within reasonable bounds, it is not only innocent, but salutary. It intensifies the virtuous feeling which gives it birth; and its due expression is among the safeguards of society against corruption and evil. ”

“ Full of just indignation against the aggressor, of generous sympathy with the oppressed, shall the palpitating throng stay the quick throbbing of their hearts to inquire of the men of the senses if they may admire, or of the critics and schoolmen if they may approve? Their intuitions have already decided the question for them. Why do the masses always accord in their estimation of the just and unjust? ”

“ The deep angry remonstrant eyes, the shaggy eyebrows, telling tales of frequent anger,—of anger frequent but generally silent,—the repressed indignation of the habitual frown, the long nose and large powerful mouth, the deep furrows on the cheek, and the general look of thought and suffering, all combined to make the appearance of the man remarkable, and to describe to the beholders at once his true character. ”

“ Disgust assails us, nausea overwhelms us, scorn conquers us, indignation stifles us, wrath shakes us, and rage consumes us when we see this miscreant of the pen, this bandit of paper, this outlaw of ink, move to the assault of persons whom the country honors, universities approve, academies reward, foreigners admire, and the bourgeoisie respects without knowing why. ”

“ No one more sincerely regrets the insults offered his person, and the injury done to his property; but I cannot restrain my indignation, when I hear the public virtue, that so promptly recoils from undue violence, stigmatized as time-serving conwardice. ”

“ Moderately as we wish to bring ourselves to the subject, in order to view with calmness the atrocious deeds daily passing under our eyes, a deep indignation, crying for vengeance, swells our bosom, and almost suffocates the whisperings of deliberative retribution. ”

“ On hearing these noble sentiments fall from the lips of a person, once a slave, and in a manner most insinuating, with all the dignity of the most refined and cultivated person, and with an indignation expressive of the deepest abhorrence for the nefarious system of unmittigated, inhuman, chattelism. ”

“ But it is ridiculous, and seems ungrateful, for people to affect an appearance of indignation against those who provide for them one of the greatest enjoyments of their lives. To chuckle over scandal all the forenoon with every mark of pleasure, and decry it in the evening with affected anger, is as preposterous as it would be in a judge, first to seduce a poor wench to fornication, and then punish her for the sin. ”

“ People in general, knowing themselves to be innocently made to suffer, would take comfort in righteous indignation and justified contempt: but to you the indignation and contempt would be the worst part of suffering ”

“ This impassioned strain is continued till his anger is turned against the author of her sufferings, when it is poured out in one of the most terrific passages which poetry, either ancient or modern, can exhibit,—a passage in which indignation and revenge seem to absorb every other feeling, and to involve not only the offender, but all who are connected with him, in indiscriminate destruction. ”

“ Burning indignation against intolerable things, fierce denunciation of the cruelties and abominations of the world find no encouragement or sympathy from this serene, detached, and therefore somewhat ineffectual, teaching. ”

“ To those of us who normally feel loyal to the nation, such a disloyal sentiment brings sharp indignation. As an index of our own sentiment and our own happy relations to the nation, this indignation has value. ”

“ If he makes no secret of his indignation, and even contempt, it must be remembered that indignation and contempt may well have been real with him, while they were real with the soundest part of his countrymen ”

“ One may imagine the emotions of shame, sorrow, and indignation with which the vast assembly, consisting of both sexes, listened to the words of an instrument, every sentence of which seemed to convey a personal indignity to the hearers—an outrage on all those ideas of decorum and decency in which they had been nurtured from infancy ”

“ Deep, chronic pains of the soul, especially if accompanied by a strong exertion of thought—among which I would give a prominent place to that lingering anger which men call indignation—gnaw the very foundations of physical life, and dry up the sap that nourish it. ”

“ The feelings of the people, which were at first merely wrath and indignation, and do not date from yesterday, have been changed into an implacable hatred, the fury of which it is impossible any longer to restrain. ”

“ That reasoning which stops the torrent of public indignation, and diverts it from its object only to dole it out to its miserable victim, drop by drop, and day by day, through a long protracted series of time with systematic, deliberate, unrelenting severity, is in fact neither wise nor humane. ”

“ A RULE OF LIFE
‘If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly, and even to harm him,’ said a crafty old knave to me, ‘you reproach him with the very defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. Be indignant ... and reproach him!
‘To begin with, it will set others thinking you have not that vice.
‘In the second place, your indignation may well be sincere.... You can turn to account the pricks of your own conscience. ”

“ The victims may writhe in agony, and the tender-hearted spectator may look on with gloomy sorrow and indignation, but it is to no purpose. The promptings of mercy and justice in the heart are only in rebellion against the law of the land. ”

“ When one is charged with practices, which his soul abhors, and which conscious innocence tells him he has never committed, an honest indignation will draw from him expressions in his own favor, which, on other occasions, might be ascribed to an ostentatious turn of mind. The part which I have acted in the American cause has been acknowledged by our friends and by our enemies to have been far from an indifferent one. ”

“ On the contrary, when we gaze upon the progress of the vicious and the criminal, however successful and prosperous in their brief space of action, to contempt and indignation, to disgust and horror, are added the same consciousness of a hereafter, and the certainty of an awful retribution. ”

“ For thus the cause of individuals is made a public concern, and the general indignation which their wrongs excite, forms at once one of the severest punishments which can be inflicted on the oppressor, and one of the strongest bulwarks that can be raised in defence of the unprotected. ”

“ Often the fierceness of his temper, the righteous indignation that swelled his bosom, impelled him to hurl defiance at his foes, and to use language, the possible consequences of which, caused the more timid and abject of his followers, to tremble with apprehension. ”

“ No violent outbursts of indignation on your part, no abusive words, no insulting language are reported to me: which, while quite alien to culture and refinement, are specially unsuited to high power and place. For if your anger is implacable, it amounts to extreme harshness ”

“ Further, Though injury, injustice, oppression, the baseness of ingratitude, are the natural objects of indignation, or, if you please, of resentment, as before explained, yet they are likewise the objects of compassion, as they are their own punishment, and without repentance will for ever be so. No one ever did a designed injury to another, but at the same time he did a much greater to himself. ”

“ But indignation is still a bondage, for it compels our thoughts to be occupied with an evil world; and in the fierceness of desire from which rebellion springs there is a kind of self-assertion which it is necessary for the wise to overcome. ”

“ Or were such an attempt to be now made, it is highly probable, that it would be resented with indignation by the good sense of mankind as an insult and outrage upon the understanding and best feelings of the human heart. ”

“ Therefore, facit indignatio versus, is only to be applied when the indignation is against general villany, and never operates when some sort of people write to defend themselves. I love to hear them reproach you for dulness, only I would be satisfied since you are so dull, why are they so angry? ”

“ The change in the poet's style prepares for another effect. While we are contemplating the exact details of the sufferings of the different classes of outraged citizens, the insult and cruelty and utter abomination of these scenes rouse our indignation against the perpetrators of the foulest crimes, and leave nothing but pity for their victims. ”

“ When the indignation against injury and injustice rises too high, and is beyond proportion to the particular ill action it is exercised upon: or lastly, when pain or harm of any kind is inflicted merely in consequence of, and to gratify that resentment, though naturally raised. ”

“ It cannot be doubted, that the expression of indignation is a just consequence of certain faults, and the general indignation with which these are spoken of before young people, must make a strong and useful impression upon their minds. ”

“ The daughters of anger, or the sins which spring from the same root, are indignation and he swelling of passion, blasphemy, imprecation, quarrelling, and contumely; fighting, sedition, striking, and wounding ”

“ Now Indignation is the handsome brother of Anger and Hatred. His looks are “lovely in terror,” yet still remember who are his relations. ”

“ There is no more sovereign eloquence than the true in indignation; ”

“ Resolved, That we spurn with contempt and burning indignation, any attempt, on the part of any person, or persons, to thrust us from the general bulk of society, and place us in a separate and distinct classification, such as is expressly implied in an address issued from the late meeting above alluded to. ”

“ They believed their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice mean—except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these illusions. ”

“ Men’s indignation, it seems, is more excited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior. ”

“ The most severe punishment that ought ever to be necessary is the natural spontaneous expression of indignation. On a few occasions when my boy has been rough with his younger sister, his mother has expressed anger by an impulsive exclamation. ”

“ We have never gone out of our way to look for trouble, being more inclined to attend to our own affairs than to oversee those of our neighbors, and, yet, when, repeatedly, gross acts of injustice and cruelty have been forced under our observation, we have, at times, been aroused to a state of what we have honestly believed to be righteous indignation, and, in these circumstances, we have conducted ourselves in accordance with our ability and the fervor of our convictions. ”

“ Look at them running to and fro about the streets, every one of them a scoundrel and a criminal at heart and, worse still, an idiot. But try to get me off and they’d be wild with righteous indignation. Oh, how I hate them all!” ”

“ Yet restrain your generous instincts and do not pause either to remonstrate or protest. You will see and hear much to raise your just indignation, but keep your feelings under, or you will be of no use to the cause. ”

“ For any amplifications whatever, and every sort of indignation may be expressed, derived from those circumstances which are attributed to persons and to things, but still we had better consider those precepts which can be laid down separately with respect to indignation.
The first topic is derived from authority, when we relate what a great subject of anxiety that affair has been to the immortal gods, or to those whose authority ought to carry the greatest weight with it. ”

“ That's because, when one's heart has been broken into in the way you have broken into mine, all sorts of weaknesses are free to enter--shame, anger, stupid indignation, stupid fears--stupid laughter, too. ”

“ Earnest rebuke and moral indignation belong to wrong-doing, and not to erroneous opinion. It is a confusion of mind on these points that has led to all the persecution and religious hatred that the world has ever witnessed. ”

“ The insolence and brutality of anger, in the same manner, when we 24 indulge its fury without check or restraint, is of all objects the most detestable. But we admire that noble and generous resentment which governs its pursuit of the greatest injuries, not by the rage which they are apt to excite in the breast of the sufferer, but by the indignation which they naturally call forth in that part of the impartial spectator ”

“ This sentiment of justice, this agony in view of cruelty and crime, is in men a strong attribute of the highest natures; for he who is destitute of the element of moral indignation is effeminate and tame. ”

“ And when we see a man rendered uninteresting and unamiable by cares, temptations, and bursts of passion or folly, yet who still governs vigilantly and ably, our indignation should be modified, when the lower propensities are indulged. ”