"I know of no more disagreeable situation than to be left feeling generally angry without anybody in particular to be angry at"
About this Quote
Anger, Colby reminds us, is most satisfying when it has an address. The “disagreeable situation” he names isn’t the heat of outrage itself, but the dead-end version: a free-floating irritant with nowhere to land. It’s a deceptively domestic complaint, yet it cuts close to a modern pathology. We’re not just mad; we’re mad in bulk, sloshing around in a mood that can’t find a single, responsible recipient.
As an educator, Colby’s intent reads like a moral weather report from someone who watched feelings curdle into behavior. Classrooms, committees, and institutions generate plenty of friction, and they also teach a crucial lesson: emotions demand narrative. When you can’t name the cause, anger turns from a response into a temperament. The subtext is almost pedagogical: if you can’t locate your target, you probably don’t understand your problem. Or worse, you’ll manufacture a target.
What makes the line work is its refusal to glorify anger. It’s not righteous thunder; it’s a vaguely humiliating fog. “Generally angry” is the killer phrasing, suggesting an all-purpose readiness to snap, the kind of irritability that recruits petty incidents as evidence. Colby sketches the psychological mechanics of displacement in one sentence: unresolved stress looks for a scapegoat because the mind craves closure more than accuracy.
Read in our era of ambient outrage and algorithmic grievance, the quote lands as both diagnosis and warning: anger without an object doesn’t stay objectless for long.
As an educator, Colby’s intent reads like a moral weather report from someone who watched feelings curdle into behavior. Classrooms, committees, and institutions generate plenty of friction, and they also teach a crucial lesson: emotions demand narrative. When you can’t name the cause, anger turns from a response into a temperament. The subtext is almost pedagogical: if you can’t locate your target, you probably don’t understand your problem. Or worse, you’ll manufacture a target.
What makes the line work is its refusal to glorify anger. It’s not righteous thunder; it’s a vaguely humiliating fog. “Generally angry” is the killer phrasing, suggesting an all-purpose readiness to snap, the kind of irritability that recruits petty incidents as evidence. Colby sketches the psychological mechanics of displacement in one sentence: unresolved stress looks for a scapegoat because the mind craves closure more than accuracy.
Read in our era of ambient outrage and algorithmic grievance, the quote lands as both diagnosis and warning: anger without an object doesn’t stay objectless for long.
Quote Details
| Topic | Anger |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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