Daily Inspiration Quote by Jeremy Taylor

Anger, in Jeremy Taylor's view, is almost never flattering: it either swells into something frightening or shrinks into something laughable. That blunt either-or is the line's engine. As a 17th-century Anglican clergyman writing in a culture obsessed with moral discipline and social hierarchy, Taylor isn't treating anger as a relatable mood; he's treating it as a diagnostic test of the soul and of judgment. The pivot on scale - "great cause" versus "small cause" - feels like common sense, but the trap is that both outcomes are condemnations. Even righteous anger, once it "turns to fury", becomes a threat to order, charity, and self-government. Petty anger, meanwhile, exposes vanity: the ego flinching at inconvenience and demanding the universe apologize.

The subtext is pastoral and political at once. Taylor lived through civil war, regicide, and religious upheaval; "fury" was not a metaphor but a recent memory, a civic contagion that could justify atrocities while pretending to be principled. His warning implies that moral seriousness doesn't license emotional excess; it makes the stakes higher, so anger's volatility is more dangerous, not more heroic.

The line also smuggles in a social weapon: ridicule. Calling small-cause anger "peevishness" frames it as childish, unmanly, unserious - a reputational threat meant to shame believers into restraint. Taylor's intent isn't to outlaw indignation; it's to deny anger the dignity it craves, forcing the reader to choose between humility and spectacle.