"The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present"
About this Quote
The subtext is classic self-help realism: the past is not over because your nervous system hasn't agreed to let it be over. Anger becomes a form of time travel - a rehearsed argument you keep re-winning, a story that protects you from being surprised again. That protection has a cost. If you expect harm, you interpret ambiguity as threat, and intimacy starts to feel like a negotiation rather than a risk worth taking. "Less capable" is doing careful work here; she doesn't claim you can't love, only that your range shrinks. Love becomes conditional, defensive, transactional.
Context matters: Barbara De Angelis built a career in the late-80s/90s relationship-industrial complex, when talk shows and paperback advice were translating therapy language into everyday scripts. This sentence is engineered to be repeatable, a pocket-sized reframe for people stuck in grievance. Its intent isn't historical amnesia; it's leverage. Forgiveness, here, isn't about letting someone off the hook. It's about taking your own future off theirs.
Quote Details
| Topic | Letting Go |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Angelis, Barbara de. (2026, January 14). The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-more-anger-towards-the-past-you-carry-in-your-171062/
Chicago Style
Angelis, Barbara de. "The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present." FixQuotes. January 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-more-anger-towards-the-past-you-carry-in-your-171062/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present." FixQuotes, 14 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-more-anger-towards-the-past-you-carry-in-your-171062/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.







