The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is often the
one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men who are all but perfect, and women
who would be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or
"touchy" disposition. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral character
is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics…

No form of vice — not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself — does
more to unChristianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up
communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for
withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off of childhood — in short, for sheer,
gratuitous misery-producing power — this influence stands alone.

… Henry Drummond, The Greatest Thing in the World [1892]

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CQOD Compilation Copyright 1999, Robert McAnally Adams, Curator

CQOD Home Page: http://www.gospelcom.net/cqod

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