verified
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Verified
Confirmed by our editorial team.
We traced this quote to a primary published source and confirmed the words are genuinely the author's. You can cite it with confidence.
Source
Confucius, Analects 12.21, as quoted in Wang Youpu (Yu-p'u Wang), The Sacred Edict, Containing Sixteen Maxims of the Emperor Kang-He, amplified by the Emperor Yoong-Ching, translated from Chinese by William Milne (London: Black, Kingsbury, Parbury, and Allen, 1817), p. 298
Editorial Note
We verified the wording in William Milne’s 1817 English translation of Wang Youpu’s The Sacred Edict, where Maxim XVI quotes Confucius as: “Kung-Tsze said, ‘When anger rises, think of the consequences.’” The line is a compact English rendering of the idea found in Analects 12.21, where Confucius warns against a moment of anger causing someone to forget himself and endanger those close to him. Samuel Austin Allibone’s 1876 quotation book reproduces the same wording, but the wording itself rests on the earlier Sacred Edict/Milne translation rather than on Allibone.
