“…turns reason out of doors, and then does terrible things.”

The only extant fragment of the tragedian Melanthius, quoted by Plutarch in his On the Restraint of Anger section 453, and very frequently in late antiquity:

[θυμός, ὅσπερ εἴωθε] τὰ δεινὰ πράττειν, τὰς φρένας μετοικίσας.

“[Anger, which is accustomed] to turn reason out of doors, and then does terrible things.

———

In the last year or so I have been experimenting with a hypothesis that every speech-act lies somewhere on a continuum the extreme poles of which are anger and love.

I dare you, dear reader, should you ever find me, to try to go a whole day without losing your peace.