Elder ElRay L. Christiansen on Anger - Hot on the (Cold) Trail of Arnold Henry Glasgow, and a Historical Bonanza

 

If you chance to meet a frown, do not let it stay...sing it with me...

The next talk by ElRay L. Christiansen, "Be Slow to Anger" talks on (not surprisingly) anger, and how it's bad for us.

I'm doing all the quotes together in today's blog, because they're very similar to each other.

 

The First Quote

Someone has said:

“Parents may tell

But never teach

Unless they practice

What they preach.”

 

 Very wise, but who said it? So I try and find the someone.

 I managed to trace the quote to one Arnold Henry Glasow, a humorist and entrepreneur active during the 1940s through the 1970s. His three books are out of print, but some of his wise quips (apparently, all he did was wise success quotes (a Chicken Soup for the Soul guy of his time), and these quotes continue to circulate around the Internet as wisdom quotes do. Many of them can be found here.

 

 The Second Quote, with a Completely Unknown Author

“A little explained,

A little endured,

A little passed over,

And the quarrel is cured.”

Also wise, so long as people are communicating and not simply pushing down feelings. Pretty sure he meant that.

 

Internal Literature Quotes

Another quote in this talk comes from The Miracle of Forgiveness by Spencer W. Kimball, which was an extremely helpful book to me once upon a time, but has grown to be a more dated source now, as such books do - modern prophetic sources are meant for their time, not so much for ours. 

Another comes from the Discourses of Brigham Young. A third comes from the Church magazine for young people, called at the time the Improvement Era, December 1964.

I did a random search to see what I could find of the Improvement Era reference, and found an entire catalog of Improvement Era magazines dating back to 1897! You know who was prophet of the Church in 1897?? Wilford Woodruff, that's who! I tell you what guys - this was fun to go poking through! This reference alone was worth doing this blog.

Another quote turned out to be song lyrics from an older hymn in an older hymbook, called "Angry Words! Oh Let Them Never" by H.R. Palmer (#67) which was also fun. It reminded me of the old hymnbook I grew up with in church - may very well have been the same hymnbook. 

I'm leaving the third quote here - to give you some idea why we don't frequently go back to Conference talks from the distant past, as much as we reference the newer ones. Language has a tendency to change so profoundly over time - 

 

The Third Quote

“Angry words, oh, let them never

From the tongue unbridled slip;

May the heart’s best impulse ever

Check them ere they soil the lip.”

(R. H. Palmer, Deseret Sunday School Songs, 1909.)
  

This song is over 120 years old. No soiled lips and unbridled tongues out there now! :-)

I so miss this language sometimes.