Stolidity and Impatience

The Vices Opposed to Patience.—(a) The sin of deficiency in sorrow is stolidity, which is a brutal insensibility that is moved neither by one’s own nor by others’ misfortunes. This is not a virtue, but an inhuman and unnatural way of life, which takes no account of man as a feeling as well as a reasoning being.

(b) The sin of excess in sorrow is impatience, which mourns excessively under afflictions, or in looks, words or deeds expresses a complaining and rebellious spirit (Prov. xiv. 17; Judith, viii. 24, 25). Stolidity and impatience are per se venial sins, but they become mortal per accidens on account of some circumstance, as when the unfeeling man gives great scandal by his hardhearted acts, or the impatient man blasphemes (see 2450, 2451).