When one is suitably attuned, virtually anything is liable to provoke irritation: a telephone left to ring or a phone call taken, people who walk too slowly or drive too quickly. Running late is irritating but so is arriving early. Impudence is irritating but obsequiousness even more so. Yet, however various its incitements, irritation is also an empty and tautological feeling. The irate know their claims against the world to be baseless or at least wildly exaggerated, and this, too, annoys them. Seemingly about every little thing and also nothing at all, irritation is a feeling in search of causes: it goes out into the world, and finds them.