"Temperament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or flippant in her manner now, as when she walked with Mr. Hatfield, there was only a gentle, playful kind of vivacity, which I thought must be peculiarly pleasing to a man of Mr. Weston's disposition and temperament. ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... the salvation of France. Michelet calls her a nonentity, a stage queen with merely the externals—the attire—of royalty, remaining exactly on a level with the rulers of the smaller Italian principalities, contriving everything and fearing everything, with no more heart than she had sense or temperament. Being a female, she loved her young; she loved the arts, but cared to cultivate only their externalities. In this, however, Michelet goes to an extreme; for no woman ever lived who had so great a talent for intrigues and politics as she—a very type of ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... unsteady hands. Her face, exposed, hardly sustained the promise of the veiled suggestion; but no man was ever known to find fault with it so long as he had hopes; afterwards—but even then it was a matter of temperament. There were those who remembered it all the more keenly for its daring deviations and ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... will be lasting is hardly to be presumed. The lesson given by firing on Atua was not sufficiently sharp and incisive to leave a lasting impression on the forgetful Samoan temperament. In fact, conditions are existing which show that peace will not last and is not seriously intended. Malietoa, the King, and his chiefs are convinced that the departure of the war ships will be a signal for a renewal of war. The circumstance that the representatives of the villages ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had adopted Carmilla's habit of locking her bedroom door, having taken into my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling assassins. ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... somewhat light-hearted, jovial, easy-going person, whose life was a pleasure to him, and who did not take too serious a view of the things in this world. Well, was I not, at that moment, in a position when I might with advantage take on the mantle of Careless's temperament and chance the result? Yes; I consented. Wybert was evidently relieved. He told me afterwards, in confidence, that he so admired what he considered my consummate self-confidence that he decided to ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... movement with her large, white, shapely hands—hands which were so different from the thin, dark, twisted ones folded on the table opposite her. The difference was not caused by hard work or the lack of it; Rachel had worked hard all her life. It was a difference inherent in temperament. The Spencers, no matter what they did, or how hard they labored, all had plump, smooth, white hands, with firm, supple fingers; the Chiswicks, even those who toiled not, neither did they spin, had hard, knotted, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... thus the direct production of a white sugar (as now practised at Java) at the tropical factory will have far-reaching effects, but with many tropical products the methods practised are as ancient as they are haphazard. Like all methods founded on long experience, they suit the environment and the temperament of the people who use them, so that the work of the scientist in introducing improvements requires intimate knowledge of the conditions if his suggestions are to be adopted. The various Departments of Agriculture are doing splendid pioneer work, but the full harvest of their ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... of her open, not unpleasing face, understood for the first time the decided attitude of the coroner. If this woman corroborated her husband's account, the poor young girl, with her incongruous beauty and emotional temperament, would not have much show. He looked to see her quailing now. But instead of that she stood firm, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... twenty-five he had been married to a lady, whose only recommendations were her personal beauty and her fashionable accomplishments. Her vanity had disgusted him, and her uncontrollable temper had embittered to its very dregs the cup of his existence. Being naturally of a gloomy and melancholy temperament, this unfortunate union had rendered his life almost insupportable. Domestic happiness, to which he had looked forward with high-wrought anticipations, proved, in his case, to have ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... predecessor.[41] As a matter of fact he was a man who read widely[42] and had pondered deeply on the superstition, but his thought had been colored by Scot.[43] His assault, however, was less direct and studied than that of his master. Scot was a man of uncommonly serious temperament, a plain, blunt-spoken, church-going Englishman who covered the whole ground of superstition without turning one phrase less serious than another. His pupil, if so Harsnett may be called, wrote earnestly, even aggressively, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... there was living, in an obscure workshop in Paris, on the crowded Quai des Orfevres, an engraver by the name of Gratien Phlippon. He had married a very beautiful woman, whose placid temperament and cheerful content contrasted strikingly with the restlessness and ceaseless repinings of her husband. The comfortable yet humble apartments of the engraver were over the shop where he plied his daily toil. He was much dissatisfied with his lowly ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... moment for the North—the repulse of Burnside at Fredericsburgh—was the only thing that at last decided Mr. Lincoln to issue his proclamation of freedom.... He has been born and bred under a slave-owner's interpretation of the Constitution and of the negro-temperament, and ... seems to persist in his publicly avowed preference of gradual abolition. Could he have had his way, I predicted, and would still predict, twenty years of misery, confusion, with probably new war unfavourable ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... passion. Before returning to her own land she meant to try and understand them better. For somewhere she had read that the future art of the world was to come forth from Russia. It is the Slavic temperament and not the Anglo-Saxon that best expresses itself in ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... that youngster had not such a reputation for quitting under fire, time and again during their many mimic battles! Then his glance fell upon Red Brown's impudent, freckled face and he smiled. Here was a warrior with a temperament to delight the leader of ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... suspected that this apathy only proved his own culpability in the theft, but such a suspicion never for a moment crossed my mind. He was, as he said, sick of the very name of bonds, and with a person of his temperament that ended the matter. Though I did not comprehend his attitude, still I took him at his word. There was something about Rad's straightforward way of looking one in the eye that impelled belief. As I had heard the Colonel boast, a Gaylord could ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... who was intimately acquainted with William Davies, had many conversations with him about his Sunday journey, and he argued the matter with him, and tried to persuade him that he had seen nothing, but that it was his imagination working on a nervous temperament that had created all his fantasies. He however failed to convince him, for Davies affirmed that it was no hallucination, but that what he had seen that Sunday was a punishment for his having broken the Fourth Commandment. It need hardly ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... His poetical temperament, excessive in all things, in good as in evil, had discerned the angel in this girl, who was tainted by corruption rather than corrupt; he always saw her white, winged, pure, and mysterious, as she had made herself for him, understanding that he ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... maintained vigorously that his consciousness was the one actually affected, and that the colonel and the general and Watts were mere hallucinations of his. The general held that Jake and the others were accessory phantasms of his own dream, and Watts and the colonel, being of more poetical temperament, held that the whole outfit was a chimera in some larger consciousness, whose entity it is not given us to know. As for Oscar, he claimed the parliament was crazy, and started to prove it, when it was ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... "Love is not easily provoked." . . . We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man's character. And yet here, right in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements in human nature. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... a temperament as this both Elmur and Selpdorf were well aware that they were handling an explosive that might at any moment wreck their most carefully laid plans. They would very much have preferred to have made a tool of the reigning Duke, but ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... always a matter for contempt. It must be a free act, an activity of the person, which by its moral intensity moderates the sensuous intensity, and by the sway of impressions takes from them in depth what it gives them in surface or breadth. The character must place limits to temperament, for the senses have only the right to lose elements if it be to the advantage of the mind. In its turn, the tempering of the formal impulsion must not result from moral impotence, from a relaxation of thought and will, which would degrade humanity. It is necessary that the glorious ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... violence. The tribunal acquired the character of an Inquisition; the most trifling suspicion was sufficient to entail strict incarceration; and it was left to chance to establish the innocence of a person accused of a capital crime. Moreover, La Regnie was hideous in appearance, and of a malicious temperament, so that he soon drew down upon himself the hatred of those whose avenger or protector he was appointed to be. The Duchess de Bouillon, being asked by him during her trial if she had seen the devil, replied, "I fancy I can see ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... gives the translation of a Chinese-Jewish Inscription, which in some respects forms a singular parallel to the celebrated Christian Inscription of Si-ngan fu, though it is of far more modern date (1511). It exhibits, as that inscription does, the effect of Chinese temperament or language, in modifying or diluting doctrinal statements. Here is a passage: "With respect to the Israelitish religion, we find on inquiry that its first ancestor, Adam, came originally from India, and that during the (period of the) Chau State ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... jingle, whether they be poets or not, generally scribble plentifully before leaving school. At the age of fourteen he wrote some verses to his mother on her birthday, but it is fair to suppose that they gave no hint of talent, as they have not been preserved: it was only from his temperament that his destiny might be guessed. The impressions of his infancy were singularly vivid and deep, and acted directly upon his imagination: they are reflected in his works in pictures and descriptions full of grace or power. The ardent Bonapartism ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... supply of food: a facility for obtaining firewood, a grateful shade from the heat, an effectual screen from the cold, and it has already been shewn that they afford the means of satisfying their thirst by a process but little known, and which from a difference in habits and temperament would be but little available to the European.[Note 67 at end of para.] In judging, therefore, of the character of any country, from the mere fact of natives being seen there, or even of their being numerous, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... eager to ascribe the practical failure of his theories to his personal inefficiency; Froebel never acknowledged himself in the wrong, but always attributed failure to external causes. On the other hand, while Froebel was equable in temperament, Pestalozzi was moody and impressionable, flying from extreme gaiety to extreme dejection, slamming the door if displeased with a lesson a teacher was giving, but coming back to apologize if he met a child who smiled upon him. Under Rousseau's ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... greatest natural aptitude and equipment of any tennis player I have ever seen. Against it he has a temperament that is inclined to carelessness and laziness. He tends to sulkiness, which he is rapidly outgrowing. He is a delightful personality on the court, with his slight figure, tremendous speed, and merry smile. He is a second "Gus" Touchard in looks and style. I hope to see him develop to be the greatest ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... which he would have to deal were too much for a man whose nerve was weakened by philosophy and experience, and Laelius by his retreat justified, if he did not gain, the soubriquet which proclaimed his "sapience".[299] But why was Scipio himself idle? The answer is to be found both in his temperament and in his circumstances. With all his dash and energy, he was something of a healthy hedonist. As the chase had delighted him in his youth, so did war in his manhood. While hating its cruelties, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... held it wicked to be anything but a partizan. And now it had revived within her, and was urging her to form no rash conclusions, to be careful in her thoughts about her new acquaintances, to weigh her opinions before expressing them. And all this in spite of a native fire and vivacity of temperament which might have led her into difficulties but for the counterbalancing power of judgment which she had inherited from the father whom she had been ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... temperament, reflective, strong and positive, now began to assume mastery over the bewildered reveries of the Southern nature. Things are seen to change. Even the masters who continue the Sung tradition infuse a somewhat more robust quality into their works, but, in so doing, ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... to it," he said. "It was a good night's work coming here to-night. Do you mean to say you don't notice the likeness? Making due allowance for the difference in height and temperament, that poor girl is the image ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... chose his residence in the valley, not amid the mountains; by the fields and meadows of the broad Tappan Zee, rather than the Highlands; in a congenial region suited to his temperament. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... her heart and her eyes there was no one but her venerable ladyship, and her alone; and now in her attendance upon Pao-y, her heart and her eyes were again full of Pao-y, and him alone. But as Pao-y was of a perverse temperament and did not heed her repeated injunctions, she felt at heart ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... himself, and with that inbred antipathy of temperament which seemed to paralyse both will and judgment. Was the secret of it that in their profound unlikeness they ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... them, no matter what vocation they enter. They are the real problem. There is another class, almost equally distressing. They are the people who are brilliant, who learn easily, and who are so adaptable that they can turn their hands to almost anything. They are usually so unstable in temperament that it is difficult for them to persist in any one kind of endeavor long enough to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... to great things. Posed on the model throne, the object of the painter's intense scrutiny, he swelled ingenuously with the conviction of his supreme importance. The lazy luxury of the model's life appealed to his sensuous temperament. He loved the warmth, the artistic setting of the studios; the pictures, the oriental rugs, the bits of armour, the old brocade, the rich cushions. If he had not been born to it, why had he not remained, like all 'the youth of Bludston, amid the filth and clatter of the factory? ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... engaged in the same work require equal quantities of food. But, in most cases, the work of women is lighter than that of men, and even when this is not the case women seem to require less food, probably because of a difference in temperament. That taken by women is usually computed to be about four-fifths of the amount necessary for a man. The proportion of food substances does not differ, however, and when individual peculiarities are taken into consideration, no definite rules ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... would have been a moral debacle for the French people, who had been buoyed up with false news and false hopes until their Government had fled to Bordeaux, realizing the gravity of the peril. The Terrible Year would have seemed no worse than this swift invasion of Paris, and the temperament of the nation, in spite of the renewal of its youth, had not changed enough to resist this calamity with utter stoicism. I know the arguments of the strategists, who point out that Von Kluck could not afford to undertake the risk of entering Paris while an undefeated army remained on his flank. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... three of whom were, in their day, noted musicians. Of the twin brothers, Johann Ambrosius and Johann Christoph, born in 1645, the first was town organist of Eisenach, and the second court musician at Arnstadt. These brothers were remarkably alike, not only in looks, but in character and temperament. They both played the violin in exactly the same way, they spoke alike, and it is said that their own wives could scarcely tell them apart. They suffered from the same illnesses, and died within a few months of one another. Johann Christoph once figured in an action for breach of promise of marriage ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... alas, with the mercurialism of temperament in which he has thought proper to indulge when only Negroes and Europeans not of "Anglo-West Indian" tendencies were concerned, he jauntily threw to the winds all the scruples and cautious minuteness which were essential to the proper ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... much on the temperament and disposition of the bodily organs that, if it is possible to find a means of rendering men wiser and cleverer than they have hitherto been, I believe that it is in medicine that it must be sought. It is true that the medicine ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... brilliant, and I could not trust you to pick out a brilliant woman for your wife. Love would come first in your eyes. Other things would seem unimportant. I know that you and the girl I select are apt to fall in love, as I shall choose a girl suitable to your temperament." ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... would surely be. The wife I mockingly called mine would be yours in spirit; whether on land or sea, and I ask for no such bride. Were I sure I could win her love, even though it might not be in years, not all the powers of earth should wrest her from me. But I cannot. Such is her temperament that she would give me only hatred, and I do not deserve ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... entering on the married life. Be sure that the affections on both sides are so perfectly intertwined around each other that the two, as it were, form one mind. This requires time and a thorough mutual knowledge on both sides. Marry into your religion and into a blood and temperament different from your own. Bend your whole form, and especially avoid everlastingly dishing up any unsuccessful past action that was done from a good motive and with the best intentions at the time. Let nothing foreign ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... a man of morose and gloomy temperament, severe even to harshness with his followers, and utterly devoid of human sympathy. Not so however his disciple and assistant Theodore Beza. The latter was born in Burgundy in 1519, and after completing ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... surprised Cockburn, Warden, and O'Meara alike, was largely due to his iron will. He knew that his exile must be disagreeable, but he had that useful faculty of encasing himself in the present, which dulls the edge of care. Besides, his tastes were not so exacting, or his temperament so volatile, as to shroud him in the gloom that besets weaker natures in time of trouble. Alas for him, it was far otherwise with his companions. The impressionable young Gourgaud, the thought-wrinkled Las Cases, the bright pleasure-loving Montholons, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Jasmine, whose excitable temperament had been going through many changes during the journey to town, had now worked herself up into an ardent desire to see Poppy—she jumped out of the cab first of all, and, running up the steps of ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... final outcome of the labor troubles, which was the phrase by which the movement I have described was most commonly referred to, the opinions of the people of my class differed according to individual temperament. The sanguine argued very forcibly that it was in the very nature of things impossible that the new hopes of the workingmen could be satisfied, simply because the world had not the wherewithal to satisfy ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... 1793. From his father, Nehemiah Roby, who was for many years Master of the Grammar-School at Haigh, near Wigan, he inherited a good constitution and unbended principles of honour and integrity. From the family of his mother, Mary Aspall, he derived the quick, impressible temperament of genius, and the love of humour which so conspicuously marks the Lancashire character. He was the youngest child. His thirst for knowledge was early and strongly manifested. Being once told in childhood not to be so inquisitive, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... earlier in the day; and the quiet and the view over Paradise river from the west windows of the sanctum appealed to the poetic soul of the chief editor. Dorothy, who was a very practical person herself, had a vast admiration for Frances' dreamy, imaginative temperament, and enjoyed her work as business manager of the "Argus" chiefly because it brought her into close contact with Frances; while Frances in her turn admired Dorothy's executive ability, and depended on her to soften the hearts of obdurate printers, ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... because their natures are sensitive. Now, that seems to me the very reason that they should be better than other people—more open to good influences. And I believe, when this has not been so, it has been owing rather to a smallness of character than to their artistic temperament." ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... character presents an illuminating contrast when compared with the elaborately detailed method of such a master of the romantic style as Shakespeare. The English dramatist shows his persons to us in the round; innumerable facets flash out quality after quality; the subtlest and most elusive shades of temperament are indicated; until at last the whole being takes shape before us, endowed with what seems to be the very complexity and mystery of life itself. Entirely different is the great Frenchman's way. Instead of expanding, he deliberately narrows his view; ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... and the splendid atmosphere of Almack's; but for the latter she seems at present to have little inclination. Kate is a girl of decided character, of strong sense, of high principle; all of which are irradiated, not overborne, by her sparkling vivacity of temperament. She has real talent; and her mind has been trained, and her tastes directed, with affectionate skill and vigilance by her gifted brother. She has many accomplishments; but the only one I shall choose here to name is—music. She was one to sing and play ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... different sort of reckoning with Germany, but English Liberalism is itself a product of the English temperament, and however it may sigh, by individuals, for a better understanding between the two peoples, in the mass, it is a part of the national purpose and a phase of the national mind and is driven relentlessly to the rivets and the hammering, the "Dreadnoughts" in being and ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... In spite of these pronouncedly Negrito results, these men had the appearance of Malays, not Negritos. Their skin color was light brown, hair wavy not curly; their habits, bearing, and speech indicated the temperament of ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... one way or another," Dundee told her. "Of course, if Tracey did kill him, he let Flora believe that he had given Sprague the blackmail money he was demanding. For it is inconceivable that a woman of Flora Miles' hysterical temperament could have slept—even with two sleeping tablets—knowing that a ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... have we done that you should hide your unhappiness from us? Why did you not come to me and tell me frankly, and like a brave girl, that the sacrifice I asked was too great for you to yield; that your youth and temperament demanded a different life to mine; that the quiet and monotony were killing you; would anything have been too ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... once more capricious and more vociferous than it ever was. This was abundantly shown during the last five years by a variety of unfortunate public adventures. Then, does the excitement of democracy weaken the stability of national temperament? By setting up what in physics would be called a highly increased molecular activity, does it disturb not merely conservative respect for institutions, but respect for coherence and continuity of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... with the sea in a life and death contest. Eustace Le Neve held the rope, and tried to aid him in his endeavors. He had meant to plunge in himself, but Walter Tyrrel was beforehand with him. He was no match in a race against time for the fiery and impetuous Cornish temperament. It wasn't long, however, before the breakers proved themselves more than equal foes for Walter Tyrrel. In another minute he was pounded and pummeled on the unseen rocks under water by the great ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... old Yorkshire family, Charles Stephen Dale was yet sufficient of a Cockney to justify both his friends and his enemies in crediting him with the Celtic temperament. Nevertheless, he was essentially a modern, insomuch that his contempt for the writings of dead men surpassed his dislike of living authors. To these two central influences we may trace most of the peculiarities that rendered him notorious and ultimately ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... at Galloway, who is young and of an experimental temperament, when he decided to save the life of this cow after the leg had been cut off by a locomotive. He insisted, however, on fitting the wooden leg, which he regards as much more useful than wooden heads on ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... he reached the studio, and found the door open and the room empty. It had the air of a room whose owner has dashed in to fetch his golf-clubs and biffed off, after the casual fashion of the artist temperament, without bothering to close up behind him. And such, indeed, was the case. The studio had seen the last of J. B. Wheeler for that day: but Archie, not realising this and feeling that a chat with Mr. Wheeler, who was a light-hearted bird, was what he needed this ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... their scruple, their delicate equipoise of perceptions, the vigilance of their apprehension, are enough? Now Impressionists of late have told us things as to their impressions—as to the effect of things upon the temperament of this man and upon the mood of that—which should not be asserted except on the artistic point of honour. The majority can tell ordinary truth, but they should not trust themselves for truth extraordinary. They can face the general judgment, but they should hesitate ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... pleasant to live with; for it was such a wholesome nature, so entirely free from moods, or fancies, or crochets of any kind—those sad vagaries of ill-health, ill-humor, and ill-conditionedness of every sort, which are sometimes only a misfortune, caused by an unhappy natural temperament, but oftener arise from pure egotism, of which there was not an atom in Helen Cardross. Her life was like the life of a flower—as natural, unconscious, fresh, and sweet: she took in every influence about her, and ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and bearing of the speaker to be such that even the distant spectator, too far off to hear, should "know that there was a Roscius on the stage". He would have found a French audience in this respect more sympathetic than an English one.[1] His own highly nervous temperament would certainly tend to excited action. The speaker, who, as we are told, "shuddered visibly over his whole body when he first began to speak", was almost sure, as he warmed to his work, to throw himself into it ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... was Holingsworth, but one altogether of peculiar character and temperament—as unlike him who rode by my side as acid to alkali. The latter was a dashing, cheerful fellow, dressed in half-Mexican costume, who could ride a wild horse and throw the lazo with any vaquero in the crowd. He was a true Texan, almost ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... of the East, to throw off past traditions and mould their civilization after that of Western countries, it was not in the nature of the lively and impulsive Japanese to advance along the path of reform with the calmness and circumspection that might have been possible to a people of less active temperament. Without doubt many foreign institutions were at first adopted rather too hastily, and the passing difficulties which now beset Japan are to some extent the inevitable result." It would be blindness ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... it is true that social conditions, racial characteristics and individuality in temperament enter very actively into the problems of the care of children in libraries and since it is also true that the books children read and the care which is given to them in libraries are frequently reflected in their conduct in relation to the School, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... narratives. Here it was that one evening we received a visit from an acquaintance, Mr. Hilton Soames, tutor and lecturer at the College of St. Luke's. Mr. Soames was a tall, spare man, of a nervous and excitable temperament. I had always known him to be restless in his manner, but on this particular occasion he was in such a state of uncontrollable agitation that it was clear ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... habits of life and temperament I had certainly fallen into a strange adventure. Not only had Eve herself come to mean for me everything that was real and vital in life, but I was most curiously attracted by her terrible father. I ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... first was Maria Dmitrievna Kalitine. Her husband, who had formerly occupied the post of Provincial Procurator, and who was well known in his day as a good man of business—a man of bilious temperament, confident, resolute, and enterprising—had been dead ten years. He had received a good education, and had studied at the university, but as the family from which he sprang was a poor one, he had early recognized ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... sentence of the above telegram is as follows. I have already mentioned that Mr. Gerard was not popular in Berlin, owing to his very highly-strung temperament, his impetuosity and his want of tact. His recall was eagerly desired. Consequently, I had received instructions to arrange, if possible, for the replacement of Mr. Gerard, and in any case that the Ambassador should be recalled for a time to Washington, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... snarled, "bromide! Now, Lady Hetth, listen to me. There is something more than nerves and a highly strung temperament in this. Next week I want Nannie, not you, to bring the child here on a visit. I know India and her religions as far as any Englishman dare say he knows anything about that unfathomable country—yes! Mam! religions—Hinduism—Brahminism—Buddhism—why, I've passed the best ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... his city office, and left all its cares behind him. You had only to look at him to see that he was prosperous, and deserved to be so. There were in his countenance the signs of strong sense, of good-humour,—above all, of an active energetic temperament. A man of broad smooth forehead, keen hazel eyes, firm lips and jaw; with a happy contentment in himself, his house, the world in general, mantling over his genial smile, and outspoken in the metallic ring ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... begins, and in Russia he ends. As volume after volume proceeds from his prolific pen—essays, treatises theological or social, tales, novels, diaries, or confessions—all alike are Russian in scenery, Russian in character, Russian in temperament, Russian in their aspirations, their hopes, or their despairs. Nowhere is there a trace of Hellas, Rome does not exist for him, the Middle Age which allured Hugo has for Tolstoi no glamour. In this he but resembles the Russian writers from Krilov to the present ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... little niceties of description which give life and reality to the picture. He says that the prince was a man of great counsel and authority, wise and of good memory, but in some things slow, whether it was through the prevalence of the phlegmatic temperament in his constitution, or from intentional deliberation, being moved to some end which men ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... remote things are apt to seem. But now—now that he had met in the flesh this man who was his father—his hesitation was turned to very horror. It was not that he did not conceive, in spite of his odd ideas upon temperament and its responsibilities, that his mother's' wrongs cried out for vengeance, and that the avenging of them would be a righteous, fitting deed; but it was that he conceived that his own was not the hand to do the work of the executioner upon one who—after all—was still his own ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... man to hold such a responsible position in the navy; but he was a bold, vigorous little Englishman—a sort of gentlemanly and well-educated John Bull terrier; of frank address, agreeable manners, and an utterly reckless temperament, which was qualified and curbed, however, by ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... some centre either of power or action or intellect about which they may group themselves, and I think that Pearse became the leader because his temperament was more profoundly emotional than any of the others. He was emotional not in a flighty, but in a serious way, and one felt more that he suffered than ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... it seems he cannot help it: his Hobby is too strong for him; regardless of curb and bridle in this instance. Let us pity a man of genius, mounted on so ungovernable a Hobby; leaping the barriers, in spite of his best resolutions. Perhaps the poetic temperament is more liable to such morbid biases, influxes of imaginative crotchet, and mere folly that cannot be cured? Friedrich Wilhelm never would or could dismount from his Hobby: but he rode him under much sorrow henceforth; under showers of anger and ridicule;—contumelious ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... heard, not a leaf rustled as Madelon and her bundle emerged from their hiding-place; but the child felt no alarm at the silence and solitude—the darkness and loneliness of the road could not frighten her. Indeed she was naturally of so courageous a temperament, and just then, through joy and hope, of so brave a spirit, that it would have been only a very real and present danger that could have alarmed her, and she did not even dream if imaginary ones. She almost danced as she went along, she ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Syria, Babylon, and even Persia itself; and it was a Greek, we must remember, whom the great king commissioned to navigate the course of the Indus and the waters of the Indian Ocean. At the same time, the very ardour of their temperament, and their consequent pride, their impatience of all regular control, their habitual proneness to civic strife, and to sanguinary quarrels with the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities, rendered them the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... said, "it is not reasonable that you should be angry with me. Is it my fault that I am plagued with a stepdaughter of so extraordinary a temperament? She will return directly, or we shall find her. I am sure of it. The wedding can be arranged then as speedily as you wish. I give her to you. I consent to your marriage. What could woman ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and to publish it with beautiful illustrations, and two years hence the world may expect to see it. I do not quite perceive how such a man as this—a man of frank, warm, simple, kindly nature, but surely not of a poetical temperament, or very refined, or highly cultivated—should make a good version of Tasso's poems; but perhaps the dead poet's soul may take possession of this healthy organization, and wholly turn ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Indian textile workers. It would, a priori, be unreasonable to expect that the working-day which would bring the greatest net advantage to both should be of the same duration. So also it may well be possible that the more energetic nervous temperament of the American operative may qualify him or her for a shorter and intenser working-day than would suit the Lancashire operative. It is the inseparable relation of the three factors—duration, intensity, and earnings—which is the important point. But in considering ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... was German, his character had suffered a certain modification by the manner of his bringing up. His mode of thought certainly differed from Greif's to an extent which could not be accounted for upon the ground of temperament alone. Brave, manly and sufficiently generous though he was, Rex undeniably had a preference for accomplishing his ends mysteriously and by diplomatic means, a characteristic more southern than northern, and assuredly not German. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... heard his father speak with more solemnity. Bertrand was silent, overawed by the older man, but to the boy the words were extremely impressive. His youthful temperament was sensitive to atmosphere. In Charleston he shared the fire, zeal and enthusiasm of an impressionable people. They saw only one side and, for a while, he saw only one side, too. Here in Frankfort the atmosphere was changed. They saw two sides ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... face of it, it seemed a poor lookout for "Tipperary" against such a foe. But it wasn't, and any one who knew the English temperament knew it wasn't. I put aside the fact that for practical everyday uses a cheerful tune is much better than a solemn tune. "Tipperary" quickens the step and shortens the march. Luther's hymn, so far from lightening the journey, would become an intolerable burden. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... difference of temperament. Some work themselves through. Those usually come forth into daylight again after three or four years, but looking somewhat thin and pale; however, one must not blame them for that; I myself am one of that kind. Others lie down in the middle of the forest; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... fruits in our kitchen-garden, so admirably planned by Schmetz, so carefully and neighborly looked after both by him and Riedriech. From gardens, Mr. Johnson went to cattle; he had a delight in cows, and our cow was a Jersey with a cream-colored complexion, large black eyes, and the sentimental temperament. We called her the Kissing Cow, because she couldn't see the secretary without trying to bestow upon him ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... instantly, and said that if they dared to be guilty of such an impertinence again, they should be sent under convoy to their respective homes. This threat caused one of the young ladies, she being of a weak and trembling temperament, to shed tears, and for this offense they were both filed off immediately, with a dreadful promptitude that struck terror into the souls of all ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... things she herself had managed to consume. She was compelled, at these parties, to spend most of her time at the refreshment table, for she could not dance with anybody except other women and very old men; Tamoszius was of an excitable temperament, and afflicted with a frantic jealousy, and any unmarried man who ventured to put his arm about the ample waist of Marija would be certain to throw ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... to London, farther from his own sober inartistic life. A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind. He was not so old—thirty-two. His temperament might be said to be just at the point of maturity. There were so many different moods and impressions that he wished to express in verse. He felt them within him. He tried weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the Russian Jew at heart, it may be said the eyes of the civilized world, were fixed upon him as an epoch-maker in the history of the Jews. Nature had formed him, physically and mentally, to be a leader among his people, and his training and temperament made it easy for him to ingratiate himself into the favor of the great. It seemed that he was just the man to be the successful executor ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... climates may render the moderate use of alcoholic drinks comparatively harmless to races less nervously organized than ours. And there doubtless are individuals in our midst whose strong constitution, phlegmatic temperament, or social training enable them to use wine daily for years without appreciable injury. They can walk with comparative safety the narrow bridge. There are multitudes who cannot. There are tens of thousands for whom ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... so excited by a knowledge of the enormous evils of slavery, that any thing was considered better than entire inactivity, or else men accustomed to a contracted field of observation, and more qualified to judge of immediate results than of general tendencies, or else men of ardent and impulsive temperament, whose feelings are likely to take the lead, rather ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... logical. Even a virtuous woman could not stand the strain, and Laura was not virtuous. Of neurotic temperament, inherently weak, if not actually vicious in character, with the spirit of the courtesan strong within her from an early age, fond of luxury and personal adornment she could not legitimately afford, it was not surprising that she ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... tear of their clothing, and playing all sorts of tricks on each other, while a half dozen playmates were standing on the bank laughing so heartily that a spectator would have found it hard to understand why the American race is so often described as of a melancholy temperament. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... identical— as indeed they were in reality—and the abhorrence which he entertained for the one helped to strengthen his dislike for the other. Closely as the brothers agreed in their inclinations and aversions the ways by which each sought to gratify them were widely dissimilar. Youth and an ardent temperament did not allow the younger brother to follow the tortuous course through which the elder wound himself to his object. A cold, calm circumspection carried the latter slowly but surely to his aim, and with a pliable subtilty he made all ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... know," said she, "it is I who compel him to go about and take as much exercise as possible. He has a temperament that needs the open air. Shooting is ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... auditor, and likewise because at the time when he came to this city the latter was hospitable and kind to him, and has always continued so. He is a man skilful in war with the Indians, as it is practiced here; but is of an irritable temperament, and desirous of having his own way on occasion, without obeying his superiors, of which there has been proof enough. When I had fully recognized the enemy and knew that he was carrying all his force on the flagship, I ordered the admiral in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... of temperament might have been observed during their conversation, while sitting under the white thorn. Every now and then, for instance, Hanna would start up and commence a series of little flirtations with the blackbird, which she called her sweetheart, and again ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a supreme factor in conversation as the points of character I have so far named. Mr. Mathews, in his "Great Conversers," writes, "The character has as much to do with the colloquial power as has the intellect; the temperament, feelings, and animal spirits even more, perhaps, than the mental gifts." I add this remark from De Quincy: "More will be done for the benefit of conversation by the simple magic of good manners (that is, chiefly by a system of forbearance) applied to the besetting vices of social intercourse than ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... on the face of a departing worshipper which so much as betrayed the transient emotion stirred by dream or romance. If they had listened to the discourse, they had evidently forgotten what they had been at no pains to remember. No new experience befell this man of artistic and impulsive temperament. I heard a sermon a short time ago preached in a seaside church, which deeply moved me; a sermon I was thankful to have heard, and the like of which I would walk a long way to hear again. As I stood outside the building waiting ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... pressed either we accepted our lot resignedly or cursed our luck, and let it go at that. These opportunities were for a class which had no lot and didn't know the meaning of luck. The others could have had them, too—can have them—for the taking, but neither by education nor temperament are they qualified to do so. There's a good field for missionary work ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... are some fifteen thousand men. The greater number are Frenchmen, droves of those long blue turned-back overcoats and red trousers, flowing sluggishly between the rows of low barracks, Frenchmen of every sort of training and temperament, swept here like dust by the war into common anonymity. I do not remember any picture of the war more curious, and, as it were, uncanny than the first sight of Zossen as our motor came lurching down the muddy road from Berlin—that huge, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... a divil av lot av talk about Irish disunion," says Mr. Dooley somewhere, "but if there's foightin' to be done it's the bhoys that'll let nobody else thread on the Union Jack." That is the Irish temperament all over, and in these days when history is being written in lightning flashes the rally of Ireland to the old flag is inspiring, but ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... his parents, is the best that has come down to our day of the heroine. There is to us a freshness about it which proves how deeply the writer must have been stirred by that wonderful character; it shows too that, with all her intensely religious and mystic temperament, Joan of Arc had a good part of sprightliness and bonhomie in her character, which endeared her to those whose good fortune ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... easy to induce the clergyman to commit to my care the conclusion of the enterprise which had brought him to town. His peculiar nervous temperament foretold a thousand accidents that might befall the precious legacy of his friend. It was only by addressing his reason in repeated arguments, and by solemnly asseverating my entire fidelity, that I induced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hand down on the table with a thump that made the lamp shake. His Latin temperament had, for the moment, carried him away; for a flash the blaze of fanaticism shone in his eyes, only to die out as swiftly as he regained ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... joy excites the brain, and how the brain reacts on the body, is well shown in the rare cases of Psychical Intoxication. Dr. J. Crichton Browne ('Medical Mirror,' 1865) records the case of a young man of strongly nervous temperament, who, on hearing by a telegram that a fortune had been bequeathed him, first became pale, then exhilarated, and soon in the highest spirits, but flushed and very restless. He then took a walk with a friend for the sake of tranquillising himself, but returned ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... was the secret explanation of much that had alarmed her in her cousin's manner: and if Lois had been a physician of modern times, she might have traced somewhat of the same temperament in his sisters as well—in Prudence's lack of natural feeling and impish delight in mischief, in Faith's vehemence of unrequited love. But as yet Lois did not know, any more than Faith, that the attachment of the latter to Mr. Nolan was not merely unreturned, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... body is not necessary to the intellectual soul by reason of its intellectual operation considered as such; but on account of the sensitive power, which requires an organ of equable temperament. Therefore the intellectual soul had to be united to such a body, and not to a simple element, or to a mixed body, in which fire was in excess; because otherwise there could not be an equability of temperament. And this body of an equable temperament has a dignity of its own ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... any special gift it is an eye for theatrical effect in real life as well as on the stage. He had a good share of the actor's temperament in his younger years, and until recently showed it in the conduct of imperial and royal business of all kinds. He still gives it play occasionally in the royal opera houses and theatres. The Englishman, whose ruler ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... whole, therefore, we look upon Lord Aberdeen as a national benefactor, who has not only turned aside a current running headlong into a revolution, but in doing this exemplary service, has contrived to adjust the temperament very equitably between, 1st, the individual nominee, having often his livelihood at stake; 2dly, the patron, exercising a right of property interwoven with our social system, and not liable to any usurpation which would not speedily extend ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... and ills to which flesh is heir. It were better, perhaps, if we human creatures sometimes did this, and discussed our common frailties as each himself partaking of them, than that we should mount, as we are so apt to do, into the clouds of theology or of ethics, according as our temperament and training are of the serious or of the intellectual order. True, there are many of our brethren violently ready to proclaim themselves frail mortals, miserable sinners, and no better, in theological phraseology, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... melancholy, if I may so express myself, incident to the occupation of a tailor, is a fact which I think very few will venture to dispute. I may safely appeal to my readers, whether they ever knew one of that faculty that was not of a temperament, to say the least, far removed ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... dancing by the two sexes, except under very exceptional circumstances. They are right; they have peculiar facilities for knowing the variety of human nature with which they have to deal. Humanity is fundamentally the same everywhere, but what is fundamental is modified by race and climate. Temperament, fashioned by causes innate and local, exercises an immense influence upon ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker |
