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More "Temperament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... partly to escape from dear mamma; and as you do not know dear mamma, it is almost impossible for you to understand how essential it was to escape. When Michael is away, I am defenceless. Mamma swoops down; takes up her abode in my house; reduces my household, according to their sex and temperament, to rage, hysterics, or despair; tells unpalatable home-truths to my friends, so that all—save the duchess—flee discomforted. Then mamma proceeds to 'divide the spoil'! In other words: she lies in wait for my telegrams, and opens them herself, saying that ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... understood, it is but a word and a blow—though the word be a hurried prayer to the God of their adoration, and the blow be aimed with all the malevolence of hell at the bosom of a fellow-creature. There is no greater inconsistency in the one character than in the other. The temperament which, under false tuition, makes the zealot, and drives him on to the perpetration of wholesale murder, while uttering a prayer to the Deity, prompts the same individual who, as an assassin or a highwayman, cuts your throat, and picks your pocket, and at the next moment bestows his ill-gotten ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the insanity of an uncle and the fits and giddiness to which he was always subject led him to fear insanity in his own case. Others, looking rather to physical causes, have dwelt upon his coldness of temperament and indisposition to love; upon the repugnance he often showed towards marriage, and the tone of some of the verses on the subject written in his later years. Others, again, have found a cause in his parsimonious habits, in his dread of poverty, the effects of which he had himself felt, and ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... turn, took the stump, opposing the measures which Colonel Alexander had left. He seemed entirely to ignore the fact that Crockett was a candidate. Not the slightest allusion was made to him in his speech. The nervous temperament predominated in the man, and he was easily annoyed. While speaking, a large flock of guinea-hens came along, whose peculiar and noisy cry all will remember who have ever heard it. Arnold was greatly disturbed, and at last requested some one to drive the fowls ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... not is as ungenerous as to criticise the conduct of the insane. But habitual, cold-blooded, and willful ill-temper—the trade-mark of unmitigated selfishness—is indisputably ill-bred. Whatever the tendency, temperament, or temptation, good form requires the cultivation and the exhibition of good humor and a disposition to take a cheerful and generous view ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... see," she dried her eyes on a handkerchief of costliest lace, "you see my—that is, the Duchess, is of such a romantic temperament, so enamoured of rural scenes, idyllic meadows, pretty shepherdesses, and the like—all the court makes merry at her foible. She thought to astonish Paris to-night by a lavish display of sweet simplicity—did Monsieur see it? That big dark place back there, behind the glass partition, was arranged ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... accompanies the passing of a man from the struggle with the soil to any occupation, the productiveness of which is not quite so clear. It requires a keenly sensitive nature to feel conscious of it, but Jim Irwin possessed such a temperament; and from the beginning of the daily race with the seasons, which makes the life of a northern farmer an eight months' Marathon in which to fall behind for a week is to lose much of the year's reward, the gawky schoolmaster slept ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... instinct toward religion, and exhibited that leaning toward the mysterious and visionary which is the common mark of an acute mind that has not been presented with any methodical course of training worthy of its abilities. Such a temperament could not fail to be powerfully influenced by Stafford; and when an obvious and creditable explanation lies on the surface, it is an ungracious task to probe deeper in the hope of coming to something less praiseworthy. ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... 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, determined, and ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Natures rich in all capacities and endowed with every kind of sensibility were frequent. Nor was there any limit to the play of personality in action. We may apply to them what Browning has written of Sordello's temperament: ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... had happened which had bound him by indestructible fetters to the old faith. He had vowed to his dying mother to remain faithful to the Holy Church and loyally to keep his oath. It was not difficult for one of his modest temperament to be content with the position of spectator of the play of life which he occupied. He was not born for conflict, and from the seat to which he had retired he thought he had perceived that the burden of existence was easier to bear, and the individual not only obtained external ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... irritating and uncomfortable in the circuit-riding of the Illinois court, but there was more which was amusing to a temperament like Lincoln's. The freedom, the long days in the open air, the unexpected if trivial adventures, the meeting with wayfarers and settlers—all was an entertainment to him. He found humor and human interest on the route where his ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... me, an idea which perhaps does Sophy all the more credit, though I shall take care not to tell her lover; this so-called pride, for which she has been censured, is clearly only a very wise precaution to protect her from herself. Being aware that, unfortunately, her own temperament is inflammable, she dreads the least spark, and keeps out of reach so far as she can. Her sternness is due not to pride but to humility. She assumes a control over Emile because she doubts her control of herself; she ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... down on the floor, and Jenny and Charlie planned a midnight attack upon the tin boiler. Amy, who was more sedate and cautious, advised them to desist; but 'twas just the exploit for Jenny's frolicsome, mischievous temperament. Charlie was to take a pillow-case, and creep softly under the bed, and fill it from the supposed contents of the mysterious boiler, while Jenny stood at the kitchen door to assist him in bearing the precious burden to their room. How slow the hours passed after the plot ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... deck, hugging my executioner's sword, and faintly calling: "A basin please!" Two ruffians—I can call them, nothing else—paced the deck, smoking, and passed me every forty seconds. If there is a thing which tumbles a human being of a highly-strung nervous temperament over when he feels squeamish, it is the occasional whiff of a cigar. Then, added to the occasional whiff, were occasional catches of derogatory remarks, which came home to me as unpleasantly as did the tobacco: "A chap with a sword ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... strip, every inch that he could possibly pay rent for. He had been there since that story was finished. The broad view rested him. When he ceased to peer into a patient's mouth, he pushed up his spectacles and took a long look over the lake. Sometimes, if the patient was human and had enough temperament to appreciate his treasure, he would idle away a quarter of an hour chatting, enjoying the sun and the clear air of the lake. When the last patient had gone, he would take the chair and have the view to himself, as ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... knew him at Oxford he was a strong man physically as well as mentally; open-hearted, and of a merry and genial temperament. At the same time he was, like most cultured persons—and especially musicians,—highly strung and excitable. But at a certain point in his career his very nature seemed to change; he became reserved, secretive, ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... other hand, looked upon Giovanni's attention to the dancer as an artifice practised solely on her account, so that the world would the less suspect his attachment to herself. Neither woman had until now felt any jealousy of Nina. To their Italian temperament she had seemed too cold a type, too antipathetic, to be a danger. The contessa was quite willing to have Giovanni marry the heiress, for she never doubted that the end of the honeymoon would find him tied more securely than ever ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... stern and steady pride, but there were differences of temperament that led to frequent clashes of will between them. Reuben Hallowell loved both his motherless children, but he understood his son less well than his daughter. What would be the result of that interview, Cicely wondered, sitting quaking beside ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... times when his art appears entirely bowed over the past; the confluence of a dozen different tendencies alive during the last century and a half; the capping of the labor of a dozen great musicians; the fulfilment of the system regnant in Europe since the introduction of the principle of the equal temperament. For the last time, the old conceptions of tonality obtain in his music dramas. One feels throughout "Tristan und Isolde" the key of D-flat, throughout "Die Meistersinger" the key of C-major, throughout "Parsifal" the key of A-flat and its relative minor. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the Celtic temperament finds something congenial in the shadows that at close of day fall about an old ruin. On fine summer evenings, and sometimes when the south-wester was hurling sheets of rain from hill to hill, and the birch-trees were bending low before its ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Vauds was a gentleman of the last century, eccentric and good. An enthusiastic disciple of Jean Jacques Rousseau, he had the tenderness of a lover for nature, in the fields, in the woods and in the animals. Of aristocratic birth, he hated instinctively the year 1793, but being a philosopher by temperament and liberal by education, he execrated tyranny with an inoffensive and declamatory hatred. His great strength and his great weakness was his kind-heartedness, which had not arms enough to caress, to give, to embrace; the benevolence ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... words. He appeared to be devoid of fear, and in either expeditions of pleasure or daring, with a calmness almost unnatural he led the way. He loved Estelle with all that fervor so inherent in men of his peculiar temperament, and when others fluttered around her, seemingly winning lasting favor in her eyes, he would vainly try to hide the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... it for him. If not his temperament, at least the circumstances of his position, cut him off from all high literary finish. He created the congregation at the Music Hall, and that congregation, in turn, moulded his whole life. For that great stage his eloquence became inevitably a kind of brilliant scene-painting,—large, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... quiet which has in it a kind of sacramental efficacy, working, we might say, on the principle of the opus operatum,[88] almost without any co-operation of one's own, towards the assertion of the higher self. And, in truth, to men of Lamb's delicately attuned temperament mere physical stillness has its full value; such natures seeming to long for it sometimes, as for no merely negative thing, with ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... And the Latin temperament gave the world a surprise. Those who judged France by her playful Paris thought that if a Frenchman gesticulated so emotionally in the course of everyday existence, he would get overwhelmingly excited in a great emergency. One evening, after ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... who alone had some slight understanding of Nan Davenant's complexities—complexities of temperament which both baffled the unfortunate possessor of them and hopelessly ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Pimpernel! Chauvelin now could see it all. Tragedies such as that which had placed an aristo's child in the power of a cunning demon like Marat were not rare these days, and Chauvelin had been fitted by nature and by temperament to understand and appreciate an execrable monster of the type ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... a beauty," said Mrs. Creswick again, looking at her three-quarters face in the glass. "Hermione is too large, and her face is too square, and—but as I said before, it doesn't matter the least. Hermione's got a temperament that ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... superficially the fact. But 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; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... taken in recruiting the department. The candidate has passed the stringent tests of character and physique applied to all metropolitan police officers. He has been watched, with unostentatious vigilance, for defects of temperament or intelligence. A few months he has on street duty in uniform, and then he may apply for transfer to the C.I.D. He may be recommended then by his divisional superiors to Mr. McCarthy—the blonde blue-eyed Irishman who rules the Central C.I.D.—who ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... a 'temperament,'" said Doctor Fleming, the Post surgeon. "That's as good as having a star. You know there are persons who attract misfortune just as sickly children catch all the diseases that are going. I knew that boy was sure to be found. Anything of Moya's ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... was neither presumptuous nor vain. He had been once repulsed and but now utterly rejected. He had no reason to hope, and yet—perhaps it was his poetical and imaginative temperament—he could ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... admirable studies from life. To that class belongs the sympathetic study which faces page 1 in the present volume. The broad humours of Whitechapel could scarcely fail to appeal irresistibly to an artist of Reynolds' peculiar temperament, and few men have depicted them with such relish or—thanks to his rare gift of ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... be a little sentimental with Lady Blandish, knowing her romantic. This mixture of the harshest common sense and an air of "I know you men," with romance and refined temperament, subdued the wise youth more than a positive accusation supported by witnesses would have done. He looked at the lady. Her face was raised to the moon. She knew nothing—she had simply spoken from the fulness of her human knowledge, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and he could seldom resist her coaxing, or be entirely disabused of the notion that his sister expected too much of her. And perhaps it was true. Patience was scarcely likely to understand differences of character and temperament, and not merely to recollect that Emlyn was only eighteen months younger than she had been when she had been forced into the position of the house mother. So, while Emlyn's wayward fancies were a great trial, Steadfast's sympathy with them ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tartar, it is that of excitability and impetuosity on ordinary occasions; the Turks, on the other hand, are nationally remarkable for gravity and almost apathy of demeanour. Now there are evidently elements in the Mahometan creed, which would tend to change them from the one temperament to the other. Its sternness, its coldness, its doctrine of fatalism; even the truths which it borrowed from Revelation, when separated from the truths it rejected, its monotheism untempered by mediation, its severe view of the divine attributes, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... light- minded men in all that light-minded town. By his birth, and both on his father's and his mother's side, Hopeful was, to begin with, a youth of an unusually shallow and silly mind. In the jargon of our day he was a man of a peculiarly optimistic temperament. No one ever blamed him for being too subjective and introspective. It took many sharp trials and many bitter disappointments to take the inborn frivolity and superficiality out of this young man's heart. He was far on in his ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... never thought that she loved him so much as you imagine I did: but he pleased her; she admired him. Did she ever utter a word of complaint, or a sigh, on learning the cruel truth? what strength of mind! what equability of temperament! what nobility of sentiment! You do not admire her enough, monsieur; you are not proud enough of having such a daughter. As to me, I glory in having been of some value in her education. I always made a point of developing her judgment, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... account of the matter, perhaps, is, that this inferiority in one branch of taste may result from a difference of temperament in our lively southern neighbours, which, in other respects, has its advantages. Restless, acute, and loquacious, they delight more naturally in those objects which remind them of the "busy hum ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... Epistle, or to both. My conclusion is that this notice proves nothing either way, when it stands alone. If the other contents of the Polycarpian Epistle are questionable, then it enforces our misgivings. If not, then this use of the notice is only another illustration of the over-suspicious temperament of modern criticism, which, as I ventured to suggest in an earlier paper, must be as fatal to calm and reasonable judgment in matters of early Christian history, as it is manifestly in matters of common life. The question therefore is narrowed to this issue, whether the Epistle of Polycarp ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... the temptations for a hot and generous temperament, eager for victory, to misstate and overstate the antagonist's position are enormous, and the sensible Socialist must allow for them unless he is to find discussion intolerable. The reader of the preceding chapters should know ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... the roof of that monarch's palace. No greater hero could a musician wish for as a source of inspiration, or as a means of exciting interest. Next to John stands the weak and voluptuous King,—a contrast as marked in character as in outward circumstance. The impulsive temperament of Herod is well brought out. One instant he resents John's boldness, and significantly exclaims, 'If I command to kill, they kill;' the next he trembles before his rebuker, and promises to amend his life. The rashness of the fatal vow to Salome, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... however, it was because Wilderspin's ancestry was, notwithstanding his English name, largely, if not wholly, Welsh, as I learnt from Cyril. Welshmen, whether sensitive or not to the rhythmic expression of the English language, are almost all, I believe, of the poetic temperament. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... anger and haughtiness, is said to be under the influence of tamas. And, O Brahmana rishi, that excellent man who is agreeable in speech, thoughtful, free from envy, industrious in action from an eager desire to reap its fruits, and of warm temperament, is said to be under the influence of rajas. And he who is resolute, patient, not subject to anger, free from malice, and is not skilful in action from want of a selfish desire to reap its fruits, wise and forbearing, is said to be under the influence of sattwa. When a man endowed with the sattwa ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... ought I to do?" said the conscientious little woman to herself, dreading above all things, and equally for her son and the doctor's daughter, the evils of an unhappy attachment, which she, with her peculiar temperament and experiences, believed to be the worst of sorrows—a misfortune never to be ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... apparent than its logic, smiles passed from one to the other, though John Effingham, who really had a regard for Sir George, was content to make an evasive reply, a singular proof of amity, in a man of his caustic temperament. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of his talk throughout, he began somehow to speak of women, and said he had never seen a woman whom he thought quite beautiful. In the same way he spoke of the New England temperament, and suggested that the apparent coldness in it was also real, and that the suppression of emotion for generations would extinguish it at last. Then he questioned me as to my knowledge of Concord, and whether I had seen ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... don't agree with you," he replied. "It is the same, more or less, with all European countries, but the Saxon temperament, with its mixture of philosophy and philistinism, more than any other, gravitates towards the life mechanical. Existence here has become fossilized. We wear a mask upon our faces; we carry a gauge for our emotions. Lovell is ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... impressed by the aura of your thought-force. If you go to a clairvoyant or a psychometerist and put into his hands a letter, a lock of hair, a cloth-piece, or anything else pertaining to one of your friends, he or she will psychically trace out the personal appearance, temperament, past and present history, and everything else in connection with that person. Marvellous, 'Impossible' you cry in surprise. But it is done. Realise through study and investigation the importance of your thought-life and avoid vitiating it by fear-thoughts, hate-thoughts, ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... reflections, as well as to thoughts of a graver character, and both presented themselves at that moment to the spirit of Tiburcio. Like all those whose life has been passed amid the depths of the desert, there was at the bottom of his heart a certain poetic temperament, at the same time that his soul exhibited that energetic vigour required by the dangers which surround such a life of solitude. His present position then was perfectly appropriate to this double character. His love was unreciprocated—the coolness of Rosarita, almost assured ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Commander Oliver Hazard Perry an application to serve under him. To Perry was promptly turned over the burden and the responsibility of smashing the British naval power on Lake Erie. Events were soon to display the notable differences in temperament and capabilities between these two men. Though he had greater opportunities on Lake Ontario, Chauncey was too cautious and held the enemy in too much respect; wherefore he dodged and parried and fought inconclusive engagements with the fleet of Sir James Yeo until destiny had passed him ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... that dust is matter in the wrong place. The same definition applies to nine-tenths of those called lazy. They are people gone astray in a direction that does not answer to their temperament nor to their capacities. In reading the biography of great men, we are struck with the number of "idlers" among them. They were lazy so long as they had not found the right path; afterwards they became laborious ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... was by nature and temperament squarely disposed toward justice and the right, but he could not resist the concerted appeals made to him by the dominant whites at the South. Early in May, rules were issued governing trade with the States lately in rebellion, but in ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... sense of sequence—revolves, if I may say so, on its own axis, a now, forever; baffling thereby all speech. And M. Maeterlinck perceives, therefore, that real communion between fellow-creatures is interchange of temperament, of rhythm of life; not exchange of remarks, views, and opinions, of which ninety-nine in a hundred are merely current coin. To what he has said I should like to add that if we are often silent with those whom we love best, it is because we are sensitive ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... seen," said Geburon, "that those who, being alike in heart, character and temperament, have married for love and paid no heed to diversity of birth and lineage, have ofttime sorely repented of it; for a deep unreasoning love is apt to ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... "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 very good ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... After a fashion that was the actual result. How far, indeed, Bentham could have achieved much in the sphere of pure philosophy, and what kind of philosophy he would have turned out, must be left to conjecture. The circumstances of his time and country, and possibly his own temperament generally, turned his thoughts to problems of legislation and politics, that is to say, of direct practical interest. He was therefore always dealing with concrete facts, and a great part of his writings ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... point on which she was ever influenced against her own judgment; the instigator being Lord Guilford, who in his turn was urged by his ambitious, unprincipled father, and his equally ambitious and unprincipled mother, in whose hands his weak, affectionate, yielding temperament rendered him an easy tool. The probability is, that had Jane been firmly established as Queen, she would have shown a character more akin to that of Elizabeth than is commonly supposed, though undoubtedly her personal piety was ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. Some of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do that great duty for duty's SAKE, why not you? Don't you know that you could go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and put them on that deck and ask them to die for duty's sake, and not two dozen of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his life. A sunny frankness and openness of spirit breathes in the pleasant chat of his books, and what he was in his books he showed himself in his daily converse. AElfred was in truth an artist, and both the lights and shadows of his life were those of the artistic temperament. His love of books, his love of strangers, his questionings of travellers and scholars, betray an imaginative restlessness that longs to break out of the narrow world of experience which hemmed him in. At ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... borrow, For moments few, a temperament as stern As Pluto's sceptre, that my words not burn These uttering lips, while I in calm speech tell How specious heaven was changed ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... not close this letter without adverting to an error into which those of your sanguine temperament would be the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... confronted, together, but little of brotherly love mingled with the glances which they threw upon each other. Ranulph's gentle, but withal enthusiastic temperament, had kindled, under his present excitement, like flax at the sudden approach of flame. He was wild with frenzy. Luke was calmer, but his fury was deadly and inextinguishable. The meeting was terrible ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fortune and felicity that it elsewhere is. The absolute openness of their minds and hearts to one another makes their happiness far more dependent on the moral and mental qualities of their companions than upon their physical. A genial temperament, a wide-grasping, godlike intellect, a poet soul, are incomparably more fascinating to them than the most dazzling combination conceivable ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... began to show a lack of interest in his comfort, once it became known that he did not tip, and he experienced difficulty in obtaining even the customary attentions. It was annoying to one who had never known an unsatisfied whim; but Kirk was of a peculiarly sanguine temperament that required much to ruffle, and looked upon the whole matter as a huge joke. It was this, perhaps, that enabled him to make friends in spite of his unsociable habits, for the men liked him. As for the women, he avoided them religiously, with the exception of Mrs. Cortlandt, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... men,—Judge Campbell, R. M. T. Hunter, Randolph the Secretary of War, General Wade Hampton, General Jeb Stuart. Very straight and tall, thin, with a clear-cut, clean-shaven, distinguished face, with a look half military man, half student, with a demeanour to all of perfect if somewhat chilly courtesy, by temperament a theorist, able with the ability of the field marshal or the scholar in the study, not with that of the reader and master of men, the hardest of workers, devoted, honourable, single-minded, a figure on which a fierce light has beaten, a man not perfect, not always just, nor always ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Lynde was warm-hearted and generous to the verge of violence, but a man in every way unfitted by temperament, experience, and mode of life to undertake the guardianship of a child. To have an infant dropped into his arms was as excellent an imitation of a calamity as could well happen to him. I am told that no one could have been more sensible of this than ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive love of landscape in us has this deep root, which, in your minds, I will pray you to disencumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and to strive to feel with all the strength of your youth that a nation is only worthy of the soil and the scenes that ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... compartment and laughed; and none of the essays I have read on laughter—not even the famous dissertation by Josh Billings—throw light on how to describe the tantalizing manner of it. He laughs several different ways: heartily at times, as men of my temperament mostly do; boisterously on occasion, after Jeremy's fashion; now and then cryptically, using laughter as a mask; then he owns a smile that suggests nothing more nor less than kindness based ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... of Philip Standfield, tried upon the 30th November, 1687, for cursing his father (which, by the Scottish law, is a capital crime, Act 1661, Chap. 20), and for being accessory to his murder. Sir James Standfield, the deceased, was a person of melancholy temperament; so that, when his body was found in a pond near his own house of Newmilns, he was at first generally supposed to have drowned himself. But, the body having been hastily buried, a report arose that he had been strangled by ruffians, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... Here was a man, maimed for life and quite content that it should be so, who had reckoned all the horrors through which he had passed as externals unworthy of the consideration of his unconquerable soul; a man simple, unassuming, expansive only through his Celtic temperament, which allowed him to talk easily to a stranger before whom his English or Scotch comrade would have been dumb and gaping as an oyster; obviously brave, sincere and loyal. Perhaps something even higher. Perhaps, in essence, the very highest. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... here, and we buried him with Christian honours. As his comrades said, he died because he had determined to die,—an instance of that obstinate fatalism in their mulish temperament which no kind words or threats can cure. This terrible catastrophe made me wish to send all the remaining Hottentots back to Zanzibar; but as they all preferred serving with me to returning to duty at the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... a sanguine temperament, the Unemployed cheered his drooping spirits by murmuring, "Better luck to-morrow!" Then he retired to his rather damp quarters in the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... looked at life. It projected from above, from outside, a black patch over his spirit, and it was for him to do what he could with the black patch. There were all sorts of possible ways of dealing with it; they depended upon the personal temperament. Some natures would let it lie as it fell, and contrive to be tolerably comfortable beneath it. Others would groan and sweat and suffer; but the dusky blight would remain, and their lives would be lives of misery. Here and there an individual, irritated beyond endurance, would throw ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... adhered, if not altogether so closely as he ought, yet at least more closely than did many others, to the proper sphere of his duties as a civilian. Influential in oratory, skillful in political management, masterful in temperament, and of unflinching loyalty, he was long the genuine leader of the House. In recalling the several members of that body he stands forth as the one striking and dominant figure. Nor did his activity cease with the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... was a black spot in her heart, and when Sturges left her for a moment to listen, it ached for the head of the priest. She had much bad as well as much good in her, this innocent Californian maiden; and the last week had forced an already well-developed brain and temperament close to maturity. She vowed that she would make herself so dear to this fiery American that he would deny her nothing. Then, her lust for vengeance satisfied, she would make him the most ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... the Persecutor.—To a man of Paul's temperament and zeal there could be no half way measures in a case like this. He could not be content to bide his time. Either the claims of Christ were true or false. If false, then they were doing harm and His doctrine and teaching must be eradicated at any cost. All the ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... accompany the receipt of my letter of allocation with certain expletives by no means creditable to the character of the projectors—at all events, I began to look with a milder eye upon the atrocities of Pennsylvanian repudiation. However, as the crash was by no means certain, my sanguine temperament overcame me, and in a fit of temporary derangement I ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... to the spokesman of the Labour Party, represent, not the conflicting interests of certain economic classes, but the "conflicting views and temperaments" of individuals.[116] And the chief divisions of temperament and opinion, he says, will be between the world-old tendencies of action and inaction—a view which does not differ one iota from ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... Yorker, I am well aware, is not "the American." But who is "the American?" I turn to Mr. G.W. Steevens, and find that "the American is a highly electric Anglo-Saxon. His temperament is of quicksilver. There is as much difference in vivacity and emotion between him and an Englishman as there is between an Englishman and an Italian." Well, Mr. Steevens is a keener observer than I; when he wrote this, he had been two months in America to my one; and he had travelled far ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... qualities. Oppressor as he was, he admired a spirit of resistance in an officer when it was shown in a just cause, and, upon reflection, was invariably his friend, for he felt that his own natural temperament was increased by abject obedience. Raynal, I think it is, has said that "the pride of men in office arises as much from the servility of their inferiors or expectants as from any other cause." In our service they are all inferiors, and all expectants. Can it then be surprising that a captain occasionally ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... against anyone so frenziedly, nay, what is more abominable, so maliciously. Now it occurs to you that you are a weak sinner, whereas at other times you insist almost on being taken for God. You are a man, as you write, of violent temperament, and you take pleasure in this remarkable argument. Why then did you not pour forth this marvellous piece of invective on the Bishop of Rochester[96] or on Cochleus?[97] They attack you personally and provoke you with insults, while my Diatribe[98] ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... retiring temperament, being introduced to each other solemnly and with ceremony, felt that to be silent was to be guilty of a glaring breach of Bilberry decorum, and, casting about in mental agony for available remarks, found none, and were ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... responsibility of caring for the salvation of the afflicted nuns, and he begged him to accompany him to the convent. This priest, whose name was Pierre Barre, was exactly the man whom Mignon needed in such a crisis. He was of melancholy temperament, and dreamed dreams and saw visions; his one ambition was to gain a reputation for asceticism and holiness. Desiring to surround his visit with the solemnity befitting such an important event, he set ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... for some time been noticing the same phenomenon which had just attracted their notice, but he had hesitated to draw their attention to it. Now, however, he spoke, and his voice sounded grave for one of Pete's usually lively temperament. ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... another reason why this course would have been impracticable. The Fabians were not suited either by ability, temperament, or conditions to be leaders of a popular revolutionary party. Mrs. Besant with her gift of splendid oratory and her long experience of agitation was an exception, but her connection with the movement ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... has since been done with the camera by men who feel and are led by the emotional in art, would claim a distinction to the painter and deny that the photographic product was unaffected by the emotional temperament. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... and the hum of promenaders on the beach, and ensconce ourselves in the snug parlour of "mine host" Paddy White, whom we used to denominate the Falstaff of the island. Though from the land of shillelaghs and whiskey, Paddy is entirely devoid of that gunpowder temperament which characterizes his country; and his genuine humour, ample obesity, and originality of delivery, entitle him to honourable identification with "Sir John." Now, by the soul of Momus! who ever beheld a woe-begone face at Paddy White's? ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... evident that Potter was of a spiritual temperament, and was indebted to a spirit influence for his impressions and convictions. But whatever is possible to the disembodied spirit in the intellectual way is also possible to the embodied spirit which has not lost its material body, if the interior faculties are ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... historians of this sanguine complexion to those of a more sober temperament, there will appear no reason for believing that the town of Falaise had existence prior to the incursions of the Saxons, or the establishment of the Normans, in Neustria. No mention of it whatever is to be found previous to the latter of these ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... mediocrity, method and laissez faire. As we said before, we take off our hat to John. He is not a magnetic man like Blaine, not a lovable man like our poor, dear friend Matt. Carpenter, not a brilliant man like our Lamar; not like any of these—warm of temperament, captivating of presence or dazzling of intellectual luminosity; but he is a great man, strong in the cold, steadfast nerve that he inherits from his ancestor, and respectable in the symmetry of an intellect which, like a marble masterpiece, leaves nothing to regret except the thought that its ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Bantu family which originally occupied the SE. seaboard of Africa from Delagoa Bay to the Great Fish River; they are a race of superior physique and intellectual endowment, as well as moral temperament, and incline to a quiet pastoral life; they were attacked under Cetywayo by the English in 1879, but after falling upon an English force at Isandula, and cutting it in pieces, were overpowered at Ulundi, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... could only bring to light with great effort, and over which it would exhaust itself. But this higher activity of the mind, this glance of genius, would still not become matter of history if the qualities of temperament and character of which we have treated did not give ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... contemplation of the necessity. He loved this life, this cause. It opened out into wider and more beautiful vistas the further he penetrated into it. He conceived it the only life for which he was particularly fitted by temperament and inclination. To give it up would be to cut himself off from all that he cared for most in active life; and would be to cast him into the drudgery of new and uncongenial lines. That sacrifice must be made. It's contemplation ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... operations on the foot, such as the probing of a sinus, the paring out of corns, or the searching of pricks, may most suitably be performed with the animal's leg held by the operator as a smith holds it for shoeing. According to the temperament of the animal, even the operation for the removal of a portion of the sole, or the injection of sinuses with caustics, may be carried out ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... and that if we could all trace out the consequences of all we do, we should realise that it was to our real interest to act rightly. And if that is admitted, it follows that the "choice" to do evil is the product of short-sightedness, or of some defect of temperament which prevents our standing up against the temptations of the moment. And our ethical education is mainly directed to making good this defect in our make up. But suppose that amount of wisdom or strength had been an endowment of our nature from the outset, is there any conceivable ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... He is not yet forty-eight, though his perfectly white hair would seem to indicate a greater age. But his red beard and whiskers contrast strongly with the snow on his head, and, together with a flashing bluish-gray eye, indicate the energetic and ardent temperament of unconquerable youth. Though not large in person, he is tall and erect, with a fine, soldierly form. His address is quick, and nervous to such a degree as to deprive him of even the ordinary fluency ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... the later half of his life, was profoundly morne, there is no other word for it. This arose in part from temperament, from a quick sense of the littleness and wretchedness of mankind . . . This feeling, acting on a harsh and savage nature, ended in the saeva indignatio of Swift; acting on the kindly and sensitive nature of Mr. Thackeray, it ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... reply at once, and her silent severity came to the surface of her mother's consciousness so painfully that it was rather a relief to have her explode, "Mother, I will thank you not to discuss my temperament with people." ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... he had almost succeeded by the time they reached the brownstone house of sitters, bedrooms and baths, gas stoves, cubby-holes, the persistent reek of onions, cigarettes and hot cheese. The hysteria of the artistic temperament, or the natural exaggeration of an artificial life, had worn itself out for the time being. Rather pathetic little sobs had taken its place, it was with a face streaked with the black stuff from her eyelashes that Tootles ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... effect of their privations (some of starvation in Tayabas), or as a result of brutal treatment. A minority of them received as good treatment as possible under the circumstances. The fate of the majority depended chiefly upon the temperament of the native commander of the district. There were semi-savage native chiefs, and there were others, like Aguinaldo himself, with humane instincts. Amongst the former, for instance, there was Major Francisco Braganza, who, on February 28, 1900, in Camarines Sur, ordered ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... inherited a sensitive temperament, one that responded quickly and truthfully to the events occurring about him, and he foresaw the beginning of a mighty struggle. Here in the capital, resolution was hardening into a fight to the finish, and he knew ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the Lower Fifth. If not exactly pretty, she was a dainty little damsel, and knew how to make the best of herself. Her fair hair was glossy and waved in the most becoming fashion, her clothes were well cut, her gloves and shoes immaculate. She had an artistic temperament, and loved to be surrounded by pretty things. She was rather a favourite at The Woodlands, for she had few sharp angles and possessed a fair share of tact. If the girls laughed sometimes at what they called her "high-falutin' notions" they ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... preacher. The preacher had a wholesome belief in the value of reiteration. He had a habit of rubbing in his points. "He blamed the boss. Listen to his impudence! 'I knew thee to be a hard man.' He blamed his own temperament and disposition. 'I was afraid.' But the boss brings him up sharp and short. 'Quit lying!' he said. 'I'll tell you what's wrong with you. You've got a mean heart, you ain't honest, and you're too lazy to live. Here, take that money from him ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... subject on which to write, and according to her temperament and circumstances she will certainly choose one of six things:—"A Spring Reverie" (or it may be "An Autumn Reverie," as the time of year suits); or "Elsie, a character sketch" (describing one of those insufferably angelic women whom happily God never made); or "Hints on Economy in Dress"; or "My ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... do anything. The hero-worship which is latent in the heart of all young people worth their salt sprang into sudden life. Lady Agatha glanced at her, noticed her expression, and smiled a rich, sweet, gratified smile. She had made a disciple. To make a disciple was very pleasant to one of her temperament. Like most women, ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... with an instance of that dilemma which is so constantly occurring in the history of the Caesars. If a prince is by temperament disposed to severity of manners, and naturally seeks to impress his own spirit upon the composition and discipline of the army, we are sure to find that he was cut off in his attempts by private assassination or by public rebellion. On the other hand, if he wallows in sensuality, and is careless ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... to believe that my few hours' acquaintance with our captain has given me considerable insight into his charac- ter. That he is a good seaman and thoroughly understands his duties I could not for a moment venture to deny; but that he is a man of resolute temperament, or that he pos- sesses the amount of courage that would render him, phy- sically or morally, capable of coping with any great emer- gency, I confess I cannot believe. I observed a certain heaviness and dejection about his whole carriage. His wavering ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... It presented itself to Olive that after this entertainment it would be an act of courtesy to call upon her; but here, at least, was the comfort that she could cover herself with the general absolution extended to the Boston temperament and leave her alone. It was slightly provoking, indeed, that Mrs. Burrage should have so much the air of a New Yorker who didn't particularly notice whether a Bostonian called or not; but there is ever an imperfection, I suppose, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... sixteen, with a small gripsack in his hand, trudged along the country road. He was of good height for his age, strongly built, and had a frank, attractive face. He was naturally of a cheerful temperament, but at present his face was grave, and not without a shade of anxiety. This can hardly be a matter of surprise when we consider that he was thrown upon his own resources, and that his available capital consisted ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... that personal temperament and individual peculiarities had their part in deciding a man's attitude toward the question of the unvarying duty of veracity, quite as surely as the man's recognition of great principles. An illustration of this truth is ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... of that one end. They desired most ardently that he should take unto himself a wife, because he was the last of his race, and there was a coronet hung up in the skies above his head. The natural effect of such anxiety upon the uncommon temperament of this particularly uncommon man was to decide him definitely to remain single forever, and because he had always proved himself of a strength of resolve and firmness of purpose quite unequalled in their experience, they felt justified in the ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... on the scaffold. Of a more violent temperament than his friend, and stimulated by stronger reasons for hatred against the king, he had received the sentence with less composure, although in his case, perhaps, it was less unjust. He burst forth in bitter reproaches against the king, and the bishop with difficulty ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... great confidence in the pacific sentiments of the Emperor William, in spite of the too frequent exaggeration of some of his gestures. He will not allow himself to be drawn on farther than he chooses by the exuberant temperament and clumsy manners of his very intelligent Minister of Foreign Affairs (Kiderlen-Waechter). I feel, in general, less faith in the desire of Great Britain for peace. She would not be sorry to see the others eat one another up.... As I thought from the beginning, it is in London that the ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... grew up they were sent to school, and both, though of different temperament, were distinguished for their superior ability. Jessie was quick at anything requiring an amount of ready talent and acute comprehension, such as Arithmetic, Geometry, and Modern Languages, but Charlie excelled in Classics and what ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him secure himself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what they performed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament. The middle region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers and peasants, concur in tranquillity ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... one of the prisons near Berlin—there 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, forgotten eddy, that ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... disassociated are always a source of annoyance to their friends, and often looked upon as irresponsible, and have to be looked after by some one who has patience enough to be with them, and often they are passed along as having an artistic temperament. ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... long the Latisan temperament could be restrained. In the matter of Craig at the tavern the scion of old John had been afforded disquieting evidence that the temperament was not ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... domestic amiability made him the delight of his sister, and his zealous self-sacrifice for the education and advancement in life of his younger brother was afterwards repaid by Augustin Robespierre's devotion through all the fierce and horrible hours of Thermidor. Though cold in temperament, extremely reserved in manners, and fond of industrious seclusion, Robespierre did not disdain the social diversions of the town. He was a member of a reunion of Rosati, who sang madrigals and admired one another's bad verses. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... 1905 gave the population of the island as less than nine hundred thousand, the latest official estimate places it at about three millions. The actual number of inhabitants is probably midway between these figures. But, to tell the truth, the temperament of the savages who inhabit the interior is not conducive to an accurate enumeration, the Dutch census-takers being greeted with about the same degree of cordiality that the moonshiners of the Kentucky mountains extend ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... been very happy during the year spent in the Presbyterian Church, all its requirements suiting her temperament exactly. Her energy and activity found full exercise in various works of charity, in visiting the prison, where she delighted to exhort the prisoners, in reading, and especially in expounding the scriptures to the sick and aged; in zealously forwarding missionary work, and in warm interest in ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... patience and then enlisted my interest by a torrent of musical terminology which she apparently had picked up from talks with her boy's piano-teacher. She interspersed her unsophisticated Yiddish with English phrases like "rare technique," "vonderful touch," "bee-youtiful tone," or "poeytic temperament." She assured me that her son was the youngest boy in the United States to play Brahms and Beethoven successfully. At first I thought that she was prattling these words parrot fashion, but I soon realized ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... perceptible in every page of the score. Marschner, too, whose 'Vampyr' and 'Templer und Juedin' had been recently produced at Leipzig, which was then Wagner's headquarters, also appealed very strongly to the young musician's plastic temperament. 'Die Feen' consequently has little claim to originality, but the work is nevertheless interesting to those who desire to trace the master's development ab ovo. Both in the melodies and rhythms employed it is possible to trace the germs of what afterwards became strongely marked characteristics. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... could not hold young Weldon's vacillant temperament for long; neither could Diana. As a matter of fact his heart, more staunch than he himself suspected, had never wavered much from Louise. Yet pride forbade his attempting to renew their former relations. It was now some months since he had seen the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... from Gouache's lodgings. The cool evening air refreshed him and helped him to think over what he had before him in the near future. Indeed the position was terrible enough, and doubly so to a man of his temperament. He would have faced anything rather than this, for there was no point in which he was more vulnerable than in his love for Corona. As he walked her figure rose before him, and her beauty almost dazzled him when he thought of it. But he could no longer ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... expedition, and those to whom he applied for information respecting the country through which he must pass warned him that he would have to undergo many hardships; but to all this advice he turned a deaf ear. His active, energetic, and enterprising temperament was proof against all fear of discomfort, and his desire to know the truth overruled every other feeling. And, when at last he stood by the beautiful lake, the goal of his search, all the trials and annoyances of ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... looked very insulted and flushed. What sort of a creature was this her papa had brought to his supper-table? Papa, who had noticed the awkward turn, and was tickled by the humor thereof, could not forbear to give evidence of amusement, insomuch that his daughter, who was by no means of a lymphatic temperament, was almost ready to leave the table, or burst into tears ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... fertile in expedients, and gay as a lark; if one scheme failed, another was sure to present itself. Pierre and Duncan were admirably suited to be friends and neighbours. The steady perseverance of the Scot helped to temper the volatile temperament of the Frenchman. They generally contrived to compass the same end by different means, as two streams descending from opposite hills will meet in one broad river ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... less dangerous. But in his disappointment he yelled so loudly that Madame Bonaparte heard him; and as she had quite a fancy for her mameluke, I was sharply scolded. However, this poor Ali was of such an unsocial temperament that he got into difficulties with almost every one in the household, and at last was sent away to Fontainebleau, to take the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Taking horses, Temperament, Teton River, The Bad Weapons, Bears, Beaver Medicine, Blackfoot Genesis, Blackfoot in War, Buffalo Rock, Dog and the Stick, Elk, Fox, Ghosts' Buffalo, Past and the Present, Race, Rock, Theft from the Sun, Wonderful ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... been the subject of severe censure should prove to be a translation from Cardinal Bembo.[273] The standard of the twentieth century is not the standard of the sixteenth, and it is certain that Luis de Leon has not the unfettered liberty of a godless layman. He is restrained by his austere temperament, by his monk's habit, by Christian doctrine. Nevertheless he moves with easy grace and dignity on planes so far apart as those of patriotism, of devotion, of human sympathy, of introspection. His ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... haughty temperament without his sordid selfishness, and what may seem incompatible with the former, a glowing imagination in connection with fine mental powers. To all but Mr. Hamilton she appeared as cold and impenetrable as himself; but the flashing eye and curling lip with which she listened ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... said, "you must try to keep under that jealous temperament. Jealousy fostered in the heart overshadows and overclouds all ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... who do not know the Slav temperament, with its strange mixture of sensuality and devotion, of barbarous cruelty and over-civilized cunning, seldom far removed from the brink of insanity, the incident I have recorded will appear incredible. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... Duff, he's chairman, you know, of the Board of Directors, that she was impossible and that we must have you. I have heard you sing, my dear, and I know the singer's face and the singer's throat and eye. You have them all. You have the voice and the temperament and the passion. You'll be great some day, much greater than I, and, with the hope of sharing your glory, I have decided to ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... I to myself in the same strain, continuing—anyhow, I was not actually getting fat. Nothing so gross as that. I merely was attaining to a pleasant, a becoming and a dignified fullness of contour as I neared my thirtieth birthday. So why worry about what was natural and normal among persons of my temperament, and having my hereditary impulses, upon attaining ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... chamber on the second floor had been thrown open; and there he found Mariana's brother. Kingsfrere Jannan was a young man with a broad white face, shadowed in pasty green, and leaden eyes. His countenance, Howat knew, masked a keen and avaricious temperament. He did uncommonly well at auction bridge in the clubs. Kingsfrere, in a grey morning coat with white linen gaiters and a relentless collar, nodded and lounged from the room; and Mariana soon appeared. "Perhaps, Howat," she said, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... with some, proceeds from a callous and indifferent temperament,—a cold, phlegmatic, stoical insensibility, alike to kindness or unkindness. It was not so with Jesus. The tender sensibilities of His holy nature rendered Him keenly sensible to ingratitude and injury, whether this was manifested in the malice of undisguised ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... considered himself a great-grandson—not in the direct line, of course—of the famous Bruce, in whose honour he had named his son Yakoff.[51] He was the sort of man who is called "very good-natured," but of a melancholy temperament, fussy, and timid, with a predilection for everything that was mysterious or mystical.... "Ah!" uttered in a half-whisper was his customary exclamation; and he died with that exclamation on his lips, two years after his removal ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... unenergetic and swayed by anger and haughtiness, is said to be under the influence of tamas. And, O Brahmana rishi, that excellent man who is agreeable in speech, thoughtful, free from envy, industrious in action from an eager desire to reap its fruits, and of warm temperament, is said to be under the influence of rajas. And he who is resolute, patient, not subject to anger, free from malice, and is not skilful in action from want of a selfish desire to reap its fruits, wise and forbearing, is said to be under the influence ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... would be evident to others beside himself. He was delighted to see once more the Comte, for whom his affection was in no way diminished. He asked him for confidential details about his wife's character and temperament, for she was almost a stranger to him because of the little time during which they had lived together. The Comte, with the utmost sincerity, as if he himself were not enamoured, told the Prince everything he knew about the Princess which would encourage her husband's love of her, and he also ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... of the changes which years of peril and of war wrought in the model of the American sailing ship. How the vessel herself, under full sail, looked when seen through the eyes of one who was a sailor, with the education of a writer and the temperament of a poet, is well told in these lines from "Two ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... into the North of Ireland among North-of-Ireland people. His story is dominated by one remarkable character, whose progress towards the subjugation of his own temperament we cannot help but watch with interest. He is swept from one thing to another, first by his dare-devil, roistering spirit, then by his mood of deep repentance, through love and marriage, through quarrels and separation from his wife, to a reconciliation at the point of death, ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... and vice versa; a strong, capable woman marries a sickly, incompetent man—and supports him; a sentimental woman is attracted to a matter-of-fact man who develops her common sense by pruning her sentimentalities; an artistic temperament is drawn to a phlegmatic; a sanguine to a bilious; a mental to a vital; an active man marries a lazy wife, or vice versa; a bright man marries a stupid girl; and ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... established a provisional government with Mr. John Bruce, a Scotch settler, as nominal president, and Mr. Louis Riel, the actual leader, as secretary of state. The latter was a French half-breed, who had been superficially educated in French Canada. His temperament was that of a race not inclined to steady occupation, loving the life of the river and plain, ready to put law at defiance when their rights and privileges were in danger. This restless man and his half-breed {390} associates soon found themselves at the head and front of ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... 'was minded to enter in unto the people,' well knowing that there he had to face more ferocious 'wild beasts' than if a cageful of lions had been loosed on him. Faith in God and fellowship with Christ lift a soul above fear of death. The noblest kind of courage is not that born of flesh or temperament, or of the madness of battle, but that which springs from calm trust in and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... regard to which the love of friends corroborates the malice of enemies it is in ascribing to the English an individualism, hard-shelled beyond all human parallel. The Englishman's country is an impregnable island, his house is a castle, his temperament is a suit of armour. The function common to all three is to keep things out, and most admirably has he used them to that end. At first, indeed, he let everybody in; he had a perfect passion for being conquered, and Romans, Teutons, Danes, and Normans in succession ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... you will go—you must ride to the tombs of the kings; and you must, if you care for the finesse of impressions, ride on a blazing day and toward the hour of noon. Then the ravine is itself, like the great act that demonstrates a temperament. It is the narrow home of fire, hemmed in by brilliant colors, nearly all—perhaps quite all—of which could be found in a glowing furnace. Every shade of yellow is there—lemon yellow, sulphur yellow, the yellow of amber, the yellow of orange with its tendency toward red, the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... resolved to remain unmarried because the insanity of an uncle and the fits and giddiness to which he was always subject led him to fear insanity in his own case. Others, looking rather to physical causes, have dwelt upon his coldness of temperament and indisposition to love; upon the repugnance he often showed towards marriage, and the tone of some of the verses on the subject written in his later years. Others, again, have found a cause in his parsimonious habits, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... sign to confirm his faith. As a man he was conscious of the deep need which all of us have, whether we are conscious of it or not, for something more real and tangible than an unseeable and unknowable God. The peculiarities of Philip's temperament strengthened the desire. The first appearance that he makes in the Gospels is characteristically like this his last. To all Nathanael's objections he had only the reply, 'Come and see.' And here he says: 'Oh! if we could ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... draw on this vein of composition without any limit whatever. I felt, or thought I felt, an inexhaustible store of fun and buoyancy within me, and I began to have a misty, half-confused impression that Englishmen generally labored under a sad-colored temperament, took depressing views of life, and were proportionately grateful to any one who would rally them even passingly out of their despondency, and give them a laugh without much trouble for going in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... an attribute of a most discomfiting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of an usually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with her, but this young woman became a mere Distillery for the production of the largest and most transparent tears I ever met with. Combined with these characteristics, was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... temperament and the peculiar nature of his position, it is not easy to see how he could have arrived at ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... Annetta was nothing more than a rather pretty wild animal. It did not enter his head that she might be in love with him. Sora Nanna was simply an older and uglier animal of the same species. To a man of Dalrymple's temperament, and really devoted to the pursuit of a serious object, a woman quite incapable of even understanding what that object is can hardly seem to be a woman ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... egotism of her relief, she thought to deepen the impression she had made by one vivid picture of her daughter as she was now. Mistaking his temperament or his story, classing him in with other strong men, the well of whose feeling once roused overflows in sympathetic emotion, she observed very gently but, as ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... poet was now promising to be in the ascendant, but an untoward event ensued. In the ardent enthusiasm of his temperament, he was induced to espouse in verse the cause of the Paisley hand-loom operatives in a dispute with their employers, and to satirise in strong invective a person of irreproachable reputation. For this offence he was prosecuted before the sheriff, who sentenced him to be imprisoned for a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... kind of bird has its own temperament. On one of my jaunts down this Mount Mansfield road I happened to espy a Canada jay in a thick spruce. He was on one of the lower branches, but pretty soon began mounting the tree, keeping near the bole and going up limb by limb in absolute silence, exactly ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... resplendent with past greatness. He remembered just enough of what he had been taught at school to realise where he was; he knew just what every one knows of Rome with no pretension to scholarship, and it was more particularly his artistic temperament which awoke within him and gathered warmth from the flame of memory. The present had disappeared, and the ocean of the past was still rising, buoying ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... new insurrection, they gave directions "that some person who shall be found most faulty may be forthwith punished".[937] "After which," the Privy Council advised, "and not before the Governor may be directed to consider of and propose, with the advice of the Council and the Assembly, ... some temperament in relation to the Planting of Tobacco and raising the price ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... ceased to elicit open-mouthed observance, and among the student-body surnames had yielded precedence to Christian names—oftener, though, to some outlandish sobriquet which satirized an idiosyncrasy of temperament or outward aspect. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... But his hopeful temperament cast off troubles readily. "We can't do anything more than just wait, anyhow; and I suppose that our friend here"—he motioned to the Aleut boy—"will see that we get our share of the ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... buoyant, adaptable French temperament of his mother, the Countess was inclined to be rather severe in her judgment of him. He was so young; so serious. She did not fancy young men except in the pages of romances; even when they had brains they appeared to her always over-weighted ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... other. The relations of master and pupil had been added to those of playfellows, and their intercourse had run on so smoothly that until to-night Maurice had never known his charge's full power to irritate him. Like most persons of steady and equable temperament, he felt deeply annoyed, even humiliated, by having been surprised into impatience and anger; he was doubly displeased with himself and with Lucia. Yet, as he thought of her his mood softened; she was only a child, and would be good to-morrow. But then she could not always be ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... adopt him as one of our glories—we who have kept up, for now almost a century, a struggle like to that which he maintained for the unity of the Roman Empire, we who consider Africa as an extension of France. More than any other writer, he has expressed the temperament and the genius of his country. This motley Africa, with its eternal mixture of races at odds with one another, its jealous sectarianism, the variety of its scenery and climate, the violence of its sensations ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... was warm-hearted and generous to the verge of violence, but a man in every way unfitted by temperament, experience, and mode of life to undertake the guardianship of a child. To have an infant dropped into his arms was as excellent an imitation of a calamity as could well happen to him. I am told that no one could have been more sensible of this ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... with a sufficient measure of the principle of self-preservation. There is a cowardice which we do not despise, because it has nothing base or treacherous in its elements; it betrays itself, not you: it is mere temperament; the absence of the romantic and the enterprising; it sees a lion in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras, "greatly find quarrel in a straw," when some supposed honour is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Bulter's feelings were sorely outraged he preserved an air of icy aloofness, which Jane imitated as long as she was on the lead. This apparent indifference should have been a warning to the cockerel, but he did not know Jane's peculiar temperament. The full revelation came one morning when they met in the lines unattended by their respective masters. The rooster quickly fell a victim to feminine duplicity, and Jane carried the mangled bundle of claws and feathers and dropped it at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... but all work and no play is a scheme of life which would ill accord with his social, pleasure-loving temperament. With a wisdom rare in his day and generation, and an energy unparalleled among Southern races, he manages to combine the two. After rising at dawn and working from twelve to fifteen hours, he does not sit down and fall asleep, but slings a guitar over his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... lived in the country, and her relatives had hovered over her like vultures awaiting her decease. The household had been gloomy and gruesome enough to have driven into melancholy madness any girl not of the sanest and most matter-of-fact temperament. Emily Fox-Seton had endured it with an unfailing good nature, which at last had actually awakened in the breast of her mistress a ray of human feeling. When the old woman at length died, and Emily was to be turned out into the world, it was revealed that she had been left a legacy ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... very vigorous-speaking old lady, that was sure. The sister by her side was of much milder temperament, and she was thanking Janice very sweetly while the other scolded ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... What had she not suffered the first summer after her marriage! And now the hot weather was coming again. That was not the root of the trouble, however—Bridget was honest enough to confess it. The root lay in herself—in her own instability of purpose, her mercurial temperament. She had been born with that temperament. All the O'Haras loved change—hungered after strong sensation. She was ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... greeting him as "one of the greatest men of our century." At Stockholm the notables of the city crowded to pay their respects—on foot, in order not to disturb the invalid with the sound of carriages and horses. He was not, however, very accessible. By temperament he shrank from either publicity or fame; and in his state of physical and mental suffering he had no heart for the honours showered upon him. He systematically discouraged the forerunners of the modern interviewers who were eager for "copy," and as far as he could he kept ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... locks, and the lines of thought were deepened in his face, but I found him in other respects unchanged. He had the same deep, metallic voice, so musical that to hear him say the slightest things was a pleasure, the same graceful courtesy and happy elasticity of temperament; and was full as ever of noble purposes, and the Roman self-conviction of power to live them out. One of those nights that "are not made for slumber" found us lingering beneath the odorous vines which interlocked their gay ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rudiments of an immortal one, the beginning of heaven on earth. These restrain those opposites, which lead to crime and death. Love and Hate are as antagonistic as heat and cold, and the usefulness of both depends upon their proper temperament. Fig. 70 represents the antagonism of the Intellectual faculties to the Animal, the Emotional to the Criminal, the Volitive to the Enfeebling. It is not essential to discover in the nerve-substance the precise power from which an impulse originates. We may reasonably interpret the functions of the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... unison, devoutly wished that a yawning hole would open up and swallow them when he began one of his infamous tirades. Even perfection in studies and execution by a cadet would receive a mere grunt from the cantankerous professor. Such temperament was permissible at the Academy by an instructor only because of his genius and for no other reason. And Professor Sykes fitted the bill. It was by sheer devotion to his work and single-mindedness of purpose that he was able to become a leading scientist in his field. Professor Sykes had been assigned, ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... appeared about 1590 an English translation, which was supplemented by various English ballads on the same subject, and it was an Englishman—Shakespeare's great contemporary, the poet Christopher Marlowe—who was himself, as you know, a man of Faust-like temperament, and not unlike him in his fate—being killed in a drunken brawl—who first dramatized the story. His brilliant and lurid play, 'The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus' follows very closely most of the details given ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... soldier chafed hard under the bit, but his suspicions were not facts. He felt that he had no solid grounds upon which to accuse the Intendant in the special matter referred to in the letters. He was, moreover, although hot in temperament, soon master of himself, and used to the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the instigator being Lord Guilford, who in his turn was urged by his ambitious, unprincipled father, and his equally ambitious and unprincipled mother, in whose hands his weak, affectionate, yielding temperament rendered him an easy tool. The probability is, that had Jane been firmly established as Queen, she would have shown a character more akin to that of Elizabeth than is commonly supposed, though undoubtedly her personal piety was much more marked than that of her cousin. It seems rather strange that ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... he was writing and which he thought was going to be a failure, anger against the follies of men, the turn of French politics, or the degeneration of the arts in modern times. Diatribes she was accustomed to, and a definite melancholy from one who had not a gay temperament. But this letter was different from all the others. She sat down and read it again. For the moment she had forgotten Maurice, and did not hear his movements in the adjoining room. She was in Africa under a palm-tree, looking into the face of a friend with keen ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... much warmth as his temperament would allow him, "the very lad I wanted to see; you have never been out of my thought. I have occasion for a clever fellow about me, and pitched upon you as the very thing, if ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... ever see that I'm not your tyrant? Do I treat you as any other man would feel he had the right to treat the girl who had engaged herself to him? Do I ever thrust my feelings or wishes—or—longings on you? And do you think repression easy for a man of my temperament?" ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... bosom naturally proud and severe, they had a corresponding effect on her countenance, where, with the remains of great beauty, were mingled traits of inward discontent and peevish melancholy. It perhaps contributed to increase this habitual temperament, that the Lady Lochleven had adopted uncommonly rigid and severe views of religion, imitating in her ideas of reformed faith the very worst errors of the Catholics, in limiting the benefit of the gospel to those who profess ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... realise that, having played into a bunker, he has lost a stroke or the best part of one, and accepts the position without any further ado, he has gone a long way in the cultivation of the most desirable properties of mind and temperament with which any player of the game can be endowed. This man, recognising that his stroke is lost, when he goes up to his ball and studies the many difficulties of its situation, plays for the mere purpose of getting out again, and probably ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... man of about forty years of age, of medium height and physique. His sanguine temperament was disclosed in the deep color of his cheeks. His countenance was coldly expressive, with regular features, and a large nose—one of those noses that resemble the prow of a ship, and stamp the faces of men predestined to accomplish great discoveries. His eyes, ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... to speak first, remained standing. He was a young man, of about twenty-two, of a ready, animated appearance, while every look and motion of his ardent countenance and restless muscles proclaimed him to be of the most sanguine temperament and enthusiastic feelings. An almost unnatural excitement was sparkling in his kindling eyes, and a sort of wild, fitful, sad, and prophetic air characterized his whole appearance as ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of the ages the word character has assumed many meanings. Originally it signified probably the dominant ground-note in the complex mass of the self, and as such it was confused with temperament. Afterward it became the middle-class term for an automaton, so that an individual whose nature had come to a stand still, or who had adapted himself to a certain part in life—who had ceased to grow, in a word—was named a character; while one remaining ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurial temperament which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink a shipload of ordinary men. Others are rich in disposition, family, and friends. There are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; some so cheerful that they carry an atmosphere of jollity about ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... literary style. There is a tremendous significance in the following passage. It tells of the transition of the actual vagabond into the literary vagabond, with power to express in words what proved so congenial to Borrow's vagabond temperament: ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... of a temperament most keenly sensitive to the finest perception of poetic feeling. Life to her was music and poetry. A beautiful picture either called forth joy or sorrow; a pathetic song thrilled her soul with well timed vibrations of feeling; a touching ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... us some of our best citizens, and most engaging architectural traditions. But it is not after all for these and other material benefits that we are indebted to them; we thank them still more for being what they were (and could not help being): for their character, their temperament, their costume, their habits, their breadth of beam, their length of pipes, the deliberation of their courtships, the hardness of their bargains, the portentousness of their tea-parties, the industrious decorum of their women, the dignity of their patroons, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... about the mystery of fire. He will begin with what he can see, the poker; and the first thing he sees about the poker is that it is crooked. He says, "Poor poker; it's crooked." Then he asks how it came to be crooked; and is told that there is a thing in the world (with which his temperament has hitherto left him unacquainted)—a thing called fire. He points out, very kindly and clearly, how silly it is of people, if they want a straight poker, to put it into a chemical combustion which will very ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... fortunate in securing for the season this delightful home, where he could be within easy reach of his official business and at the same time enjoy the quiet so necessary to his temperament. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... said one. "So am I." "And I, too." The first speaker added: "We shall not return to Rouen, and if the Prussians approach Havre we will cross to England." All three, it turned out, had made the same plans, being of similar disposition and temperament. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and if the conditions are such that these men prosper or commit their misdeeds with impunity, their example is a very evil thing for the community. Where these men are business men of great sagacity and of temperament both unscrupulous and reckless, and where the conditions are such that they act without supervision or control and at first without effective check from public opinion, they delude many innocent people into making investments ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... blames me for it. He counted on making immense profits; M. de Seignelay counts on nothing but perils and labors. He will succeed if he do not carry things with too high a hand. The king would have no better servant, if he could rid himself a little of his temperament. He admits as much himself; and yet he does not mend." Seignelay died on the 3d of November, 1690, at the age of thirty-nine. "He had all the parts of a great minister of state," says St. Simon, "and he was the despair of M. de Louvois, whom he often placed in the position of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... depressed with the ill-success of his fifth act, at which, according to Gozlan, he had acquitted himself so badly that Madame Dorval, the principal actress, refused to take a role in the play; or, on the other hand, his sanguine temperament would cause him to overlook the drawbacks, and to think only of the enthusiasm with which the first four acts had been received. Neither of these two things took place. Balzac "n'y pensait deja plus." He talked with the greatest eagerness of the embellishments he had proposed to M. Decazes for his ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... statesman save Albert Gallatin. He was a splendid orator and brilliant writer, an excellent lawyer, and a clear-headed and industrious student of political history. He was also eminent as a political leader, although he lacked faith in democratic government, and a generous impatience of temperament sometimes led him to prefer short and arbitrary by-paths toward desirable ends, which can never be securely reached save along the broad but steep and arduous road of popular conviction. But with all Hamilton's splendid qualities, nothing about him is so remarkable as the early age ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... hard to rouse her to interest in anything. She always said, and was probably right, that want of proper discipline in childhood was the reason of this variableness, which she deplored, but could neither combat nor conceal. Temperament must also have had something to do with it. Her nervous system was too highly strung, she was too sensitive, too emotional, too intense. She reflected phases of feeling with which she was brought into contact as a lake reflects the sky above it, and the bird that skims across it, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... them could not sit still to read something that wanted to be read; they walked the floor, one holding the candle, the other the paper; both fighting mosquitos with both hands. I am of a less excitable temperament—for I contrive to live a ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... rightly continues. But there was in him, as in Linnaeus, a survival of certain theological ways of looking at the universe and certain theological conceptions of a plan of creation; it must be said, too, that while his temperament made him distrust new hypotheses, of which he had seen so many born and die, his environment as a great functionary of state, honoured, admired, almost adored by the greatest, not only in the state but in the Church, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... mother in the old days by just such a word. She would save the daughter in the same way. And the two were much alike—same slight, girlish figure; same blond hair and blue eyes; same expression, and the same impetuous, high-strung temperament. "If that child's own mother walked in this minute I couldn't tell 'em apart, they do favor one another so," old Margaret had told her mistress when she opened the door for the girl, and she was right. Pomford ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... more, without a stain on his character except to them that knew him well. But the old fool had lost me a tenant. Yes, sir; this J.W. Snyder young man, with the sign hardly dry on the glass door of his office in the Pettengill Block, had a nervous temperament to start with, and on top of that he'd gone fully into Pete's life history and found out that parties his brother-in-law was displeased with didn't thrive long. He packed up his law library that afternoon and left for another town ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... was not a leader of these raids. His temperament was not of that kind. He did not care to assume direction of an expedition because it carried too much trouble and some responsibility. His mind was wayward and liable to shift to some other thing at any moment; besides, mischief for its ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... his wife thought his luxury and good taste her natural right, and she felt no gratitude for the fact that her pride and self-love had never suffered. It was thus in everything. Kindness has its mishaps; often it is attributed to temperament; people are seldom willing to recognize it as the secret effort ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... finished. The broad view rested him. When he ceased to peer into a patient's mouth, he pushed up his spectacles and took a long look over the lake. Sometimes, if the patient was human and had enough temperament to appreciate his treasure, he would idle away a quarter of an hour chatting, enjoying the sun and the clear air of the lake. When the last patient had gone, he would take the chair and have the view to himself, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... sensitive temperament, even, than Carroll's, the provocation would have been extreme. Perkins was recalled to a more serious view of the situation by the choking accents ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... could. I believe now that she does not, and perhaps never has loved me, but I must forgive her for all that. She may have tried to do so, and for a time have thought that she did, and the true blame may all the while have rested with me alone. With her strong, unbending temperament, fearless of correction, and jealous of all control, how, indeed, could she long cling to one of such a tranquil and yielding nature as myself? That she loved me not, proves not that she could love no one; and though she now seems so coldly heartless and so rashly heedless of her fame, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the life of an itinerant preacher. He preached all over New England, making friends everywhere, and receiving numerous calls without, however, settling down to a fixed habitation. This would seem to have been a peculiarity of his temperament; for in 1875 George William Curtis wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Cranch a letter which began with "O ye Bedouins"; and it is true that until that time he can hardly be said to have had a habitation of his own. He extended his migration as minister-at-large from Bangor, Maine, to Louisville, Kentucky. His ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... or circumstances we may owe the existence of Charles Lamb's letters, their quality is of course the fruit of the genius and temperament of the writer. Unpremeditated as the strain of the skylark, they have almost to excess (were that possible) the prime epistolary merit of spontaneity. From the brain of the writer to the sheet before him flows an unbroken ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... themselves free to discuss them. You must work yourselves into a fervour of revolt and defiance, before you call in question Paley's declaration that "happiness is equally distributed among all orders of the community". I do not know whether I should wonder most at the cheerful temperament or the complacent optimism of Adam Smith, when he asks, "What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?"[13] When the greatest philosophers talk thus, what is to ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... make that effort, which, after all, had only enabled me to leave London, and wander about the country for a time? But could I, taking all circumstances into consideration, have done better than I had? With my peculiar temperament and ideas, could I have pursued with advantage the profession to which my respectable parents had endeavoured to bring me up? It appeared to me that I could not, and that the hand of necessity had ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... spoken, or, oftener, spoken unpremeditatedly and followed by a blush; these were food sufficient for his great passion,—the one passion of his life, to exist upon. Indeed we are inclined to think that with men of his temperament love is kept in a more vigorous, more actively healthy state by its (apparently) receiving only measured response. A woman who is gifted with the power of throwing her soul into looks, and language and loving ways, runs the risk of producing upon ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... outlay was heavy; and the outlook altogether was of the gray without the gold. But his wife's words were always cheerful, though the tone of them had not a little of the mournful. Their tone came of temperament, the words themselves of love and its courage. The daughter of a gamekeeper, the neighbors regarded her as throwing herself away when she married Franks; but she had got an honest and brave husband, and never when life was hardest ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... And it was comforting to know that his father agreed about not putting their minds in tight boxes. For Aunt Jane's drastic prescription alarmed him. Of course school would have to come some day; but his was not the temperament that hankers for it at an early age. As to a moral backbone—whatever sort of an affliction that might be—if it meant growing up ugly and 'disagreeable,' like Aunt Jane or the Aunt Jane cousins, he fervently hoped he would never have one—or ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... gallant exploit was on the classic battle-field of Cannae. This captain, who was not the friend I had joined the day after my brigand adventure, was a most plucky and dashing cavalry officer, and was well seconded by his men, who were all Piedmontese, and of very different temperament from the Neapolitans. On one occasion a band of 250 brigands waited for us on the top of a small hill, never dreaming that we should charge up it with the odds five to one against us—but we did; and after firing a volley ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... times, was not a man yielding or complacent to opposition or injury; but that he was a man of fighting blood or instincts, quick in wit and repartee, apt and inclined for aggressive sally, ready to slash and lay about him in all encounters,—in short, a very Mercutio in temperament, and in the lively and constant challenges of ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... the fields to the country church, I still insist that the beauty of that sight doesn't answer the question how it is that Matthew forgot to say anything about salvation through Christ. Prof. Swing is a man of poetic temperament; but this is ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... marvellous, the importance of which had already begun to be understood. One of them, Mary of Magdala, who has rendered the name of this poor town so celebrated in the world, appears to have been of a very enthusiastic temperament. According to the language of the time, she had been possessed by seven demons.[2] That is, she had been affected with nervous and apparently inexplicable maladies. Jesus, by his pure and sweet beauty, calmed this troubled nature. The Magdalene ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Pablo in wrath, and then things happened. Sandhelo, with the sensitiveness of his artistic temperament, thought that all remarks made in his presence were intended to be personal. So when Hinpoha looked him in the eye and shouted "Back!" and Katherine jerked his bridle and screamed "Back!" he cannot be blamed if he did what any gentleman would have done when commanded ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... write." Whereupon, and the name (with infinite hard breathing) being signed, the commissioner would proceed to fill in the man's appearance, height, etc., on the official form. In this task of literary portraiture he seemed to rely wholly upon temperament; for I could not perceive him to cast one glance on any of his models. He was assisted, however, by a running commentary from the captain: "Hair blue and eyes red, nose five foot seven, and stature broken"—jests as old, presumably, as the American marine; and, like the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by dignity. The landlady, on the other hand, had no idea of any other gradation except that of pounds, shillings, and pence. I walked out one morning in order to avoid the perpetual altercations on the subject, with my mind, you may imagine, in no very enviable temperament. I fell into gloom, to which from my infancy I had been occasionally subject. I had a family for whom I had no dinner, and a landlady for whom I had no rent. I had gone abroad in despondence—I returned home almost in ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Czarina's gift could have possibly shaken his adhesion: and then, as to threats from the same quarter, he knew him to be sealed against those fears by others of a gloomier character, and better adapted to his peculiar temperament. For Oubacha was a brave man, as respected all bodily enemies or the dangers of human warfare, but was as sensitive and timid as the most superstitious of old women in facing the frowns of a priest, or under the vague anticipations of ghostly retributions. But had it been otherwise, and had ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... delightful to retire, in imagination, to the society of Epicurus, or the study of a few literary masterpieces. That may be very true, but it can be interesting only to a few men of similar taste; and men of profound insight, whether of the poetic or the philosophic temperament, are apt to be vexed by his hasty dogmatism and irritable rejection of much which deserved his sympathy. His wanton quarrel with the world has been avenged by the world's indifference. We may regret the result when we see what rare qualities have been cruelly wasted, but we cannot fairly shut ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... captain has given me considerable insight into his charac- ter. That he is a good seaman and thoroughly understands his duties I could not for a moment venture to deny; but that he is a man of resolute temperament, or that he pos- sesses the amount of courage that would render him, phy- sically or morally, capable of coping with any great emer- gency, I confess I cannot believe. I observed a certain heaviness ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... the strength and elevation of General Smith's character. He was blessed by a singularly clear, orderly and comprehensive mind, and was most industrious and persistent in its use. Somewhat phlegmatic and deliberate in temperament and manner, he gave the impression occasionally that he was lacking in push and energy, but such was not the case in fact. During his services on the Rio Grande he suffered, as previously related, a malarial attack from which it is now evident he never entirely recovered. Under exposure to ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... which Lucilius attacks are those which reappear in the pages of the later satirists. They are the two extremes to which the Roman temperament was most prone: rapacity and meanness in gaining money, vulgar ostentation and coarse sensuality ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... could judge her, for I had so much more to occupy my mind and interest my heart than my companion. There was baby in the first place, and the responsibilities of the school and mission naturally fell to my share. No doubt it requires an even temperament to live contentedly without society, and with only such excitement as daily duties and the beauties of nature afford. Yet these are full of infinite happiness, and we were not without friends, although we had no company: the little party at ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... jokes soon began to flutter their moulted wings, and musty compliments to offer themselves for the acceptance of the ladies, and meet with a reception varied by temperament and experience: what the bold faced countess heard with a hybrid contortion, half sneer and half smile, would have made Lady Florimel stare out ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... was no home any longer for him. To this point, and no farther, could his thoughts return in after years. But the misery which he then endured is hardly to be understood, save by those of like delicate temperament with himself. All day long he sat silent in his cabin; nor could any effort of the captain, or others on board, induce him to go on deck till night came on, when, under the starlight, he ventured into the ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... question of temperament," said Maria Dolores. "Your friend has the ascetic temperament. And it does not by any means follow that he loves less because he resigns his love. What you call an inhuman story seems to me a wonderfully noble one. I saw your friend this morning, when he and you were walking together, and I ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... Garrison was without doubt designed to terrorize him into silence on the subject of slavery. But his persecutors had reckoned without a knowledge of their victim. Garrison had the martyr's temperament and invincibility of purpose. His earnestness burned the more intensely with the growth of opposition and peril. Within "gloomy walls close pent," he warbled gay as a bird of a freedom which tyrants could ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... that Julia Monson enjoyed herself as much as she had anticipated. Love she did not Betts Shoreham; for that was a passion her temperament and training induced her to wait for some pretty unequivocal demonstrations on the part of the gentleman before she yielded to it; but she LIKED him vastly, and nothing would have been easier than ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... up the receiver his face looks like a strawb'ry shortcake just ready to serve. Somehow Mr. Ellins seems to be enjoyin' the major's rush of temperament to the ears. Anyhow, there's a familiar flicker under them bushy eyebrows of his and I ain't at all surprised when he remarks soothin': "I gather, major, that someone can't ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... Channing. He had youth, zeal, and executive force. Writing of him after his death, Dr. Bellows said: "He had rare administrative qualities and a statesmanlike mind. He would have been a leader anywhere. He had the ambition, the faculties, and the impulsive temperament of an actor in affairs. He had the fervor, the concentration of will, the passionate enthusiasm of conviction, the love of martyrdom, which make men great in action."[9] Throughout his life Gannett labored assiduously for the ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... delicate and intimate than that of our Friends in fiction awaits a more passionate writer than the present parodist. Our LOVES in fiction are probably numerous, and our choice depends on age and temperament. In romance, if not in life, we can be in love with a number of ladies at once. It is probable that Beatrix Esmond has not fewer knights than Marie Antoinette or Mary Stuart. These ladies have been the marks of scandal. ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
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