"Temperament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... capture Tigranes, (22) the son-in-law of Struthas, with his wife, on their road to Sardis. The sum paid for their ransom was so large that he at once had the wherewithal to pay his mercenaries. Diphridas was no less attractive than his predecessor Thibron; but he was of a more orderly temperament, steadier, and incomparably more enterprising as a general; the secret of this superiority being that he was a man over whom the pleasures of the body exercised no sway. He became readily absorbed in the business before him—whatever he had to do he ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... verse Arnold was not wholly at ease. As has been said, one searches in vain through the whole course of his poetry for a blithe, musical, gay or serious, offhand poem, the true lyric kind. The reason for this is soon discovered. Obviously, it lies in the fundamental qualities of the poet's mind and temperament. Though by no means lacking in emotional sensibility, Arnold was too intellectually self-conscious to be carried away by the impulsiveness common to the lyrical moods. With him the intellect was always master; the emotions, subordinate. ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... a perfect figure and graceful movement. Her eyes were large and dark, her hair black and abundant, in this being the only one of my mother's children who resembled her, as she did also in the contour of her face and nose. She was of a hopeful and joyous temperament and full of energy; by this latter gift she had raised herself from the humblest position to one of influence and acquired in no long time much reputation as a remarkably successful teacher, and her services were in constant demand. She was also a favorite in ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... town—I notice she always goes when she gets a lawyer's letter, there is no mistaking the envelope—she comes home tired and haggard-looking, an old woman of thirty-five. I wonder why. It takes her, even with her elasticity of temperament, nearly a day to get young again. I hate her to go to town; it is extraordinary how I miss her; I can't recall, when she is absent, her saying anything very wonderful, but she converses all the time. She has a gracious way of ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... identity of its material particles, for these come and go, are in constant flux, and are wholly changed, it is said, every seven years. But, notwithstanding this change, the body of the man is the same with that of the child. The same features, figure, temperament, morbid and passional tendencies, are reproduced year after year. These flying particles, gathered from earth and air, are manufactured into brain, bone, blood, according to an unvarying law, and then given back again to air and earth. There is, therefore, a hidden mysterious ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... different times, that when he was dwelling upon that particular portion of his life, he became gloomy and abstracted, as if still under the influence of former indelible impressions. Undoubtedly Captain Finn is of a strong poetical temperament, and any one on hearing him narrate would say the same; but it is supposed that, when the captain performed this first solitary excursion, his brain was affected by an excited and highly poetical imagination. After eleven months of solitude, he reached ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... 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 gravest fears that in ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... and subterfuges that follow that Miss BOWEN justifies her title. Certainly The Cheats establishes her in my mind as our first writer of historical fiction. The character-drawing is admirable (especially of poor weak-willed vacillating Jaques, a wonderfully observed study of the STUART temperament). More than ever, also, Miss BOWEN might here be said to write her descriptions with a paint-brush; the whole tale goes by in a series of glowing pictures, most richly coloured. The Cheats is not a merry book; its treatment of the foolish heroine in particular ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... MARGUERITE MARIE (1647—1690), French nun and mystic, was born at Lauthecourt, a village in the diocese of Autun, on the 22nd of July 1647. She would seem to have been from the first of a morbid and unhealthy temperament, and before the age of thirteen was the subject of a paralytic seizure. Having been cured of this, as she believed, by the intercession of the Holy Virgin, she changed her name to Marie and vowed to devote her life to her service. In ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... without the least delay. Hence arose the saying above quoted, usually applied to the extrication of persons or things from a difficulty. The above anecdote was told the other evening by an old citizen upwards of eighty, by no means of an imaginative temperament. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... comments on big brothers," I smiled back at her. Win was nineteen and I had attained the mature age of twenty-seven. We were orphans and spinster Aunt Lucy did her best to be a parent to us; and we got on smoothly enough, for none of us had the temperament that rouses ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... Frances, who was waiting in the barge. On their way back to the palace neither Frances nor Nelly spoke after Nelly had told what she had heard at the inn. Usually Nelly was laughing or talking, or both, and when a woman of her temperament is silent, she is thinking. In this instance her thinking brought her to two conclusions: first, that Hamilton was the man Frances loved and hated; and second, that it was his face she had recognized on the night Roger Wentworth ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... from business, but determined, if he got the opportunity, to strike a good hard blow in defence of law and order. Already he was well on the way to possess a solid stake in the country, and the native conservatism of his temperament grew stronger as circumstances bent themselves to his will; a proletarian conquering wealth and influence naturally prizes these things in proportion to the effort their acquisition has cost him. When he heard of his brother's death, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... for days at a time, and soon, Montboron, who was not fitted to play the part of a Sganarelle, either by age or temperament, became convinced that his mistress was making him wear the horns, that she was hobnobbing with the General, and that she was in possession of one of the five keys of the house in the Eglisottes ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... in a mood of deep depression. The artistic temperament is peculiarly subject to these moods, but in Paul's case there was reason why he should take a gloomy view of things. His masterpiece, "The Shot Tower from Battersea Bridge," together with the companion picture, "Battersea Bridge from the Shot ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Hughes died," he says, "in Jackson county, W. Va., at a date unknown to me, but in very old age. While he was a great scout and Indian trader, he never headed an expedition of note. This no doubt was because of his fierce temperament, and bad reputation among his own countrymen." In studying the annals of the border, we must not fail to note that here and there were many savage-hearted men among the white settlers, whose deeds were quite as atrocious as any attributed to the red-skins. Current histories of Indian ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... of a different temperament, and so is your father. My father is an austere, unbending man, and if I were on the Terrace and were to fling myself into his arms, he'd very likely fling ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... attracted women. His delicate physique,—he died of consumption,—his refined, poetic temperament, and his exquisite art as a composer combined with his beautiful piano playing, so well suited to the intimate circle of the drawing-room, to make his personality a thoroughly fascinating one. Moreover, he was, besides an artist, a gentleman, with the reserve ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... children, he would doubtless have pursued a different course. But to him, and, as he sincerely hoped, to his son, the strife after civil honors was sternly barred. Apostasy only could lay it open. And, as the sentiments of honor and duty in this point fell in with the vices of his temperament, high principle concurring with his constitutional love of ease, we need not wonder that he should early retire from commerce with a very moderate competence, or that he should suppose the same fortune sufficient for one ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... I. was, however, not alone in her interest in the Chora. Her devotion to the monastery was shared also by her grandson the sebastocrator Isaac. Tall, handsome, brave, but ambitious and wayward, Isaac was gifted with the artistic temperament, as his splendid manuscript of the first eight books of the Old Testament, embellished with miniatures by his own hand, makes clear.[525] If the inscription on the mosaic representing the Deesis found in the inner narthex really refers to him, it proves that his ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... that a few representative men, or as many as were able, should meet towards the end of July at Hadleigh Rectory. They were men in full agreement on the main questions, but with great differences in temperament and habits of thought. Mr. Rose was the person of most authority, and next to him, Mr. Palmer; and these, with Mr. A. Perceval, formed as it were the right wing of the little council. Their Oxford allies were the three Oriel men, Mr. Keble, Mr. ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... harpsichord to the two daughters of a wig-maker named Keller. As the lessons progressed the teacher became conscious of a growing attachment for the younger of his pupils. There was something spiritual about the character of this maiden which appealed strongly to his musical temperament, though probably the loneliness of his life at the time may have added force to his longing to possess her for his wife. His poverty, however, must have convinced him of the hopelessness of declaring himself at the moment, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... is such a spare, straight, dry old lady—such a pew of a woman—that you should find as many individual sympathies in a chip. Mr Sownds, now, who is fleshy, and has scarlet in his coat, is of a different temperament. He says, as they stand upon the steps watching the young couple away, that she has a pretty figure, hasn't she, and as well as he could see (for she held her head down coming out), an uncommon pretty face. 'Altogether, Mrs Miff,' says Mr Sownds with a relish, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... in personal contact with Luther, and who had become fired with an aspiration to carry the Reformation into his native country. By recent historians Master Olof has been described as of a "naively humble nature," rather melancholy in temperament, but endowed with a gift for irony, and capable of fiery outbursts when deeply stirred. At Straengnaes he had been preaching the new faith more openly and more effectively than any one else, and he had found a pupil as well as ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... hand blindly, not knowing whither He is taking me." His touching verses, beginning "Lead, kindly Light," betray the same feeling. Gloom did encircle him, but in the midst of it there was a light, which he strove and craved to follow. Though mystical, in a certain sense, by temperament, he resolved, he tells us, to be guided, not by his imagination, but by his reason. He had once a strange emotional experience, but when it was over he wished that it should not unduly influence him. "I had to determine its logical value," he says, "and its bearing on my duty." "What are ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... Maury suddenly, and as if he was picking up the threads of a conversation dropped but a moment before; "and that's just the point"—and his usually gentle voice was heavy with a didacticism unlike itself—"that affects most deeply a man of my temperament and generation. Nemesis—fate—whatever you choose to call it. The fear that perhaps it doesn't exist at all. That there is no such thing; or worse yet, that in some strange, monstrous way man has made himself master of it—has no longer to fear it. And man isn't fit to be altogether master ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Padre. The stranger turned to his companion with an impatient gesture; but the Padre heeded him not. The view that burst upon his sight was such as might well have engrossed the attention of a more enthusiastic temperament. The fog had not yet reached the hill, and the long valleys and hillsides of the embarcadero below were glittering with the light of a populous city. "Look!" said the Padre, stretching his hand over the spreading landscape. ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... to speak; indeed, I was conscious of a lump in my throat quite inconsistent with a philosophic temperament. Glancing at my darling, I perceived that she was agitated, and straightway the nightmare, which was at odds with her joy, as to how she was to provide a suitable supper for these delightful visitors, took possession also of ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... upon the grouping of words and the length of the pauses between groups than upon the utterance of syllables. The rate of syllabic utterance is usually a personal characteristic. Some of us articulate rapidly, while others of more phlegmatic temperament speak slowly. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... was right. It was not the moment. No doubt he must marry some day; he had come home, indeed, with the vague intention of marrying; but the world was wide, and women many. That he had very little romance in his temperament was probably due to his mother. His childish experiences of her character, and of her relations to his father, had left him no room, alas! for the natural childish opinion that all grown-ups, and especially all ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... destitute of sense, by the favorable influence of the circumambient air (as Empedocles says), moistening them in such a measure as is most agreeable to their nature. But as for us men, our appetites prompt us on to the chase and pursuance of whatsoever is wanting to our natural temperament. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... impossible to lay down a detailed method for the teaching of English literature. Much depends upon the nature of the literature read, the temperament of the teacher, the aptitude of the pupil. Every teacher will, in great measure, discover his own methods. At all events, no attempts will be made here to give more than a few suggestions. In the first place, the teacher will remember ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... sounded out into the far corners of the earth, and was the world's wonder as well for the circumstances under which it was perpetrated, as for the preternatural composure with which it was borne. Something of his calmness may have been due to his natural temperament, something to an unaffected weariness of a world which in his eyes was plunging into the ruin of the latter days. But those fair hues of sunny cheerfulness caught their colour from the simplicity of his faith; and never was there a Christian's victory over ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... He knows if an attack is coming he may only have a few seconds in which to act. His rifle is loaded with the S.O.S. grenade and all he has to do to let it off is to press the trigger. All varieties of temperament are represented in these lonely sentries, hence occasionally ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... invitation, dined with him and his officers in the cabin. All political topics had been avoided, and no one who had looked in would have supposed that the majority of those present were the prisoners of the others. The Irish temperament quickly shakes off a feeling of depression, and the meal was as lively as it had been ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... attendance upon dowager lady Chia, in her heart and her eyes there was no one but her venerable ladyship, and her alone; and now in her attendance upon Pao-y, her heart and her eyes were again full of Pao-y, and him alone. But as Pao-y was of a perverse temperament and did not heed her repeated injunctions, she felt at ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to end of the long line of transports, but it was plain even to the rawest conscript that there was no choice save between surrender and massacre. They cursed and stamped about the decks or sat down and cried, according to temperament, and that, under the circumstances, was ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... knows how difficult it is to deal with a mule when it is in the mood either not to go at all, or to go the wrong way. Having driven a team of these animals—fine Calabrian mules they were, equal to the best Spanish—all the way from Naples to Dieppe, I can boast of some experience in the mulish temperament. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... decline any work which you may desire me to do, but I really must decline this. I cannot write from dictation. I cannot be your amanuensis. Although it may seem like boasting, this is one of the few things I cannot do: my nervous temperament, my disposition, in fact my very nature, stand in the way, and ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... thing that nature had endowed John with a nervous temperament, and had made him a light sleeper. For, at that instant, or maybe a little before, some peculiar action on the Indian's nerves conveyed ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... tempestuous hopes and desires, in such startling types. Exhausted by the struggle, she panted for the rest and luxury of a companionship in which both brain and heart could find sympathy. She met Chopin, and she recognized in the poetry of his temperament and the fire of his genius what she desired. Her personality, electric, energetic, and imperious, exercised the power of a magnet on the frail organization of Chopin, and he loved once and forever, with a passion that consumed him; for in Mme. Sand he found the blessing and curse of his life. ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... aunt sufficiently not to be extra wayward with her, and between the spillekens, and a long story about Cousin Dickie in New Zealand, all went well till bed-time. There was something in the child's nervous temperament that made the first hours of the night peculiarly painful to her, and the sounds of the distant festivity added to her excitability. She fretted and tossed, moaned and wailed, sat up in bed and cried, snapped off attempts at hymns, would ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... death, they had ceased to torment each 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 ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... particularly at a loss in his intercourse with Anne Maria. She was a little older than himself, and, being perfectly at home, both in the ceremonies of the occasion and in the language of the company, she felt entirely at her ease herself; and yet, from her natural temperament and character, she assumed such an air and bearing as would tend to prevent the prince from being so. In a word, it happened then as it has often happened since on similar occasions, that the beau was afraid of ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... "magician" he had acquired, among other things, from the fact that he 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 ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... all the more because he drinks or dozes through the better part of the day. There is a physical reason for the preference. The absence of light stimulus, and the changes which follow sunset seem to develope in him a kind of night-fever as in the nervous temperament of Europe. Hence so many students choose the lamp in preference to the sun, and children mostly clamour when told at 8 ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... patience required to collect them. Right then, Mate, I made a vow to study the pesky things as they have seldom been attacked before—even though I never had much use for pictures in which you cannot tell the top side from the bottom, without a label. But then, Jack says, my artistic temperament will never keep me awake at night. Now I decided all at once to make a collection. Heaven knows what I will do with it. But Uncle grew so enthusiastic he included his niece in the conversation, and while his humor was at high tide I coaxed him into a promise that Sada might come down ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... to have prospered progressively, and to have had no reason to regret, even in a wordly sense, his choice of a profession. But towards the end of 1834 a disaster overtook him; and thenceforth, to the end of his days, he had nothing but tedious struggling and uphill work. To a man of his buoyant temperament, and happy in his home, this might have been of no extreme consequence, if only sound health had blessed him: unfortunately, the very reverse was the case. Sickly hitherto, he was soon to become miserably and hopelessly diseased: he worked on through everything bravely ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... I should have acted a wiser part, had I been contented with even the still small voice of a few partial friends, and retired from the boards in the pleasing delusion of success; but unfortunately, the same easy temperament that has so often involved me before, has been faithful to me here; and when you pretended to be ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... meditative pose, his elbow in one hand, his chin in the other, and looks long at the young girl, scrutinizing not only the line and modelling of the body, but the expression of the face, the eyes, the shade and nature of the hair, reading her temperament with the lucidity of a phrenologist aided by the divination of a plastic artist who has had great experience of feminine humanity. The examination lasts many minutes, and finally, as if under the inspiring influence of the god of taste, Epinglard, in broken phrases, composes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... world. Nothing is more remarkable than the fulness of the life that throbbed in them. 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
... boy; there was nothing of the coward in him, though his sensitive temperament made him sometimes hesitate where an ordinary child with less imagination would have acted promptly. The desire to cry he thrust down and repressed, fighting his depression by the thought that within a few hours the voice ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... habit of gambling engendered by it ruins the temper, depraves the morals, and keeps up a constant state of excitement at variance with any settled and serious occupation. The temptations to laziness which it offers are too great for any people luxurious or idle by temperament; and the demon of Luck is set upon the altar which should be dedicated to Industry. If one happy chance can bring a fortune, who will spend laborious days to gain a competence? The common classes in Rome are those who are most corrupted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... of a nervous temperament and needed some minutes' rest in which to collect myself. Then I began to examine the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening of life ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... worth walking not a quadrillion kilometers but a quadrillion of quadrillions, raised to the quadrillionth power! In fact, he sang 'hosannah' and overdid it so, that some persons there of lofty ideas wouldn't shake hands with him at first—he'd become too rapidly reactionary, they said. The Russian temperament. I repeat, it's a legend. I give it for what it's worth. So that's the sort of ideas we have on ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... cortex anterior to the motor centres, even if extensive, may produce few or no symptoms, and in consequence this region has been called a "silent" area. Occasionally there results a change in temperament or intelligence, and the region is on this account supposed to be concerned with the higher psychical functions. There is evidence that the pre-frontal cortex has a centre for the conscious initiation ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... one who had nothing better to do than minister to his wants. Hobo, too, made his appearance, and he alone of the company gave no sign of mental disturbance. Amy pushed him away impatiently as he rubbed against her, the effect of worry on Amy's temperament having the not unusual result of making her short-tempered. Then a bright idea ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... have directed her hasty action of enwrapping her shoulders, but it was scarcely likely, considering Miss Aldclyffe's temperament, that she had all her life been used to a maid, Cytherea's youth, and the elder lady's marked treatment of her as if she were a mere child or plaything. The matter was too slight to reason about, and yet upon the whole it seemed that Miss Aldclyffe must ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... important transactions, the controversy with England being then in effect the business of his life, facts, dates, and particulars made an impression which was never effaced. He was prepared, therefore, by education and discipline, as well as by natural talent and natural temperament, for the part which he was now ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... back to this period of my life with the greatest satisfaction. I had exquisite pleasure, like all young people of sanguine temperament and generous disposition, in the consciousness of the capability of making sacrifices. This notion was my idol, the idol of the inmost sanctuary of my mind, and I worshipped it with all the energies of ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... but its virile strength and its literary merit have given it currency, and commended it to the taste of many people, both weak and strong, who have the pensive temperament. Abraham Lincoln loved it and committed it to memory in his boyhood. Philip Phillips set it to music, and sang it—or a part of it—one day during the Civil war at the anniversary of the Christian Sanitary ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... sake, I am glad that you are here. You have something of his temperament, and I can talk freely with you, too, whatever ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... is scented for years with his wealth; if a poor man grows rich he stinks of poverty for forty years!' That was the way with this Hemorrhoid Jack. Oh, if it had been in my power I would have seized the scoundrel by the collar and thrown him out of the gate. But Sarkis was not of my temperament; he had a gentle heart and was meek as a lamb. I went up to him, ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... power. Jehu swept like a whirlwind, or like leaping fire among stubble, from Ramoth to Jezreel, from Jezreel to Samaria, and nothing stood before his fierce onset. Promptitude, decision, secrecy,—the qualities which carry enterprises to success—marked his character; partly, no doubt, from natural temperament, for God chooses right instruments, but from temperament heightened and invigorated by the conviction of being the instrument whom God had chosen. We may learn how even a very imperfect form of this conviction gives irresistible force to a man, annihilates ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... physical proportions, being six feet three inches in height, quite black, very intelligent, and of a temperament that would not submit to slavery. For some years his master, Col. Cunnagan, had hired him out in Washington, where he was accused of being in the schooner Pearl, with Capt. Drayton's memorable "seventy fugitives on board, bound for Canada." At this time he was ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... of milder nature and more melancholy temperament; she had a poetic turn of mind, and occasionally wrote verses. Some of these had been printed on satin paper, and sold for objects of beneficence at charity bazaars. The county newspapers said that the verses "were characterized ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... found myself alone in the house, the family and servants at church, and a brooding stillness that presaged the approach of a storm, settling over all. At that time I was a dreamy, romantic, long-haired youth with all sorts of notions about the artistic temperament, carelessness in dress, and painting miniatures for a living. They told me I had some talent, and I ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... in 1835, the strooger influence of L. Gurlitt turned his talent into new channels, and he became the founder of the German realistic school. Although his landscapes evince too much of his aim at picture-making and lack personal temperament, he is a master of technique, and is historically important as a reformer. A number of his finest works are to be found at the Berlin National Gallery, the New Pinakothek in Munich, and the galleries at Dresden, Darmstadt, Cologne, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... more 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. Unkind things are said of all three, but ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... and imprisonment of 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 not touch, nor ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... softest lustre from out the pale, olive face, set in a wealth of wavy jet-black hair. For Helen Torringley was, like himself, of mixed blood. Her mother, who had died in her infancy, was a South American quadroon, born in Lima, and all the burning, quick passions and hot temperament of her race were revealed in her daughter's every graceful gesture and inflexion of her ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... sober personality there ran like a streak of light some hint of fairy lightness, derived probably from her Celtic origin. Now, as Rogers watched her, he caught a flash of that raciness and swift mobility, that fluid, protean elasticity of temperament which belonged to the fairy kingdom. The humour and pathos in her had been smothered by too much care. She accepted old age before her time. He saw her, under other conditions, dancing, singing, full of Ariel tricks and mischief—instead of eternally ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... possessed no charms for one of Maud's temperament: it never did possess any for her. She was as out of place in it as a mourning dove in a city mob. Her spirit sought tranquillity, and she found it in the serene and changless convent life. You and I might seek in vain for anything like peace of spirit in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... are "well-bred." To say that they are 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
... was it, supposing I am right at all, that Handel distrusted in the principles of Scarlatti as deduced from those of Bach? I imagine that he distrusted chiefly the abuse of the appoggiatura, the abuse of the unlimited power of modulation which equal temperament placed at the musician's disposition and departure from well-marked rhythm, beat or measured tread. At any rate I believe the music I like best myself to be sparing of the appoggiatura, to keep pretty close to tonic and dominant ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... chance," said Dennymede. He was a sharp, black-haired young man, with a worried brow and a bilious complexion. The soothing of the human race with Sypher's Balm of Gilead mattered nothing to him. His atrabiliar temperament rendered his attitude towards humanity rather misanthropic than otherwise. "Indeed," he continued, "I don't see why you shouldn't try for the army contracts without ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... said, "it is not reasonable that you should be angry with me. Is it my fault that I am plagued with a stepdaughter of so extraordinary a temperament? She will return directly, or we shall find her. I am sure of it. The wedding can be arranged then as speedily as you wish. I give her to you. I consent to your marriage. What could woman ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... likes: other Generals, estimable in their way, have a physiognomy displeasing to the sick man; and will smart for it if they enter,—"At sight of HIM every pain grows painfuler!"—the poor King being of poetic temperament, as we often say. Friends are encouraged to smoke, especially to keep up a stream of talk; if at any time he fall into a doze and they cease talking, the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... he might tell himself that he was no longer young, that time had robbed him of anything that could catch a girl's fancy, that the gulf of birth, associations, and surroundings yawned wide between. His own experience and insight into temperament rose up and contradicted him, and Alicia Derosne's face drove the truth into his mind. Seeking for a hero, she had strangely, almost comically, he thought, made one of him. Hero-worship, shutting out all criticism, had led her on till she made of him, a man whose life bore no close scrutiny, ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... his name with that of M. Bratiano, who is President of the Council and Minister of Finance, and, so far as temperament is concerned, the very opposite of his colleague. M. Bratiano is a quiet, courteous gentleman, somewhat younger than M. Rosetti. His features are regular and handsome, his beard and hair iron-grey, and his voice even and melodious. He is full of pleasant humour, and has the bearing ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... us something of a clue to his character: a strong will; great physical energy; sanguine, fanatical temperament; unbounded courage and little wisdom; crude, visionary ideality; the inspiration of biblical precepts and Old Testament hero-worship; and ambition curbed to irritation by the hard fetters of labor, privation, and enforced endurance. In association, habit, language, and conduct, he was clean, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... now passed since the inquest, and, while Miss Tuttle still remained at liberty, it was a circumscribed liberty which must have been very galling to one of her temperament and habits. She rode and she walked, but she entered no house unattended nor was she allowed any communication with Mr. Jeffrey. Nevertheless she saw him, or at least gave him the opportunity of seeing her. Each day at three o'clock she rode through K Street, and the detective ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the ladies like a little exaggeration. There's Mrs. Ravenel likes me fine, and says it's my temperament; and Peggy of the Poplars is crazy about me; and hundreds in the two continents who'd marry me at a second's notice. I'm a great lover," he laughed somewhat uneasily, keeping his eyes averted, and adding, ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... involves very real dangers. I mean dangers to the spirit over and above those of the right-hand trouser pocket. For, let it be honestly stated, the business of writing is solidly founded on a monstrous and perilous egotism. Himself, his temperament, his powers of observation and comment, his emotions and sensibilities and ambitions and idiocies—these are the only monopoly the writer has. This is his only capital, and with glorious and shameless confidence he proposes to market it. Let him make the best ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... vigorously that his consciousness was the one actually affected, and that the colonel and the general and Watts were mere hallucinations of his. The general held that Jake and the others were accessory phantasms of his own dream, and Watts and the colonel, being of more poetical temperament, held that the whole outfit was a chimera in some larger consciousness, whose entity it is not given us to know. As for Oscar, he claimed the parliament was crazy, and started to prove it, when it was thought best ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... age is content to be obliged. The frigidity of his address and the seeming stiffness of his manner, due really to an innate and incurable shyness, produced even among people who ought to have known him well a totally erroneous notion of his character and temperament. To Bulwer Lytton ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... of man, perhaps there is no other, which afford such evidence as the 'Divine Comedy' of uninterrupted consistency of purpose, of sustained vigor of imagination, and of steady force of character controlling alike the vagaries of the poetic temperament, the wavering of human purpose, the fluctuation of human powers, and the untowardness of circumstance. From beginning to end of this work of many years there is no flagging of energy, no indication of weakness. The shoulders, burdened ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... "This is a book which may be a genuine source of pride to every native of the ancient province of Galloway," he wrote. "Galloway has been celebrated for black cattle and for wool, as also for a certain bucolic belatedness of temperament, but Galloway has never hitherto produced a poetess. One has arisen in the person of Miss Janet Bal— something or other. We have not an interpreter at hand, and so cannot wrestle with the intricacies of the authoress's name, which appears to be some Galwegian form of Erse or Choctaw. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... other things besides science, and though he may have, and ought to have no heart during a scientific investigation, yet when he has once come to a conclusion he may be hearty enough in support of it, and in his other capacities may be of as warm a temperament as even you ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... as to have a rich husband. Not that the possession of a rich husband is to be declared a misfortune, per se, but, considering the temperament of Mrs. Caldwell, the fact was against her happiness, and therefore is to be regarded, taking the ordinary significance, of the ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... appearance, very much like his brother. The long, iron-gray hair, brushed straight out from his head, reminds one of Robert Toombs. He is smaller in stature, and is a man of strong abilities, even temperament, and well-balanced mind. His brother had great regard for his business judgment and political sagacity, and often consulted him on public matters. These men lived near each other in Washington, their families grew up together, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... will. I'll give it to you straight. You know quite well that you have let your father bully you since you were in short frocks. I don't say it is your fault or his fault, or anybody's fault; I just state it as a fact. It's temperament, I suppose. You are yielding and he is aggressive; and he has taken advantage ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... their prosperity unexampled; their love of liberty indomitable; their pugnacity proverbial. Peaceful in their pursuits, phlegmatic by temperament, the Netherlands were yet the most belligerent and excitable population of Europe. Two centuries of civil war had but thinned the ranks of each generation without quenching the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all the best people in the community were present; the real best people, you understand. Spiritually, it was an occasion hallowed by grave conversation; for were we not within the shadow of God's house, in the sacred presence of the dead? It was gruesome if you had an Episcopalian temperament, but certainly it conduced to good breeding and sobriety. But, more particularly, there was the dinner itself set out of huge hampers on white cloths that appealed to the natural primitive man simply and honestly, without a single pretense of delicacy to hide the real ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... how 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 to be ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... close connection. One of the most memorable mysteries of nature, is how, out of the slightest of all connections (for such, literally speaking, is that between father and child), so many coincidences should arise. The child resembles his parent in feature, in temperament, in turn of mind, and in class of disposition, while at the same time in many particulars, in these same respects, he is a new and individual creature. In one view therefore the child is merely the father multiplied and repeated. Now one of the indefeasible principles of affection is the partaking ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... purchase fifty thousand acres, fence the territory in, and the enclosed herds would continue to propagate indefinitely. Such were the delightful pictures which my entertainers presented to me. Captivated by the charming manners of my hosts, my sanguine temperament kindled into heat at the touch of their enthusiasm. Where every venture was sure of successful issue, there was no need for deliberation or selection. I invested indiscriminately in all, and ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... with as 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 you can read ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... staggering visibly. Every moment he felt steadier mentally. And yet he was saying to himself that General T—- was perfectly capable of shutting him up in the fortress for an indefinite time. His temperament fitted his remorseless task, and his omnipotence made ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad |
