Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Temperament   Listen
noun
Temperament  n.  
1.
Internal constitution; state with respect to the relative proportion of different qualities, or constituent parts. "The common law... has reduced the kingdom to its just state and temperament."
2.
Due mixture of qualities; a condition brought about by mutual compromises or concessions. (Obs.) "However, I forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be found in things of this nature, so disputable on their side."
3.
The act of tempering or modifying; adjustment, as of clashing rules, interests, passions, or the like; also, the means by which such adjustment is effected. "Wholesome temperaments of the rashness of popular assemblies."
4.
Condition with regard to heat or cold; temperature. (Obs.) "Bodies are denominated "hot" and "cold" in proportion to the present temperament of that part of our body to which they are applied."
5.
(Mus.) A system of compromises in the tuning of organs, pianofortes, and the like, whereby the tones generated with the vibrations of a ground tone are mutually modified and in part canceled, until their number reduced to the actual practicable scale of twelve tones to the octave. This scale, although in so far artificial, is yet closely suggestive of its origin in nature, and this system of tuning, although not mathematically true, yet satisfies the ear, while it has the convenience that the same twelve fixed tones answer for every key or scale, C sharp becoming identical with D flat, and so on.
6.
(Physiol.) The peculiar physical and mental character of an individual, in olden times erroneously supposed to be due to individual variation in the relations and proportions of the constituent parts of the body, especially of the fluids, as the bile, blood, lymph, etc. Hence the phrases, bilious or choleric temperament, sanguine temperament, etc., implying a predominance of one of these fluids and a corresponding influence on the temperament.
Equal temperament (Mus.), that in which the variations from mathematically true pitch are distributed among all the keys alike.
Unequal temperament (Mus.), that in which the variations are thrown into the keys least used.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Temperament" Quotes from Famous Books



... mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical position, acting with natural temperament. The greater part is nothing but an accident! Your father, for example, settles in Vermont, in a town where all are, in fact, free and equal; becomes a regular church member and deacon, and in due time joins an Abolition society, and thinks us all little better than ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... 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 ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... visited by the ticklish Tarascon- nais. Daudet relates that in his attempt to shed a humorous light upon some of the more erratic phases of the Provencal character, he selected Tarascon at a venture; not because the temperament of its natives is more vainglorious than that of their neighbors, or their rebellion against the "despotism of fact" more marked, but simply because he had to name a par- ticular Provencal city. Tartarin is a hunter of lions and charmer of women, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... built by an enterprising squatter, who for some unaccountable reason abandoned them shortly after. The "jumper" who succeeded him disappeared one day quite as mysteriously. The third tenant, who seemed to be a man of sanguine, hopeful temperament, divided the property into building lots, staked off the hillside, and projected the map of a new metropolis. Failing, however, to convince the citizens of San Francisco that they had mistaken the site of their city, he presently fell into ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... season. He had studied the pianoforte with Rosenthal, and his success, from his debut, had been so unequivocal that he played too much in public. There was a fiery particle in his interpretations of Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt that proclaimed the temperament, if not the actual possession, of genius. Still in his early manhood—he was only twenty—the maturity of his musical intelligence and the poetry of his style created havoc in impressionable hearts. With his mixed ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... but, after all, the matter was manifestly, to my mind, merely one of fancied or implied duplicity or deceit capable of easy explanation; it would probably have had no lasting effect on any but a diseased mind; and, knowing him as well as I did, I could understand how, with his reserved temperament and in his wounded pride, my father would silently withdraw himself from his wife, nor deign to stoop so far as to seek an explanation. I could discern only too clearly that he had taken as proof of dissimulation some circumstance that would only appear ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... will be less so." A grim light that was almost a smile shone in his black eyes. "But we have carefully discriminated in our personnel. That is as it should be. There will be certain bloodshed. Knowing the temperament and preparations of your late masters this seems to be inevitable. But again we have provided. Our greatest and most important task is the possession of the power station, and for the capture of that we have machine guns which will quickly reduce the enemy to capitulation. The ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... form it may be like other bodies, but in its relation to ourselves it stands alone and admits of no rival; yet the remedy that has cured us should not be forced upon a people, irrespective of their place, their environment or their temperament. ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... and of the Spanish governors of the Floridas. And in the third place, before his first twenty-four hours were up, the new executive fell into a desperate quarrel with his predecessor, a man of sufficiently similar temperament to make the contest a source of sport ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... such a state to a man of the temperament of the gallant commander,' etc., the termination of the article was indulgent. Rosamund recurred to the final paragraph for comfort, and though she loved Beauchamp, the test of her representative feminine sentiment regarding his political career, when personal feeling on his behalf ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... turn off the gas burning in the middle of the shop, Mr Verloc descended into the abyss of moral reflections. With the insight of a kindred temperament he pronounced his verdict. A lazy lot—this Karl Yundt, nursed by a blear-eyed old woman, a woman he had years ago enticed away from a friend, and afterwards had tried more than once to shake off into the gutter. Jolly lucky for Yundt that she had persisted in coming up time after time, or else ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... a task than might have been imagined. A Scottish schoolboy, "from a child he had known the Scriptures," and, as his Hebrew Melodies testify, he was not unwilling to turn to the Bible as a source of poetic inspiration. Moreover, he was born with the religious temperament. Questions "of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate," exercised his curiosity because they appealed to his imagination and moved his spirit. He was eager to plunge into controversy with friends and advisers who challenged or rebuked him, Hodgson, for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... have known a father or a mother, and for his kindest and best friends to be of a blood not his own. The moments of depression, however, were brief, as he had that greatest of all gifts from the gods, a cheerful and hopeful temperament. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... taken, a ready and improving speaker, an apt and attractive writer, affable and sincere, and with the undesigning faculty of making friends, Lord Henry seemed to possess all the qualities of a popular leader, if we add to them the golden ones: high lineage, an engaging appearance, youth, and a temperament in which the reason had not been developed to ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... cautiously, was taught to get up a strong house feeling by perpetual endeavours to wake in him the esprit de corps, was gently ridiculed if he displayed any good principle, was tremendously bullied if he showed signs of recalcitrance, was according to his temperament led, or coaxed, or initiated, or intimidated, into the condition of wickedness required of him before the house could continue to go to the devil, as fast as it wished to do, and was doing before. This was Mackworth's work, and Wilton acted as his Azazel, and Kenrick did not ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... she had never before loved any man, and being of a sanguine nervous temperament, with her likes and dislikes of the strongest possible, with a great deal of animal nature, cheerful and talkative, yet lacking in force, by nature kind and benevolent to a fault, and her development of individuality ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown

... different for English and for Indian textile workers. It would, a priori, be unreasonable to expect that the working-day which would bring the greatest net advantage to both should be of the same duration. So also it may well be possible that the more energetic nervous temperament of the American operative may qualify him or her for a shorter and intenser working-day than would suit the Lancashire operative. It is the inseparable relation of the three factors—duration, intensity, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... had been alone at her table, why she had advertised her ill success in the life she had chosen, her present abandonment by men. This had been done to strike at Armine's peculiar temperament. It was ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... hues, and made them only add to the native splendor of lip and eye. Then she had a transparent complexion, where the blood rippled vividly and roseately at the least excitement. This expressed a vivacity of temperament and a sensitiveness which yet she had not, so that I was constantly looking for more than there was in her, and as constantly disappointed. The face suggested, and so did the conversation, far more both of native sensibility and of culture than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... warning note on a scrap of paper, which I jammed on the candle, where my brother could not fail to find it when he came home later on, and then I went off to the station, and was taken back to the capital by a Hussar officer of congenial temperament. ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell

... when a man likes to lay his troubles before his son; and in the view his son usually took of his troubles, Hilary seemed to find another mood of his own. It was a fresher, different self dealing with them; for the fellow was not only younger and more vigorous; he was another temperament with the same interests, and often the same principles. He had disappointed Hilary in some ways, but he had gratified his pride in the very ways he had disappointed him. The father had expected the son to go into business, and Matt did go into the mills at Ponkwasset, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... from arbitrary codes and an opportunity to embrace a compass as wide as the range of literary excellence. Realizing that every reader, even the professed critic, is hemmed in by certain prejudices arising from his temperament, his education, his environment, he was unwilling to pledge his trust to any school or fashion of criticism. The favorite oppositions of his generation—Shakespeare and Pope, Fielding and Richardson, English poetry and French—had no meaning for him. He was glad to enjoy each ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... enjoying robust health, is scarcely old enough to be embalmed and put in a glass case in the Museum as one of its million of curiosities. 'It is better to wear out than rust out.' Besides, if a man of active temperament is not busy, he is apt to get into mischief. To avoid evil, therefore, and since business activity is a necessity of my nature, here I am, once more, in the Museum, and among those with whom I have been so long and so pleasantly identified. I am confident ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... hat and wraps with that manner of inconsequence which distinguishes the artistic temperament from the thrifty one, and passed on into the cozy dining-room. The maid had arranged some sandwiches and a bottle of light wine. She ate and drank, while intermittent smiles played across her merry face. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... of Mr. Clay. Seeking nothing so eagerly as an opportunity to harass the government, he could have found none more to his taste than this question of South American recognition. His enthusiastic and rhetorical temperament rejoiced in such a topic for his luxuriant oratory, and he lauded freedom and abused the administration with a force of expression far from gratifying to the responsible heads of ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... the whole of him, with all his habits, ideas, desires, with all his spiritual and physical temperament, was one thing—love for women, and that love, she felt, ought to be entirely concentrated on her alone. That love was less; consequently, as she reasoned, he must have transferred part of his love to other women or to another woman—and she was jealous. She was jealous not of any particular woman ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... of women who think of taking up work in special schools. They should be thoroughly strong and healthy, or they will prove unequal to a strain which tells at times even on the strongest. But to women of good health who possess the right temperament, these schools offer a field of useful and ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... mob at his heels." Yet "apart from his criminal jurisdiction he was reckoned a wise and impartial judge, a master of the Common Law, and a thorough and indefatigable administrator of public functions." "It was this despotic ardor of temperament ... which made him, when a young man, employ with resolute audacity the engine of popular revolt, and which led him when older, and when in possession of that power against which he had so steadily warred, to wield with the same ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... slumberous town, and awarded the only praise that ever I knew her to bestow on Shakespeare, the individual man, by acknowledging that his taste in a residence was good, and that he knew how to choose a suitable retirement for a person of shy, but genial temperament. And at this point, I cease to possess the means of tracing her vicissitudes of feeling any further. In consequence of some advice which I fancied it my duty to tender, as being the only confidant whom she now had in the world, I fell under Miss Bacon's most severe and passionate ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in the valley, not amid the mountains; by the fields and meadows of the broad Tappan Zee, rather than the Highlands; in a congenial region suited to his temperament. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... clumsy, when they are walking on level ground, and as unsteady as that of a person under the influence of liquor; but they appear the reverse of awkward when engaged in the avocations incident to their primitive life. They are exceedingly phlegmatic in temperament, greedy, avaricious, suspicious, very indolent and filthy, and by no means celebrated for strict adherence to truth. The Nordlanders one and all spoke of them, in answer to my questions, with mingled distrust and contempt, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... social vices 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 in ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... sad injury under brutal wrong. He was like those delicate and somewhat complicated musical instruments that produce the sweetest harmonies when in tune and well played upon, but the most jangling discords when unstrung and in rough, ignorant hands. He had inherited his nervous temperament, his tendency to irritation and excess, from the diseased, over-stimulated system of his father, who was fast becoming a confirmed inebriate, and who had been poisoning himself with bad liquors all his life. From his mother he had obtained what balance he had in temperament, but he owed more to ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... tightly upon a ruler. "That I cannot answer directly," he said, slowly. "Miss Lambert's case is not simple. She is a very remarkable musician, that you know, and yet her talent is fitful. She sometimes plays very badly. I am not at all sure she has the temperament which will succeed on ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... Majesty by the nose, and are piping tunes with an eye to his dancing, thereto. This is a painful thought, which, I believe, does much agitate his Majesty now and afterwards.—A painful thought or suspicion, rising sometimes (in that temperament of his) to the pitch of the horrible. I believe it occasionally, ever henceforth, keeps haunting the highly poetic temperament of his Majesty, nor ever quits him again at all; stalking always, now and then, through the vacant chambers of his mind, in what we may call the night-season (or time ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... 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 glances, the listless motion of his ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... his second arrival from the South he brought with him the big drum, the pahu, which he sounded as he skirted the coast quite out to sea, to the wonder and admiration of the natives on the land. La'a, being of an artistic temperament and an ardent patron of the hula, at once gave the divine art of Laka the benefit of this newly imported instrument. He traveled from place to place, instructing the teachers and inspiring them with new ideals. It was he also who introduced into the hula the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... Elizabeth nor later politicians of Elizabeth's temperament desired the Church of England to become too genuine. It has been more convenient to leave an element of unsoundness at the heart of an institution which, if sincere, might be dangerously powerful. The wisest and best of its bishops have found their influence impaired, their position ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... is at present our national policy, was a magnificent principle in the days of Cobden—but the times have changed. We must change with them. That is where the typical Englishman fails. It is a matter of temperament. He is too slow to adapt himself ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... fact Cecil Cumberland needed no reminder. It was a thorn that pricked and stung even his dull nature—for the child's father lived. To a jealous temperament it is galling to be reminded of a predecessor in a wife's affections, even when the grave has closed over him; if the man still lives, it ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... was a moderately wide opening in the floating barrier close ahead of him. The rest of the crew stood silent watching the skipper, for they were by this time more or less acquainted with Wyllard's temperament. ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... is that of the seer, the poet, the spiritualist, of all such as have an eye for the deeper essences and first principles of things. Concede intellectual power, or the spiritual element, then add this temperament, and there follows a certain subtile, penetrative, radical quality of thought, a characteristic percipience of principles. And principles are not only seen, but felt; they thrill the nerve as well as greet the eye; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... menacing sound, which grew louder every moment, Rose, who had all the irritability of a sensitive temperament, clung to her father's arm, saying, in a terrified whisper, "It is like the sound of the sea the night ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... {p.196} has not yet been explained, and is to be justified only upon grounds of necessity, in the Boer commander's inability, however occasioned, sooner to get his numbers together, concentrated and disposed for so grave an enterprise. The solution is probably to be found partly in his own natural temperament, which his previous career, though political rather than military, indicates to have been cautious, and lacking in the aggressive quality that has given President Kruger, in civic contests, a continuous triumph over his more ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... have, poor Laura! I used to think that it was such a beautiful thing that Sam had such an artistic temperament; but how seldom it goes with the practical! Poor Sam had just enough talent to tempt him away from a useful business life, and not enough to make his family comfortable. How I do hope his daughter hasn't inherited his happy-go-lucky, selfish nature; for there ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... of the painters, proves their greater nobility; saying that sculpture calls for a certain better disposition, both of mind and of body, that are rarely found together, whereas painting contents itself with any feeble temperament, so long as it has a hand, if not bold, at least sure; and that this their contention is proved by the greater prices cited in particular by Pliny, by the loves caused by the marvellous beauty of certain statues, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... 13, 1610. His father was a French noble and a soldier of fortune, who rose to be governor of Guienne. His parents entered him at the Jesuit College, where he completed his novitiate and took the first vows, and in 1635 he was ordained as a priest. Early manifestations of an erratic temperament, a mystical habit of mind, and physical frailty, led to his severance from the Society of Jesus. He entered upon a preaching mission, and, coming under the attention of Pere Gondran, second general of the Congregation of the Oratory at Paris, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... America"—like the volume by Henry van Dyke which bears that very title—give a programme of national accomplishments and aspirations. But our immediate task is more specific. It is to point out how adequately this idealistic side of the national temperament has been expressed in American writing. Has our literature kept equal pace with our ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... man and woman aligning themselves like cavalry fifteen feet apart and moving across the field—the men in leggings or high boots, riding with the heel low and the toes turned according to temperament; the girls with a cap, a derby, or a beaver with a white veil, and the lad's eye caught one of them quickly, for a red tam-o'-shanter had slipped from her shining hair and a broad white girth ran around ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... The Sultan Ibrahim, the only surviving brother and successor of Mourad, was in his twenty-fifth year at the time of his accession; but he had been closely immured in the seraglio from the moment of his birth; and the dulness of his temperament (to which he probably owed his escape from the bowstring, by which the lives of his three brothers had been terminated by order of Mourad) had never been improved by cultivation. Destitute alike of capacity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... must be clear that the envoy, who came to put forward counsels that were intended to restore harmony, but that by so doing might assume the aspect of palliating the Futai's conduct, could not count on a very cordial reception from a man of Gordon's temperament, whose sense of honour and good faith had been deeply injured by the murder of ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... other loyal supporters far better friends than he deserved. The Prince came to Scotland (1650); while there, he was crowned and took the oath of the Covenant (S438). It must have been a bitter pill for a man of his free and easy temperament. But worse was to come, for the Scottish Puritans made him sign a paper declaring that his father had been a tyrant and that his mother was an idolater. No wonder the caricatures of the day represented the Scots ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... fingers, former stonecutter though he was. Since his colossal 'Vintaging Girl,' he had gone on reducing and reducing the proportions of his figures without appearing to be aware of it himself, always ready to stick out ferociously for the gigantic, which agreed with his temperament, but yielding to the partiality of his eyes for sweetness and gracefulness. And indeed real nature broke at last through inflated ambition. Exaggerated still, his 'Bathing Girl' was already possessed of ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... ring as near excitement as was possible to one of his temperament was in his voice. "Ain't that an island, that brown patch out there, pretty well over to the other ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... his children, which he had impaired. I will not go so far as to say, that this was a prospect fixed upon Mr. Canning's mind, or an object that he was bent upon pursuing, for it is difficult to trace the springs of so susceptible a temperament; but under the circumstances it was quite natural, considering his means and his family, that while he honourably sought a situation to render service to his country, he should not be unmindful of the means of repairing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... child, she had spared neither her heart nor her purse in his education, with such happy results that he was regarded by all who knew him as one of the finest specimens of young Virginia that it were possible to meet. Of medium height, active, handsome, dark-eyed, dark-haired, fiery and impetuous in temperament, generous and frank in disposition, he was a model among men; trained from his boyhood in every manly sport and art, and educated in the best institutions of learning in the colonies, his natural grace perfected by a tour of two years in England and abroad, from which ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... old Yorkshire family, Charles Stephen Dale was yet sufficient of a Cockney to justify both his friends and his enemies in crediting him with the Celtic temperament. Nevertheless, he was essentially a modern, insomuch that his contempt for the writings of dead men surpassed his dislike of living authors. To these two central influences we may trace most of the peculiarities that rendered him notorious ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... endowed woman with large capacities for developing these powers and graces, let her look to it that they be not suffered to lie buried in a napkin, or perverted to the idolatrous worship of the goddess of fashion. The plastic and pliable temperament of woman tends towards making her an easy prey for the tempter, when he approaches her with smiles, bearing in his hands jewels of gold, braided hair, and costly apparel. She is lured the same by the giddy revel and the fashionable dance—trusting, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... had assimilated a mighty variety of emotions, and we may see how his form shows the influence now of one poet, now another—Milton, Cowley, Shelley, Hood, Poe, and Rossetti—yet each influence, as it came upon him, was passed through the crucible of his own defined temperament, and the resultant is wholly his own, a creature which speaks of half-suppressed emotion, yet fantastically rich in phrase, rhythm, and image. His study of all the poets seems to have opened to him ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... The insane temperament and its pathological twin brother, the neuropathic diathesis, roams at large unrestrained from without or that self-restraint which, bred of adequate self-knowledge, might come from within, and contaminates with neurotic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... associate with spirits of the just who expectant wait for their golden harps and glorious crowns from the Most High God. For human weaknesses, human failings, arising from our nature, springing from our temperament, which the Creator has ordained, shall be even thus, and not otherwise; for these have ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... exclamation at his statements. If you do not, he may perchance repeat himself with enlarged hyperbolisms; and should you then hear in a matter-of-course manner, he may give you up as one stoical or phlegmatic in your temperament. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... feel natural unless they were curveting about on skates. Their skates seem as much a part of them as tails to mermaids. It is bedtime now for sane folks, but at this moment a certain madness which does not at all fit in with the true German temperament descends on the crowd. Some go upstairs to another part of the building, where there is a dancehall called the Admiralskasino; but, to the truly swagger, one should hasten to the Palais du Danse on the second floor of the big Metropolpalast in the Behrenstrasse. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... R Mohawk St., Buffalo. AA1. Sentimental cuss. Quotes poetry. Thinks has artistic temperament. Not much business head. Place made a success by head clerk, Miss Norah Cahill, who runs it and him as well. Play Norah to win, for first, second, and place. P. S. Jan. 13, gifts and hot air wasted on Norah and no good. Got to have the goods and the prices. P. S. Mar. 4, Cahill nearly scalped me ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... in "unearthly screams," "jumping up and down," tangled hair, sweating brow, glaring eyes, etc., etc. Upon these things, which his discriminating admirers were glad to overlook as mere matters of temperament and constitution, and in spite of which they were charmed with his graceful and truly vigorous speech, his biographer loves to dwell. He has much to say of the length and complexity of the sentences, but nothing of the often exquisite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... handsome fees he let them do so. The people were good to me; almost too good, for they were inclined to make a lion of me, which I hated—at least the women were; only they had to beware of Yram, who was a young lady of a jealous temperament, and kept a sharp eye both on me and on my lady visitors. However, I felt so kindly towards her, and was so entirely dependent upon her for almost all that made my life a blessing and a comfort to me, that I took good care not to vex her, and we remained excellent friends. The men were ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... whose history and adventures he gives, possessed a well-marked and striking character, and differed in temperament and action from the rest. Achilles was one. He was fiery, impetuous, and implacable in character, fierce and merciless; and, though perfectly undaunted and fearless, entirely destitute of magnanimity. There was a river called the Styx, the ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... of it, for a girl of Laura's temperament, was already bit by bit to incline to it. She began to turn it over, to taste the adventure of it—to talk very fast to Fricka, under her breath, with little gusts of laughter. And no doubt there was something ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... pleased with the occasion, which would furnish him with pretences to withdraw himself gradually from an intercourse by this time become equally cloying and unprofitable. Being well acquainted with the mother's temperament, he guessed the present situation of her thoughts, and concluding she would make the jeweller a party in her revenge, he resolved from that moment to discontinue his visits, and cautiously guard against any future interview ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... for many years. He represented a neighboring State in the Senate, of which body he was a leader when I entered it in 1883. I probably knew him as well as any of my Republican colleagues; but his was a very cold, distant temperament, even in the Senate, hardly capable of forming a very close friendship for any one, and ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... great things. Posed on the model throne, the object of the painter's intense scrutiny, he swelled ingenuously with the conviction of his supreme importance. The lazy luxury of the model's life appealed to his sensuous temperament. He loved the warmth, the artistic setting of the studios; the pictures, the oriental rugs, the bits of armour, the old brocade, the rich cushions. If he had not been born to it, why had he not remained, like all 'the youth of Bludston, amid the filth and clatter of the factory? He loved, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... cold, flinty look come into his eyes as he turned away from her to Hetty with the pitcher of lemonade. And then Beryl Mae Macomber, she gets over close enough for Mr. D. to hear it, and says conditions is made very inharmonious at home for a girl of her temperament, and she's just liable any minute to chuck everything and either take up literary work or go into the movies, she don't know which and don't care—all kind of desperate so Mr. D. will feel alarmed about a beautiful young thing like that out in the world alone and unprotected ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... dislike of these excellent women for Sheridan and Fox. In Sheridan's case Burke did not much disagree with them. Their characters were as unlike and as antipathetic as those of two men could be; and to antipathy of temperament was probably added a kind of rivalry, which may justly have affected one of them with an irritated humiliation. Sheridan was twenty years younger than Burke, and did not come into Parliament until ...
— Burke • John Morley

... animals must consist in choosing the most perfect of both sexes, that is the most beautiful in respect to the body, and the most ingenious in respect to the mind; but where one sex is given, whether male or female, to improve a progeny from that person may consist in choosing a partner of a contrary temperament. ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... trust for good counsel. What would be his advice? Should she write and ask him? No she could not do that. She could not bring herself to write to him, telling him that the Aylmer 'entanglement' was at an end. Were she to do so, he, with his temperament, would take such letter as meaning much more than it was intended to mean. But she would write a letter to Captain Aylmer. This she thought that she would do at once, ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... had sat listlessly, hardly looking, and not counting, when—my eye being fixed on hers—I witnessed in its iris and pupil a startling transfiguration. These sudden, dangerous natures—sensitive as they are called—offer many a curious spectacle to those whom a cooler temperament has secured from participation in their angular vagaries. The fixed and heavy gaze swum, trembled, then glittered in fire; the small, overcast brow cleared; the trivial and dejected features lit up; the sad countenance vanished, and in its place appeared a sudden eagerness, an intense ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... room, however, a different scene was being enacted. Every man was acting according to his own temperament and each in his own way attempted to hide the anxious thrill that every real football player feels before "the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... tale. All these were certain to seize upon such an imagination as that of Burke, and lay the foundation of much of that high-souled mental poetry—one of his great characteristics; indeed, the circumstances of his youth were highly favorable to his peculiar temperament—his delicate constitution rendered him naturally susceptible of the beautiful; and the locality of the Blackwater, and the time-honored ruins of Kilcolman, with its history and traditions, nursed, as they were, by the holy quiet of a country ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... immigration. And since the poor devil must have one enjoyment, and society has shut him out of all others, he betakes himself to the drinking of spirits. Drink is the only thing which makes the Irishman's life worth having, drink and his cheery care-free temperament; so he revels in drink to the point of the most bestial drunkenness. The southern facile character of the Irishman, his crudity, which places him but little above the savage, his contempt for all humane enjoyments, in which his very ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... I 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

... belongs somehow to the nature of man, even if it involves taking an unfair advantage. Every person who excels in any business thinks it right that he should enjoy more advantages than his inferior. If he meets with a success he ascribes it to the force of his individual temperament, and if he fails in anything he refers it to the workings of the supernatural. A man, however, who tries to gain advancement by plots and injuries is in the first place held to be crafty and crooked, malicious and vicious: (and this I ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... grasped the peculiarities of his audience and its temperament, his task was at once the most difficult and the most delightful, and my friend, Mr. Arthur Dunn, has performed most useful service in embalming a portion of Gridiron history in his ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... will be," said Mr. Bingham. "You'll never make a burglar. I'm glad you are beginning to see it. In choosing a profession a man must study his temperament. If you don't, sooner or later you will fail. Compare myself, for example. All my life I have been in banks—I have got on in banks. I have even been a bank manager. But was I happy? No. Why wasn't I happy? Because it did not suit my temperament. I am too adventurous—too versatile. Practically ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... public neglect, and any other crosses or vexations which she might have in life, with her usual equanimity; and ate, drank, acted, slept, with that regularity and comfort which belongs to people of her temperament. What a deal of grief, care, and other harmful excitement does a healthy dulness and cheerful insensibility avoid! Nor do I mean to say that Virtue is not Virtue because it is never tempted to go astray; only that dulness is a much finer ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the merest coincidence into an encounter with a spirit, and the poetic temperament of the narrators clothes the stories with vividness and mystery. They tell how the presence of a ghost made the midsummer air so cold that even wood did not burn, and of groans and footsteps underground as long as the ghost is displeased with what ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... precepts, to be wisely controlled, regulated, and managed. She put all her morality upon the same plane, and thereby succeeded in equalizing corporeal pleasure, so that the entire scale of human acts produced a harmonious equality of temperament, whence goodness and virtue necessarily followed, the pathway ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... published first in The Atlantic Monthly and McClure's Magazine and gathered subsequently into a book entitled The Soul of the Street. About the time of the appearance of this book the author's temperament reacted against the atmosphere which it embodied, and in the summer of 1900 by an arrangement with McClure's Magazine he went to Newfoundland to gather impressions and material for a series of sea-tales. Up to this time he had never ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... had 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 specimens, so that they didn't ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... of cold, clear-sighted, self-seeking temperament. In almost all English histories dealing with this period his steadiness and solid unshowy qualities are contrasted with Essex's flightiness and failure, to the natural disadvantage of the latter. This, however, is not perhaps quite the last word upon ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... A. Early was of too phlegmatic a temperament for such an undertaking. He was slow in every thing but name. And, as I have informed you before, so notoriously cautious and slow was he to act, even when a youth at West Point, that he gained the sobriquet of "The Late Early," by which he is known at this ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams

... resembling those of John Randolph; and, also, for the whiteness of his whiskers, in violent contrast to the blackness of his hair—the latter, in consequence, being very generally mistaken for a wig. His temperament was markedly nervous, and rendered him a good subject for mesmeric experiment. On two or three occasions I had put him to sleep with little difficulty, but was disappointed in other results which his peculiar constitution ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... believed that every united effort that raises the personal standard of thought and purpose is of the utmost importance. It was her earnest desire that women should live lofty and useful lives. She frequently laid stress upon this manner of life, and at such times her temperament seemed charged with sympathetic interest in young women journalists. "Unity in Diversity," the motto adopted by the General Federation of Women's Clubs, is a fitting expression of the broad conceptions ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... same iron in the blood, the same vigorous constitution, the same sanguine temperament, the same immortal possibilities as 'Pushing to the Front.'"—THOMAS W. BICKNELL, Ex-U.S. ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden

... his identity under the pseudonym of "Mount Carmel." It will bear the title, Lloyd George—Saint or Dragon? and will be prefaced by an introduction by Mr. Stickham Weed, in which that eminent publicist discusses the antagonism of the Celtic temperament to Jugo-Slav ideals. The book ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various

... was that vehemence of temperament which is necessary for their full development. Schiller's heart was at once fiery and tender; impetuous, soft, affectionate, his enthusiasm clothed the universe with grandeur, and sent his spirit forth to explore its ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... ingratitude without being of any permanent service to the recipients. He lent money, but expected to be repaid even by his brother-in-law. And this prudence helped to retain the confidence, while his sympathetic temperament secured the liking, of most. Again, he had the valuable knack of constantly replenishing the number of his friends among men junior to himself. His character attracted the liking of Sulla, who was twenty-seven years his senior, and he remained ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... and bloody career. "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 ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... spite of these pronouncedly Negrito results, these men had the appearance of Malays, not Negritos. Their skin color was light brown, hair wavy not curly; their habits, bearing, and speech indicated the temperament of the Malay. ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows

... knew that to try to recast Peter's tremendous energy into staidness and caution would only rob him of what was best in his nature. He found room in his apostle family for as many different types of temperament as there were men, setting the frailties of one over against the excessive ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... the Northern hill-sections, needs any description of the heavy lumbering "Concord coach" in which the young girl and her stage-companions were slowly dragged up Genesee Street, Utica, by four horses of lymphatic temperament, on that sultry July afternoon with occasional sprinkles of shower thrown in to make it endurable. They are all alike—those heavy coaches—except as to paint and upholstery, wherever we meet them,—whether they drag us up ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... business head who comes into the firm with us, it ain't been such a strain for Gussie and Aaron as for us with a genius. But neither have they got the smart son, the lawyer of the family, for theirs. We got a temperament in ours, Sara. Ain't that something to ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... beautiful, with the beauty of those glorious summer sunsets which crown a cloudless day. Her spotless reputation had given an endless topic of conversation to the Bordeaux cliques; the curiosity of the women was all the more lively because the widow gave signs of the temperament which makes a Spanish woman and a Creole particularly noted. She had black eyes and hair, the feet and form of a Spanish woman,—that swaying form the movements of which have a name in Spain. Her face, still beautiful, was particularly seductive for its ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... between the "preachments," the young married and unmarried women promenaded round the tents, and their smiling faces formed a striking contrast to the demure countenances of their more experienced sisters, who, according to their age or temperament, descanted on the folly, or condemned the sinfulness of such conduct. Some of those old dames, I was informed, were decoy birds, who shared the profits with the preachers, and attended all the "camp-meetings" ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... and frolicsomeness, especially if your lines are cast in pleasant places: it becomes difficult not to slide into practical Antinomianism. What a place to live in for eleven years! yet Wilkins did so with success and general applause. He was inclined by temperament to the freedom of mellowed Independency rather than to the stiffness of the Presbyterians, who more successfully than their rivals resisted the enervating influences of life in Oxford. Circumstances as well as inclination led him to become an Independent: his ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... operation, which was an exceedingly unpleasant necessity to a person of his progressive temperament. It was a slow maneuver; but the sergeant waited patiently till it was accomplished, by which time the extra lamp and the pole ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... played a more important part towards the close of the following century by giving itself almost in a mass to John Wesley. No doubt the neglect of the remote districts by the Bishops of Exeter and their clergy left Wesley a clear field; but the temperament of the people was also in his favour. Anything fervent takes with the Celt, while he cannot abide the religious compromise which commends itself ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... slight or an injustice. The girl, I knew, was quite as high-spirited as young Murchison. I feared she was not so just, and hoped she would prove more yielding. I knew that her affections were strong and enduring, but that her temperament was capricious, and her sunniest moods easily overcast by some small cloud of jealousy or pique. I had never imagined, however, that she was capable of such intensity as was revealed by these few words ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... weeks before his death, contains the accents of immortality. And "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" (unfortunately too long to reprint in this volume), is fully as characteristic of the lighter and more playful side of Brooke's temperament. Both these phases are combined in "The Great Lover," of which Abercrombie has written, "It is life he loves, and not in any abstract sense, but all the infinite little familiar details of life, remembered and catalogued ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... curiously at his friend. There was not the slightest suggestion of mischief or irony in his tone or manner; nothing, indeed, but a sincerity and anxiety usually rare with his temperament. It struck him also that his speech had but little of the odd California slang which was always a part of his imitative levity. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... comfort: order, decorum, and cleanliness, seemed its characteristics; and happiness and contentment that of the inmates' existence. Mr. Smithers was evidently a man of domestic attachments; one whose greatest pleasure was in his family; while his wife was blessed with an equally happy temperament, devoted to her husband, with whom and her children she divided her entire affection. Their family consisted of three, two boys and a girl; who, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which they laboured, were exeeedingly obedient ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... does nothing better than speech-making, he might as well drop it. There might be something in benevolent efforts, if one had just the temperament and talents for them. But as it is, I fear most of it is humbug; mutual admiration, seeing your name in the paper, and all that. And how they get imposed on! How they pauperize and debauch those they try to raise! It's a law of nature, Bob, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... Sunday or Saint's day, and their protracted lenten fare exchanged for abundance of good meat, and bread, and "tay, galore, for the priest and the mistress;" but when politics or any stirring cause is offered to them, their feelings are found to be as excitable, and their temperament as fiery, as though still standing on the banks of the Suir or ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... "logic-chopping engine," because his intellectual processes were so methodical, systematic, hard-headed: Rossetti was a master of color and harmony. Yet Mill found in Pauline the workings of a powerful mind: and Rossetti's sensitive temperament was charmed with the wonderful pictures and lovely melodies ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... that I have refrained from that, and also from taking advantage of you when you were in my power. Recollect, sir, also, that the yacht is still in possession of the smugglers, and that you are in no condition to insult with impunity. My lord, allow me to observe, that we men are too hot of temperament to argue, or listen coolly. With your permission, your friend, and my friend, and I, will repair on deck, leaving you to hear from your daughter and that lady all that has passed. After that, my lord, I shall be most ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... both Emily and I have had good health, and therefore we have been able to work well. There is one individual of whom I have not yet spoken—M. Heger, the husband of Madame. He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable in temperament. He is very angry with me just at present, because I have written a translation which he chose to stigmatize as 'peu correcte'. He did not tell me so, but wrote the word on the margin of my book, and asked, in brief stern phrase, how it happened that my compositions were always ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... act, an activity of the person, which by its moral intensity moderates the sensuous intensity, and by the sway of impressions takes from them in depth what it gives them in surface or breadth. The character must place limits to temperament, for the senses have only the right to lose elements if it be to the advantage of the mind. In its turn, the tempering of the formal impulsion must not result from moral impotence, from a relaxation of thought and will, which would degrade humanity. It ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... Latin and make maps, and he had ample experience of practical navigation. His life as a mariner got him the habit of meditation, and this favored the espousal of theories, which, upon occasion, he could expound with volubility or defend with passion, as his Italian temperament prompted. His imagination was portentous, and the Fifteenth Century was hospitable to this faculty; there was nothing—except plain but unknown facts—too marvelous to be believed; and that Columbus was even more credulous than his contemporaries is proved by the evidence that even facts were ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... character is essential or auxiliary—it depends upon how we define the theme. In Hamlet, for example, Hamlet, Claudius, and Gertrude are manifestly essential: for the theme is the hesitancy of a young man of a certain temperament in taking vengeance upon the seducer of his mother and murderer of his father. But is Ophelia essential, or merely auxiliary? Essential, if we consider Hamlet's pessimistic feeling as to woman and the "breeding of sinners" a necessary part of his character; auxiliary, if we take the view ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... to Mr. Harrison's, and Roland did not speak until they were at his door. This professor was a blond, effusive, large man of enthusiastic temperament. He was delighted to listen to Mrs. Tresham, and he saw possibilities for her that Signor Maria never would have contemplated; though when Roland told him what Maria had said he endorsed his opinion so far as to admit the excellence ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... felt by all classes that the dignity of the Southern cause was adequately represented in the person and character of the commander of her most important army. While others, as brave and patriotic, no doubt, but of different temperament, had permitted themselves to become violent and embittered in their private and public utterances in reference to the North, Lee had remained calm, moderate, and dignified, under every provocation. His reports were ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... done yet. His next shot was to be a long one and a bold one, and he was not sure where it would hit. He was not sure that it might not rebound and—but his was the nature which makes for success or disaster without a second thought. For him there was no middle course. His temperament was volcanic and his actions were largely governed by the passionate nature which was his. Iredale had not turned from the window, or he would have seen the evil working of that face. His own great, broad shoulders were set squarely before ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... had never been of a sanguine temperament; he had become still less so as he advanced in life. Ronald, on the contrary, was accustomed to look on the bright side of objects. He believed that he had obtained a clue which would lead to the discovery of a matter now he felt of so much ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... Girls frequently overdo rope-skipping. No girl should jump more than fifty times in succession. Excessively keen competition under trying conditions frequently has a bad effect upon girls of a nervous temperament. Of course, girls should rest and not take part in active games when they are physically incapacitated. There are, however, a wide variety of games and sports in which girls may find both pleasure and profit. The ideal type of exercise for girls is found in swimming, walking ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... mockingly, "I trust your over-sensitive, artistic temperament is not to be so influenced by our ghostly visitor that you will be unfitted for ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... 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 ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... 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 of ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the synod of his church from Nova Scotia. He was a tall, handsome man, at this time of some thirty years of age, of a presence which might almost have been called commanding. He was very strong, but of a temperament which did not often give him opportunity to put forth his strength; and his life had been such that neither he nor others knew of what nature might be his courage. The greater part of his life was spent in preaching to some ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope

... made Matty, who was of an anxious temperament, extremely nervous. She struck the match hesitatingly, and lighted the candle shakily. Of course it would not light (candles never do on such occasions), and a long red-hot end of burnt wood projected from the ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... we are no longer in the company of such sane and healthy people as Eckhart and Tauler. The half-sensuous pleasure of ecstasy was evidently a temptation to Suso, and the violent alternations of rapture and misery which he experienced suggest a neurotic and ill-balanced temperament.[26] ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... measure would only urge to desperation a girl of Zura's temperament and that, to my mind, people could not be made good by law, but ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... her brow, the colour of the thick tresses being probably, from her complexion, repeated in the irises of her large, deep eyes. Her rather nervous lips were thin and closed, so that they only appeared as a delicate red line. A changeable temperament was shown by that mouth—quick transitions from affection to aversion, from a pout ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... he immediately applied himself to alter the whole frame of the constitution; sensible that a partial change, and the introducing of some new laws, would be of no sort of advantage; but, as in the case of a body diseased and full of bad humours, whose temperament is to be corrected and new formed by medicines, it was necessary to begin a new regimen. With these sentiments he went to Delphi, and when he had offered and consulted the god, he returned with that celebrated oracle, in which the priestess called him "Beloved ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... where they passed many happy hours together. But with the knowledge of the fearful secret which overshadowed her father's life a deeper gravity had come to her, which subdued her otherwise exuberant and joyous temperament; and Alexander often asked if it was the love she felt for him which had thus checked her former cheerfulness. And this shadow did not pass away when, shortly after Christmas, her wedding was celebrated, and Mauer informed her that he had ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus

... the grounds of our determination. The immediate parties may find some excuse or palliation in the thoughtlessness of youth, the strength of affection, the pangs of disappointment and blighted hopes, in versatility of feeling to which all are subject, and in constitutional temperament. The conduct of the friends of either is not to be judged of nor censured in consequence of the unfortunate results which have attended this truly unfortunate case. In judging of the past transactions of others, which have terminated either ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... 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; ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne

... the spot," Miriam went on, with a certain imaginative seriousness; for she loved romance and mystery so well, and was of a temperament so poetical, that the wildest fairy-tales had a sort of reality for her. "No one can find the treasure while the spell remains. But Kamaiakan understands the spell, and the conjuration which dissolves it; and when he dissolves it, the ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... 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

... given employment in designing a series of tapestries for the royal palace; and from 1780, when he was made a member of the Spanish Royal Academy, ensues the period of his greatest artistic activity. Carrying into his art the same excess of temperament which marked his life, his execution was rapid and decisive. Rebellious to the ordinary means employed by painters, he used various mediums, some of which have ill withstood the ravages of time; and, disdaining ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... short, but by no means vulgar-looking man, about fifty, with a high forehead covered with wrinkles, and with eyes deep sunk in his head. I never met a man of apparently less bustle, and of a cooler temperament. He was an object of observation from his very unobtrusiveness. There were. I immediately perceived, a great number of foreigners in the room. They looked much too knowing for Arguelles and Co., and I soon found that they were members of the different embassies, or missions ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... third word I want you to speak and that is: "Thank God, that life is for me." Some say, "I believe there is such a life, but not for me." There are people who continually say: "Oh, my character is so unstable; my will is naturally very weak; my temperament is nervous and excitable, it is impossible for me always to live without worry, resting in God." Beloved brother, do not say that. You say so only for one reason: You do not know what your God will do for you. Do begin to look away from self, ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray

... was neither a base nor an unkind lad. His bane was a morbid temperament, which he could no more help than his sallow face and weedy person; even his vanity was directly traceable to the early influence of an eccentric and feckless father with experimental ideas on the upbringing of a child. It was a pity that brilliantly unsuccessful man had not lived to ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... gushed forth and furnished water to the ships, Juan Fuller had his washhouse. Within a stone's throw was the grist mill of Daniel Sill where a mule turned, with the frequent interruptions of his balky temperament, a crude and ponderous treadmill. Grain laden ox-carts stood ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... I questioned him why he had altered his declamation. He declared he had made no alteration, and did not know, in speaking, that he had deviated from it one letter. I believed him; and, from a knowledge of his temperament, am convinced that, fully impressed with the sense and substance of the subject, he was hurried on to expressions and colourings more striking than what his pen ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... her introduction to Briarcroft had somewhat faded, and the excitement of the Lower School mutiny had subsided, Gipsy began to find the life more than a trifle dull. She had an adventurous temperament, and her roving life had given her a taste for constant change and variety, so the prim regime of the English boarding school seemed to her monotonous in the extreme. She chafed against the confinement and the regularity ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil



Words linked to "Temperament" :   calmness, unsociableness, gourmandism, willing, animalism, ill nature, restrictiveness, physicality, unwillingness, loneliness, unwilling, blood, perfectionism, readjustment, adjustment, permissiveness, registration, sunniness, discomposure, sunshine, involuntariness, bloodiness, bloodthirstiness, agreeableness, equanimity, moodiness, composure, agreeability, nature, spirit



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com