"Phlegmatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the men with the greatest store of nervous energy came best through this expedition. Having more imagination, they have a worse time than their more phlegmatic companions; but they get things done. And when the worst came to the worst, their strength of mind triumphed over their weakness of body. If you want a good polar traveller get a man without too much muscle, with good physical tone, and let his mind be on wires—of steel. And if you can't ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... deep lower jaw, strong legs and neck, semi-hanging ears, truncated tail, and frequent presence of a fifth toe, distinguish the noble Mastiff. They are silent, phlegmatic dogs, conscious of their own strength, seem to consider themselves more as companions than servants, are resolute, and face danger with the utmost self-possession. A cold region, such as the highest ranges of Central Asia, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... simple manner, Herr Count," responded the colonel. "I have had the peculiar misfortune which sometimes overtakes a married man; my wife deceived me, and ran away with her lover, whom I do not even know. As mine is not one of those phlegmatic natures which can meekly tolerate such an indignity, I am searching for the fugitives—for what purpose I fancy you can guess. For four years my quest has been fruitless; I have been unable to find a trace of the guilty pair. A lucky chance at last led me to this secluded corner ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... is for him to see the work. They make very good carpenters; and this trade is not taught them, but they only have to see it. For in what pertains to agibilibus [101] they are better than we, for they are more phlegmatic. The Indian women have more capacity, and learn easily to use the needle, when they see it, thus they are more skilful than the Spanish women reared here; therefore the articles of handiwork that have been exported from these islands are numberless. And all these Indian ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... one of the reasons why he and the stocky, phlegmatic social scientist made such a good team, he thought. As far as he, himself, was concerned, people were just a mysterious, exasperatingly unpredictable order of things which were subject ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... known in Chapelizod that Sturk was poking after Lord Castlemallard's agency that Nutter felt the scene going on before his eyes between him and Dangerfield like a public affront. His ire was that of a phlegmatic man, dangerous when stirred, and there was no mistaking, in his rigid, swarthy countenance, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and less degrees of intensity in the change. The degree of intensity, or depth of experience, may depend on several things. It may depend, to, a certain extent, on the temperament of the individual. One person is of a phlegmatic temperament; his mind is sluggish; his feelings are not deep; he rarely becomes excited. Of a cool, calculating disposition, he does everything deliberately and cautiously. He feels the ground before him ere he takes a step. ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... produces a restlessness which must either expend itself in bodily or mental exertion or force of expression; from this probably arise the frequent use of superlatives, and the exaggeration of language, which the more phlegmatic English ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... his wife in scornful pity. He wondered sometimes, in his phlegmatic reasoning, why women ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... consciousness in every succeeding generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the Han dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom. They were especially adapted to the Chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual. Moreover, as we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines, from the constant exhortations to loyalty which Confucius enjoined. And yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... judge from the physical aspect, from the facial expressions, from the movements, and from the voice of a man whether he is nervous or phlegmatic, active or passive, healthy or lacking in vigor and strength. A skillful size-up will determine that he is either eccentric or well balanced mentally, that he is thrifty or extravagant, that he is disposed to take comprehensive views or is inclined to give undue attention ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... like that of most others amongst whom I lived, consisted perhaps more in the absence of active bad qualities, than in the possession of good ones; in other words, it was negative rather than positive. Their phlegmatic, apathetic temperament, coldness of desire and deadness of feeling, want of curiosity and slowness of intellect, make the Amazonian Indians very uninteresting companions anywhere. Their imagination is of a dull, gloomy, quality and they seemed never to be stirred ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... along these lines gives the following instructive comments regarding the practice of psychometric power: "Persons of a highly-strung nervous organization, with large perceptive faculties make the best psychometrists. Phlegmatic people seldom psychometrize clearly, and usually lack receptivity to the finer forces. Letters, clothes, hair, coins, ornaments, or jewels—in fact, almost any article which has belonged to, or has been worn by, its possessor for any length ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... of dirty diggers, bearded like the pard, at work on the ground. Staines sent Falcon back to tell Bulteel, and suggest that he should at once order them off, or, better still, make terms with them. The phlegmatic Boer did neither. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but his tobacco. You must know, Sir, every woman carries in her hand a stove with coals in it, which, when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats; and at this chimney dozing Strephon lights his pipe. I take it that this continual smoking is what ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... rousing her from her bed to ask her an amazing question, than by going to Fyodor Pavlovitch. But that is just how it is, sometimes, especially in cases like the present one, with the decisions of the most precise and phlegmatic people. Pyotr Ilyitch was by no means phlegmatic at that moment. He remembered all his life how a haunting uneasiness gradually gained possession of him, growing more and more painful and driving him on, against his will. Yet he kept cursing himself, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... him in silence, with a cool, phlegmatic indifference most exasperating to one in his ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... Marie-Antoinette, fated to pass thy life with such men! Phlegmatic Louis, art thou but lazy semi-animate phlegm then, to the centre of thee? King, Captain-General, Sovereign Frank! If thy heart ever formed, since it began beating under the name of heart, any resolution at all, be it now then, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... into the wilds with hunting parties, and camped through the summers with fishermen, geologists, explorers and mountain climbers. The reaction of individuals to the open spaces has ever been interesting to me. I have seen voluble women silent before the awesome beauty. I have seen phlegmatic business men moved to tears. There was no ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... to talk of the weather with the two men, who found him a little dismal. One—he of the Zambesi lion episode—was grizzled, phlegmatic, and patient, and in no way critical of his company. So soon he was embarked on extracts from his own experience to which Mr. Andrews, who had shares in some company in the neighbourhood, listened with flattering attention. Mrs. Alderson set herself to entertain Mr. Wishart, and being ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... reviving, Admiral Oakes," returned the phlegmatic surgeon; "but it is like the gleaming of sunshine that streams through clouds, as the great ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... unrestrainedly cultivate one's own style of life as there. And withal, artistic freedom of life accommodates itself remarkably well with the political narrowness of the country under Clerical rule. The Bavarian phlegmatic temperament craves constant stimulation; the political strife, in which there is no embittered fanaticism, but which in all good nature sways backward and forward, is an indispensable condition of the national life. Combativeness and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... did actually rival it, giving him faith and hope; his own primary occupation of Paula's heart. Moreover, Mrs. Goodman would be an influence favourable to himself and his cause during the journey; though, to be sure, to set against her there was the phlegmatic and obstinate Abner Power, in whom, apprised by those subtle media of intelligence which lovers possess, he ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... else in the world. George had been as fair of face and hair as Andrew was dark, as cheerful and amusing as Andrew was gloomy and dispiriting, as agile and dexterous of mind and body as his brother was slow and angular, as emotional and warm-hearted as the other was phlegmatic and sour—or so it seemed to the father ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... great fisherman should have what makes Stewart White a great hunter—no emotions. If a lion charged me I would imagine a million things. Once when a Mexican tigre, a jaguar, charged me I—But that is not this story. Boschen has the temperament for a great fisherman. He is phlegmatic. All day—and day after day—he sits there, on trigger, so to speak, waiting for the strike that will come. He is so constituted that it does not matter to him how soon or how late the strike comes. To me the wait, the suspense, grew to be maddening. Yet I stuck it out, ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... was easy-going and too phlegmatic to harbor curiosity. So the bargain was straightway sealed under a ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... to find his first impressions as to the lad's innocence confirmed, and to be able to withdraw the charge against him. But the manner in which the magistrate had dismissed the case had roused even his phlegmatic mind to indignation, and had set his conscience troubling him a little as to his own conduct of the affair. This was why he now felt and looked not quite happy in the presence of ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... usually were dead from the metal that had entered their lungs. The children were mostly Jewish, for you must know that when the Jews become part of a slow Eastern civilization they sink yet lower and become yet more phlegmatic and listless than the people among whom they have settled. I was indignant and asked if nothing was being done to remedy this terrible evil. Then I was told that there was one man who was devoting ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... Proclamation of the Empire, and the new German emperor gave thanks to God. It was a fitting sequence to the greatest military success since Napoleon crushed the German armies at Jena and Austerlitz. The tables at last were turned, and the heavy, phlegmatic, intelligent Teutons triumphed over the warlike and passionate Celts. So much for the genius of the greatest general and the greatest diplomatist that Europe ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... stand to that which is counselled, because he holds to it in weakly fashion by reason of the softness of his temperament, as we have stated with regard to woman (ad 1). This is also the case with phlegmatic temperaments, for the same reason as in women. And these results are due to the fact that the bodily temperament is an occasional but not a sufficient cause of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Dulberry proposed to Bertram that they should adjourn to the Town Hall. On entering the court-room, they were both surprized to observe the phlegmatic Dutchman addressing Sir Morgan in the character of petitioner. They caught enough of his closing words to understand that the gite of his petition was to obtain the baronet's sanction for the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... A serious phlegmatic doctor fell in love with a girl who danced very well, and, to please her, he started to learn ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... 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, and my own ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... during the recital of the story. It was done in a way that was so real and genuine that it completely broke them down. They declared that morning that they would not quickly judge anyone again. They had thought him phlegmatic and unlovable, and now here had come out from the heart of this Indian, of such a rugged exterior, a story and an exhibition of love and devotion more genuine and beautiful than any that had ever been revealed to ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... these villains?" I burst out, and my indignation was not only against them for their cruelty, but also against their victim for his phlegmatic attitude toward them. It was difficult to ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... The phlegmatic sentry looked at me cunningly. His face lapsed into a broad grin. Growling "danker!" (thank you!) he calmly took it and lighted up. From this incident I discovered that even a thick-skulled, dull-witted German infantryman has a ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... old ideas of physiology, one of the four "humours" or fluids which composed the body. Where it abounded it made men dull and heavy, or as we still say "phlegmatic." ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... we should naturally expect from the same sanguine disposition. He shewed us that grey hairs could add nothing but hypocrisy to him; for he avowed public prostitution, laughed at all honour, public spirit, and patriotism; and gave convincing proofs that the most phlegmatic old miser upon earth could not be sooner tempted with gold to perpetrate the most ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... He even had to manoeuvre daily how to escape him, and violent scenes were of constant occurrence between them. Eric could not, and would not, brook his bullying with silence. His resentment was loud and stinging, and, Ishmaelite as Barker was, even his phlegmatic temperament took fire when Eric shouted his fierce and uncompromising retorts in the hearing ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... off and being properly domiciled; the confusion of tongues and peculiarity of temperament resembled the Babel of old. Here the mercurial Son of France in search of a case of red wine, hot and impulsive, belching forth "sacres" with a velocity well sustained. The phlegmatic German stirred to excitability in quest of a "small cask of lager and large box of cheese;" John Chinaman "Hi yah'd" for one "bag lice all samee hab one Melican man," while a chivalric but seedy-looking Southerner, who ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... length, by fate's transferred decree, The visitor becomes the visitee, Oh, then, indeed, it pulls another string; Your ox is gored, and that's a different thing! Your friend is sick: phlegmatic as a Turk, You write your recipe and let it work; Not yours to stand the shiver and the frown, And sometimes worse, with which your draught goes down. Calm as a clock your knowing hand directs, Rhei, jalapae ana grana sex, Or traces on some tender missive's back, Scrupulos duos ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... which is beyond hope and beyond pity—overshadows, like a ghastly image of doom seated upon a remote throne in the chill twilight of some far Ultima Thule, all the events, so curious, so ironic, so devastating, which happen to his lethargic and phlegmatic son. It is this imaginative element in his work which, in the final issue, really and truly counts. For it is a matter of small significance whether the scene of a writer's choice be the uplands of Wessex or the jungles of the tropics, as long as that ironic and passionate consciousness of the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... would start things off and get the rest moving, the 82nd Line regiment was brought to Rennes. This regiment was commanded by Colonel Pinoteau, an energetic and capable man, very brave, but something of a hothead, although he appeared outwardly phlegmatic. He was a follower of Bernadotte and one of the most enthusiastic of the conspirators. He promised to deliver his regiment, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... of Vezelay he spoke before the king; and Louis the Seventh, with his nobles, received their crosses from his hand. The abbot of Clairvaux then marched to the less easy conquest of the emperor Conrad: [311] a phlegmatic people, ignorant of his language, was transported by the pathetic vehemence of his tone and gestures; and his progress, from Constance to Cologne, was the triumph of eloquence and zeal. Bernard applauds his own success in the depopulation of Europe; affirms ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... .... We are tolerably phlegmatic and notoriously hard to provoke. We look on with considerable composure while our favourite Chinaman is being dismembered in the streets, and our dog publicly insulted. Detecting an alien hand in our trousers pocket excites in us only a feeling of temperate disapprobation, ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... trailed on the flight of steps below. This being done, he began to look on tranquilly, whistling from time to time when a blackbird flitted past. Suddenly, at the moment when the superintendent's assistants were preparing to execute Charmolue's phlegmatic order, he threw his leg over the balustrade of the gallery, seized the rope with his feet, his knees and his hands; then he was seen to glide down the facade, as a drop of rain slips down a window-pane, rush to the two executioners with ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... losses; nay, even a complete view of his ledger and day-book, together with the regular balancings of his accounts, would probably not afford quite so much entertainment, even to a reader of the most unblemished integrity and phlegmatic temper, as the adventures of Gil Blas, and Jonathan Wild, adorned with all the wit of Le Sage, and humour of Fielding. When Gil Blas lays open his whole heart to us, and tells us all his sins, unwhipt of justice, we give him credit for making ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... this sudden outburst on the part of a man whom up to that time he had taken to be unusually cool-headed and phlegmatic, did not immediately answer. He was watching the Ellersdeane constable, who was running after Gabriel Chestermarke's rapidly retreating figure. He saw Gabriel stop, listen to an evident question, and then lift his hand and point to various features of the Hollow. The policeman touched ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... from Mars understand this better, for their quarter is a penal colony. Sleepy-eyed, phlegmatic Martians, self-condemned for minute violations of their incredible and complex mores—without guards save themselves—will return to the subterranean cities, complex philosophies, and cool, dry air of Mars when they have declared their own sentences ...
— Foundling on Venus • John de Courcy
... of England loudly complained of these outrages; the nation was fired with resentment, and cried for vengeance; but the minister appeared cold, phlegmatic, and timorous. He knew that a war would involve him in such difficulties as must of necessity endanger his administration. The treasure which he now employed for domestic purposes, must in that case be expended in military armaments; the wheels of that machine on which he had raised ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... asked of his companion, in a bantering voice. "I should have pictured you grandly jovial, wreathed perhaps with ruddy vine-leaves, the light of inspiration in your eye, and in your hand a mantling goblet! Drink, man, drink! you need a stimulant, an exhilarant, an anti-phlegmatic, a counter-irritant against English spleen. You are still on the other side of the Alps, of the Channel; the fogs yet cling about you. Clear your brow, O painter of Ossianic wildernesses! Taste the foam of life! ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... Shuster was so recently driven for trying to give to a people a sense of national self-respect; in India, where an Emperor moves a national capital to pacify submerged discontent; and even in far Cathay, the mystery land of Marco Polo, immobile, phlegmatic, individualistic China, men have been waging war for the philosophy incorporated in the first ten lines ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... people. From a defect in the former of these qualities arises a want of taste; a weakness in the latter constitutes a wrong or a bad one. There are some men formed with feelings so blunt, with tempers so cold and phlegmatic, that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives. Upon such persons the most striking objects make but a faint and obscure impression. There are others so continually in the agitation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "Bother you, you phlegmatic old cow," cried a merry voice. "Here we have spent ten minutes palavering your boy, in order to make him let us surprise you, and then when we spring it on you, you don't budge. Wasn't ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... at the odd-looking instruments the medical man was taking from the case, but Thorndyke watched his movements with phlegmatic indifference. He stood erect; threw back his shoulders; expanded his massive chest and struck it with his clenched fist in ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... Henry?" inquired George Townsley, a thick-set, sedate young man, with an intelligent, but rather phlegmatic look. ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... that it is possible to conceive, there will always be some men large and others small, some weak and some strong, some phlegmatic and some nervous, some more intelligent, others less so, some superior in mental power, others in muscular strength; and it is well that it should be so; moreover, ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... shared Annie's bedroom, and Annie was rather startled one evening to hear this phlegmatic young person burst out into a strong tirade against Hester and Dora. Dora had managed, for some inexplicable reason, to offend Susan, and Susan now looked to Annie for sympathy, and boldly suggested that they should get up what she was ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... the Great Eastern Railway. The Mackwayte's house was plainly indicated, about 200 yards down on the right-hand side, by a knot of errand boys and bareheaded women grouped on the side-walk. A large, phlegmatic policeman ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... the House of Commons itself, in the most gross and vilifying language.(5) In short, the plot thickens fast, and Catilines start up in every street. I cannot say Ciceros and Catos arise to face them. The phlegmatic and pedants in history quote King William's and Sacheverel's times to show the present is not more serious; but if I have any reading, I must remember that the repetition of bad scenes brings about a catastrophe ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... and black-eyed are more precocious in this respect than the light-haired and blue-eyed; that the fat, sluggish girl is more tardy than the slender, active one; that, in general, what is known as the nervo-bilious temperament is ever ahead of that called the lymphatic or phlegmatic. ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... large can and ale-glasses, with a plate of tobacco, sat some half-dozen men, enjoying their pipe and glass. In the chimney corner sat Thomas Dickons, the faithful under-bailiff of Mr. Aubrey, a big broad-shouldered, middle-aged man, with a hard-featured face and a phlegmatic air. In the opposite corner sat the little grizzle-headed clerk and sexton, old Hallelujah—(as he was called, but his real name was Jonas Higgs.) Beside him sat Pumpkin, the gardener at the Hall, a very frequent guest at the Aubrey Arms o' nights—always ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... not love. He ruled her—she was his property. She found it easier to accept his rule than to rebel. Had his treatment of her descended to brutality, she would have flown to her lover or else died. One critic says: "Laura must have been of a phlegmatic type, not of a fine or sensitive nature, and all of her wants were satisfied, her life protected and complete. The adoration of Petrarch was not a necessity to her—it came in as a pleasing diversion, a beautiful compliment, but something she could easily do without. Had she been a maid and been ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... pijjin!" he shouted, gesticulating and showing more excitement than he had ever displayed before, his disposition generally being phlegmatic in the extreme. "One big smokee go long. Me see three piecee ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... time. The monotony of the weird song of the sea winds, the nerve-tearing, lazy creak of the wooden timbers, the sinuous crawling, rolling, or plunging over the most wondrous of God's works, invariably produces a sepulchral impression even on the most phlegmatic mind, but to the mystically constituted brain of Nelson, under all the varied thoughts that came into his brain during the days and nights of watching and searching for those people he termed "the pests of the human race," it ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... to save his all. The mason with his trowel in his hand, rushes from the half-finished wall; Pat drops his hod between heaven and earth and slides down the ladder, muttering: "Oi'll have me moaney or Oi'll have blood!" The fat phlegmatic Dutchman, dozing behind his bar, wakes to the situation and waddles down the street, puffing and blowing like an engine, and muttering: "Mine Got in Himmel—mine debosit ish boosted!" And thus they make the run on the bank, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... lamp-light between a red-covered round table and the fire, a flaxen haired cherub by her side—for so did his ingenuous inexperience picture domestic happiness—he required the dominating characteristic of angelic placidity. Perhaps his foster-mother and the comfort Ben Flint found in her mild and phlegmatic devotion had something to do ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... go, and was intensely amused by all he saw. The young Lakes were so thoroughly in the habit of taking every thing, whether commonplace or curious, in the same phlegmatic fashion, that Jan's pleasure was a new pleasure to his foster- mother, and ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... exclaimed Asa, usually one of the most phlegmatic of the youths, "the girl is blown away ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... I am flatter than a denial or a pancake; emptier than Judge Parke's wig when the head is in it; duller than a country stage when the actors are off it,—-a cipher, an o! I acknowledge life at all only by an occasional convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world; life is weary of me. My day is gone into twilight, and I don't think it worth the expense of candles. My wick bath a thief in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it. I inhale ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... is to be taken of Burns as a man will have many and various answers. Those who still denounce him as the chief of sinners, and without mercy condemn him out of his own mouth, are those whom Burns has pilloried to all posterity. There are dull, phlegmatic beings with blood no warmer than ditch-water, who are virtuous and sober citizens because they have never felt the force of temptation. What power could tempt them? The tree may be parched and blistered in the heat of noonday, but the parasitical fungus draining its sap remains cool—and poisonous. ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... watching von Francius and listening to his sharp speeches. I remembered what Anna Sartorius had said in describing this haupt-probe to me. It was all just as she had said. He was severe; his speeches roused the phlegmatic blood, set the professional instrumentalists laughing at their amateur co-operators, but provoked no reply or resentment. It was extraordinary, the effect of this man's will upon those he had to do with—upon ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... which such a girl as Charlotte Marsden appeared as the glowing embodiment of the vivid and intense spirit of the present age. Her naturally energetic and mercurial nature had been cradled among the excitements of the gayest and giddiest city on the continent. A phlegmatic uncle had remarked to her, in view of inherited and developed characteristics, "Lottie, what in ordinary girls is a soul, in you is a flame ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... all was quiet and tame. The Belgians had lost their original antipathy to Bonaparte, without having yet had time to acquire any warmth of interest for the Bourbons. Natively phlegmatic, they demand great causes or strong incitement to rouse them from that sort of passiveness that is the offspring of philosophy and timidity- philosophy, that teaches them to prize 'the blessings of safety ; and timidity, that points out the dangers of enterprise. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... moralist asks is, Shall we gain or lose by surrendering human life to the relative spirit? Experience answers that the dominant tendency of life is to turn ascertained truth into a dead letter, to make us all the phlegmatic servants of routine. The relative spirit, by its constant dwelling on the more fugitive conditions or circumstances of things, breaking through a thousand rough and brutal classifications, and giving elasticity to inflexible principles, begets ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... but under his calm and somewhat self-repressed exterior there was a fervor which made him easily find poetry and romance among the events of every-day life. And perhaps poetry and romance are as plentiful as ever in the world except for those phlegmatic natures who I suspect would in any age have regarded them as a dull form of erroneous thinking. They exist very easily in the same room with the microscope and even in railway carriages: what banishes them in the vacuum ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the country, hitherto an oligarchy, and forced the States to invest him with absolute power. He was a man of enlightened and strong mind, firmly attached to the Lutheran religion; his disposition was cold, unfeeling, and phlegmatic, utterly destitute of imagination. He had just lost his queen, Ulrica Eleonora, and he appeared to feel her death more than could have been expected from a man of his character. He became even more gloomy and silent than before, and his incessant application to business proved ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... part of the work was performed at midsummer under the rays of a scorching sun, the cattle were, of course, irritable and restive to a degree that in colder weather would have seemed inconsistent with the phlegmatic characteristics of their race. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... for every lawful purpose of life, and a very material part of prudence is to judge rightly, and make the best of them. If you have to deal, for example, with a phlegmatic gloomy man, take him, if you can, over his bottle. This advice may seem, at first view, to give countenance to a species of fraud: but is it so? These hypochondriacal people have their fits and starts, and if you do not take them when they are in ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... called the intellectual faculties. Thus, it may he observed, that a man of a sanguine constitution, is commonly lively, ingenious, full of imagination, passionate, voluptuous, enterprising; whilst the phlegmatic man is dull, of a heavy understanding, slow of conception, inactive, difficult to be moved, pusillanimous, without imagination, or possessing it in a less lively degree, incapable of taking any strong measures, or ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of his topic, to take the most effective ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... stolid and phlegmatic!" muttered Mr. Dane, as he read the inscription. (Evidently that remark ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... submissive, but now savage and vindictive natives. It was no slight cause probably which had induced them to revolt. The cruelty and tyranny, the exactions and treachery of the white man had at length raised their phlegmatic natures, and they were about to exact a bitter revenge for long years of oppression and wrong. As in many similar instances, the innocent were doomed to suffer with the guilty; and as far as we had been able to judge, our friend Senhor Pimento had treated those around him with ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... true that Vienna is the home of purity, of early retirers, of phlegmatic and virtuous souls? Are its gaieties mere febrile imaginings of liquorish dreamers? Is it, after all, the Los Angeles of Europe? Or, despite its appearances, is it truly the gayest city in the world, redolent of romance, bristling with intrigue, polluted with ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... polluted by the divinity." As an additional argument against the cause being divine, he adduces the fact that this disease is hereditary, like other diseases, and that it attacks persons of a peculiar temperament, namely, the phlegmatic, but not the bilious; and "yet if it were really more divine than the others," he justly adds, "it ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... family, though apparently phlegmatic, are somewhat given to Blowing up, and, when about to die, instead of taking the matter coolly and philosophically, they are always terribly Flurried. In fact, the whale, when in articulo mortis, makes a more tremendous rumpus about its latter end than any other animal either of the sea ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... fellow-citizen, I "bit in my breath and swallered it down." I adopted the course Mr. Maskelyne told me he did with the Davenports, sat with my eyes open and my mouth shut. It is marvellous to see how excited we phlegmatic islanders grow when either spirits are brought to the front, or we think we have found out a conjuring trick. I am not going to follow the example of my gushing brethren, but I can safely say that ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... we want you," replied the baron—a phlegmatic man, who, nevertheless, saw the quivering lip, and turned away hastily. For he knew that mademoiselle would never forgive herself, or him, if she broke ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... sword—stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord; for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium—scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps—and knocked their flag and scepter, their laws and bayonets into the sluggish waters of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... see us at a funeral, or when we're suffering from cold feet, then they'd see us smiling and singing! No wonder the French have never really recovered from the gaiety of the British soldier as he went into battle. But if they really want to see the average Britisher looking every bit as phlegmatic as his Continental reputation, they should look at him when he's out for a day's gaiety. No wonder that men, when they "go to the dogs," go to Paris. "The dogs" at home are too much like a moral purge to make a long stay in the "kennel" anything but a ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... either a gift of nature or the reward of study. But I, the Baital, the devil, ask you, what is a born philosopher, save a man of cold desires? And what is a bred philosopher but a man who has survived his desires? A young philosopher? - a cold-blooded youth! An elderly philosopher? —a leuco-phlegmatic old man! Much nonsense, of a verity, ye hear in praise of nothing from your Rajaship's Nine Gems of Science, and from ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... apoplexy, and was succeeded by his son George II., a man who resembled his father in disposition and character, and was superior to him in knowledge of the English constitution, though both were inclined to steer the British bark by the Hanoverian rudder. Like his father, he was reserved, phlegmatic, cautious, sincere, fond of business, economical, and attached to Whig principles. He was fortunate in his wife, Queen Caroline, one of the most excellent women of the age, learned, religious, charitable, and sensible; the patroness of divines and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... to these things his person was unpopular. His phlegmatic Dutch habits contrasted unfavorably with those of the graceful Stuarts, whose evil qualities were forgotten in the remembrance of their showy characteristics. Neither his Dutch followers nor his Dutch manners were regarded with favor; and had it not been for his eminently kingly capacity, these ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... she came panting in upon drowsy Sheelah, startling that phlegmatic person out of an honest ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... of Wales be empowered to exercise the Royal Authority; whereupon the Prince at the palace, having heard the Address, read a reply, sufficiently startling to the country, though well foreknown to those present: he laid stress upon the new conditions of the world—that phlegmatic eye, which had seen so much, lifting a moment in punctuation to dwell coldly upon his hearers, then coldly reading again; the difficulties, he said, which he was called upon to face on behalf of His Majesty were not lightly to be ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... America. It is one of the most nervous and restless animals we know. An individual of sanguine temperament rarely is seen. Out of about forty specimens with which we have been well acquainted, I do not recall one that was as quiet and phlegmatic as the raccoon, the nearest relative of Nasua. With a disposition so restless and enterprising, and with such vigor of body and mind, I count it strange that the genus Nasua has not spread all over our south-eastern states, where it is surely fitted to exist in a state of nature even ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... be no easy matter to fix, and I am afraid the poet himself did not here see very clearly what he would be at. Philinte, however, with his illusory justification of the way of the world, and his phlegmatic resignation, he paints throughout as the intelligent and amiable man. As against the elegant Celimene, Alceste is most decidedly in the right, and only in the wrong in the inconceivable weakness of his conduct towards her. He is in the right ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... add that, desperate as your case seems to be, I participate in your sanguine hopes? I do not deem them entirely romantic, but share in that which the phlegmatic would call the frenzy of your mind; and half-persuade myself that you will ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... be entirely owing to the particular animation attending that period of life; for, after attaining a certain age, there is hardly any distinction. Upon the whole, a very remarkable sameness seems to characterize the countenances of the whole nation; a dull phlegmatic want of expression, with very little variation, being strongly marked in all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... one's soul terribly, especially when he improvised, he would suddenly, as if to take away the impression and remembrance of his sorrow from others and from himself, turn stealthily to a glass, arrange his hair and his cravat, and show himself suddenly transformed into a phlegmatic Englishman, into an impertinent old man, into a sentimental and ridiculous Englishwoman, into a sordid Jew. The types were always sad, however comical they might be, but perfectly conceived and so delicately rendered that one could not grow weary ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... New Yorker in appearance, thirty-two years old, good-looking, manly, self-poised, and somewhat phlegmatic in temperament. ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... a blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did the year after, another, a little before the fire; the old women, and the phlegmatic hypochondriac part of the other sex, whom I could almost call the old women too, remarked, especially afterward, though not till both those judgments were over, that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses that it ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... psychologists and philosophers have been too broad and too classical to be of practical value. Sanguine and choleric temperament, the bilious, the nervous and the phlegmatic, the quick and the slow, all these are broad divisions, and no man really exemplifies them. What I propose to do is less ambitious, but perhaps more practical. I shall take a few of the qualities with which the previous pages have concerned themselves and show how they work out in individuals ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... If they had been miserable they would have charged this fairy scene of the night with a criminal heartlessness; but as they were joyous, they vaguely wondered how the purple sea, the yellow stars, the changing crowds under the electric lights could be so phlegmatic and stolid. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... your promise of coming to visit me. I fear you must be very solitary at Hornsea. How hard to some people of the world it would seem to live your life! how utterly impossible to live it with a serene spirit and an unsoured disposition! It seems wonderful to me, because you are not, like Mrs. ——, phlegmatic and impenetrable, but received from nature feelings of the very finest edge. Such feelings, when they are locked up, sometimes damage the mind and temper. They don't with you. It must be partly principle, partly self-discipline, which keeps you ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... second, and darted alter the housekeeper. Ah! she did not need to go far. Leaning over the banisters, she saw Madame Leon and the Marquis de Valorsay in earnest conversation in the hall below; the marquis as phlegmatic and as haughty as usual, but the house-keeper fairly excited. Marguerite at once understood that as Madame Leon knew that the marquis was among the funeral guests, she had gone to warn him of Madame de Fondege's presence. ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... don't go away from her—" he broke off, and walked restlessly around the room, limping occasionally from force of habit. "It's easy enough for a cold-blooded chap like you to say 'wait.' But she doesn't help me, she doesn't help me! You phlegmatic people don't know how emotion, even the sight of emotion, goes to the head—or you'd never be actors. You wouldn't dare.—I am mad about her now, absolutely mad about her. Absurd, isn't it?" He gave a forlorn laugh. "In the words of ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... in other respects. It is remarkable that all the early faces of the Madonna are especially stupid, and all of the same type, a sort of face such as one might carve on a pumpkin, representing a heavy, sulky, phlegmatic woman, with a long and low arch of the nose. This same dull face continues to be assigned to the Madonna, even when the countenances of the surrounding saints and angels are characterized with power and beauty, so that I think there must ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... most ardent and the coolest man alive. When his emotions slumbered he appeared almost phlegmatic; when they were moved he was no less than passionate. And now, without having quite intended an early marriage, he put the question plainly. It came with all the ardour which was the accumulation of long years behind a ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... no worse than his former Commander-in-Chief, though he may have been oftener culpable, being so much more excitable than the phlegmatic Washington. ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... a deep breath and his heart gave a great throb, as would be the case with the most phlegmatic being who contemplated the near possession of such vast wealth. Visions of the wild round of dissipation and excesses in which they would indulge came up before the two evil men, and it was no wonder that they were impatient for ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... to go to Switzerland and be happy in, all in celebration of Charles Knollys's majority and marriage to his young wife. So they had both forgotten heaven for the nonce, having a passable substitute; but the powers divine overlooked them pleasantly and forgave it. And even the phlegmatic driver of their Einspaenner looked back from the corner of his eye at the schoene Englaenderin, and compared her mentally with the far-famed beauty of the Koenigssee. So they rattled on in their curious conveyance, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various |
