"Phlegmatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... New Inverness, and Frederica. The colonists were of different nationalities, widely variant in character, religion and government. There were to be seen the depressed Briton from London; the hardy Gael from the Highlands of Scotland; the solemn Moravian from Herrnhut; the phlegmatic German from Salzburg in Bavaria; the reflecting Swiss from the mountainous and pastoral Grisons; the mercurial peasant from sunny Italy, and the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... a row," and take one's luck of the results. This craving to disturb the calm current of events, and the good conduct and composure of one's neighbours as a matter of diversion, must be incomprehensible by phlegmatic people, who never feel it, whilst some Irishmen, I fancy, never quite conquer it, perhaps because they never quite cease to be boys. In any degree I do not for an instant excuse it, and in excess it must be simply ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... news that seditious pasquinades had been found on the doors of the University not only took away the appetite from many and disturbed the digestion of others, but it even rendered the phlegmatic Chinese uneasy, so that they no longer dared to sit in their shops with one leg drawn up as usual, from fear of losing time in extending it in order to put themselves into flight. At eight o'clock in the morning, although the sun ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... untitled, and the remaining visitors were called for the purpose of being exhibited. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the chief lion of the evening. Clare was once more surprised on finding the great philosopher a heavy, stout, phlegmatic-looking man, instead of the pale dreamer pictured by his imagination. He was slightly annoyed, too, on hearing the famous sage talk incessantly, to the exclusion of every one else, notably of William Hazlitt, who sat close to him, and of Charles Elton, the translator of the 'Hesiod,' ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... monumentum aere perennius." You may either go along it all the way to Buffalo on Lake Erie or by the stage; or sometimes on one and then in the other, just as you think fit. Grand indeed is the scenery by either route and capital the accommodations. Cold and phlegmatic must he be who is not warmed into admiration by the surrounding scenery, and charmed with the affability of the travellers he meets on ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... high and courageous songs, loving songs, and songs of faith. Lady Dorinda, having shut her curtain for the night, declined to take any part in this household festivity, though she contributed some unheard sighs and groans of annoyance during its progress. A phlegmatic woman, fond of her ease, could hardly keep her tranquillity, besieged by cannon in the daytime, and by chattering and laughter, the cracking of nuts and the thump of soldiers' feet ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... nature; I, being young, was full of amazement at the news just given us and of the excitement of hunting down the man we knew as Sir Gilbert Carstairs. But I am not sure that Mr. Lindsey struggled much with anything—he was cool and phlegmatic as usual, and immediately began to ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... feelings are slow, but for that reason surer when once aroused. The Emperor's enormous fame had preceded him; and the appearance among them of this genius, all fire and flame, who had come, as he said, to adopt them, warmed their phlegmatic nature. They were at once filled with admiration; his presence, his trust in them, his consoling and encouraging words, the good works at once begun by his active and able ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... the next day to Geneva. John Yeardley has preserved, in his diary of this part of the journey, a little anecdote of French character which naturally struck him the more forcibly from his having hitherto been conversant only with the phlegmatic temperament of the Germans. The coachman, it should be said, was of ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... you could plant a seed according to directions and it would produce a plant which seemed to resemble in a general way the picture on the outside of the package. Now, under the fluctuating influences of irresponsible isotherms, phlegmatic Springs, rare June weather and overdone weather in August, I find it almost impossible to produce a plant or vegetable which in any way resembles its portrait. Is it my fault or the fault of the climate? I wish the ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... says Dr. Leake, "of taking snuff, is that of sneezing, which, in sluggish phlegmatic habits, will give universal concussion to the body, and promote a more free circulation of the blood; but of this benefit snuff-takers are deprived, from being familiar with its use." When the stimulus of snuff ceases to be ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the course of the Revolution there were thirty thousand Hessians in the British armies in America, and, as their owners, the German princelings, received L5 apiece for them it was a profitable arrangement for those phlegmatic, corpulent, and braggart personages. The Americans complained that the Hessians were brutal and tricky fighters; but in reality they merely carried out the ideals of their German Fatherland which remained behind the rest of Europe in its ideals of what was fitting in war. Being uncivilized, ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... in actual battle, was phlegmatic, and constitutionally lazy and happy. When enjoying his German pipe he felt impressibly serene, and did not care to be disturbed. He therefore paid no attention to the angry manner of Montague, who brushed past him repeatedly in his hasty ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... for your story of the phlegmatic musical animal who called forth such stormy devotion in a female breast, and who, himself cold and indifferent, was loved to the extent of a watery grave being sought by his inamorata as solace for his indifference, let me ask the question why the women who torment men with their uncertain ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... earthy temperament are most vehemently aroused. Even so, on the other hand, a man fails to 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 incontinence, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... not thirty years ago. Another work, issued also in London, says, "Cynthia, 'the queen of heaven,' as the ancients termed her, or the MOON, the companion of the earth, and chief source of our evening light, is a cold, moist, watery, phlegmatic planet, variable to an extreme, in astrological science; and partaking of good or evil, as she is aspected by good or evil stars. When angular and unafflicted in a nativity, she is the promissory pledge ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... backward by a dead fist separated from its parent body, yet on this occasion this actually happened to me, and, what is more, the fist had a spear in it. The camels tried to rise and bolt, but they are phlegmatic brutes, and, as ours were tired as well, we succeeded ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... dogs, and also rather resembled the Chinese chow, with broad heads and rather short muzzles, prick ears, and a tail inclined to curl over the back. "All these people have a very cheerful disposition, laughing often, yet at the same time they are somewhat phlegmatic. They talk very deliberately, as if desiring to make themselves well understood, and, stopping suddenly, they reflect for a long time, when they resume ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... 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 must have been one long heartache. No wonder that he lets fly ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... have found the following plan to answer best in certainly more than half the cases that have come under my observation: The first five minutes of the bath may be occupied by a general galvanic current of medium intensity, descending where the patient is of an irritable, ascending where of a phlegmatic temperament. The pole connected with the foot electrode should now be detached, and the surface board substituted. The second five or ten minutes may be consumed by running a galvanic current between the head electrode and the surface board, the ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... appeal, Allow them accent, cadence,—fools may feel; 960 But, spite of all the criticising elves, Those who would make us feel, must feel themselves. His eyes, in gloomy socket taught to roll, Proclaim'd the sullen 'habit of his soul:' Heavy and phlegmatic he trod the stage, Too proud for tenderness, too dull for rage. When Hector's lovely widow shines in tears, Or Rowe's[75] gay rake dependent virtue jeers, With the same cast of features he is seen ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... The phlegmatic German smiled, and in a guttural voice announced that his terms were three dollars a day, including rooms and meals, which, when all the circumstances are considered, was not extravagant. The party carried their luggage to their rooms, where they prepared themselves for the meal, which was satisfactory ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... half blocked, and cabs and omnibuses, in charge of overheated and eloquent drivers, were being filtered through the narrow space left at their disposal by a phlegmatic policeman. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... reviving, Admiral Oakes," returned the phlegmatic surgeon; "but it is like the gleaming of sunshine that streams through clouds, as the great luminary sets ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... 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
... 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 undertaken, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... of bygone days, Jeanne with tears in her throat, and Rosalie in the quiet tone of a phlegmatic peasant. The servant kept referring to the subject of unpaid interests; and at last requested Jeanne to give her up all the business papers that Jeanne, in her ignorance of money matters, was hiding from her, out ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... wisdom by holding his peace at all times, except when very hard pressed by hunger or pain, and appeared to regard life in general in a grave, earnest, inquiring spirit. Nevertheless, we would not have it understood that Will was a slow, phlegmatic baby. By no means. His silence was deep, his gravity profound, and his earnestness intense, so that, as a rule, his existence was unobtrusive. But his energy was tremendous. What he undertook to do he usually did with all his might ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... thought that a spirit of observation is necessary in order to our doing or communicating much good; and were it not for a very phlegmatic habit, I think my soul would be richer. I, however, appear to myself to have lost much of my capacity for making observations, improvements, etc., or of retaining what I attend to closely. For instance, I have been near three years learning the Sanskrit language, ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... authorities at all. Still, who would blame him? His action, when all is said and done, was merely typical of that "every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost" attitude assumed by latter-day neoteric Government institutions. But even the most phlegmatic member of the community will feel upset when the trousers which he has ordered are consigned by his tailor to somebody else, and on this occasion the War Office did gird up its loins and remonstrate in ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... halt nor haste. While his tumultuous friends, captivated by the absolute, adored and invoked splendid revolutionary adventures, Combeferre was inclined to let progress, good progress, take its own course; he may have been cold, but he was pure; methodical, but irreproachable; phlegmatic, but imperturbable. Combeferre would have knelt and clasped his hands to enable the future to arrive in all its candor, and that nothing might disturb the immense and virtuous evolution of the races. The good must be innocent, he repeated incessantly. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... authority in the administration of it. In corroboration of this, the little black eye of Judge Mondelet brightly twinkled, and he nodded his head in dignified approbation. Judge Van Feloon, who seemed more phlegmatic, quietly settled the matter by saying, that he supposed if a man did work for another, and the other had agreed to pay him, he was entitled to the money, and that therefore the court would have to see that a bargain had been made, and the work duly performed, and then decide. The next ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... much even for Ebenezer's phlegmatic spirit. He seized his broad-brimmed hat and clapped ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Wolford, phlegmatic as he was, seemed slightly moved by this unexpected change in the manner and position of Tompkins. He narrowly observed the expression of his face, but did not reply. He was afraid to trust himself to speak, lest he should betray ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... the field of fire was absolutely clear for at least two hundred yards in front. It is the most trying time of all, this waiting for the approach of an enemy you cannot see, and it tells on the most phlegmatic disposition. The men occupy the heavy moments by working the bolts of their rifles, and seeing that they work easily. The success or failure of the defence depends mainly on the speed and accuracy with which ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... which my bosom had long felt. He was, however, very unlike, in most respects, to myself. He was rather phlegmatic than ardent—slow in his fancies, and shy in his associations from very fastidiousness. He was too much governed by nice tastes, to be an active or performing youth; and too much restrained by them also, to be a popular one. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... native of the Island Empire smiles or scowls, exhibits surprise or fear, he apparently does these things with his whole soul. Such facial plasticity provides far more effective concealment of real emotions than the phlegmatic indifference of the Briton, who, in the words of Emerson, requires "pitchforks or the cry of 'fire!'" to ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... 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
... his cheek. The cards were so thumbed and tattered that by the backs of them each player guessed pretty shrewdly what the other held. Yet they went on playing night after night; the Snipe shrilly blessing or cursing his luck, the Scotsman phlegmatic as a bolster. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... with whom he was more intimate than any others of the party. He would not have been drawn to the Scotchman, but for his being Tom's room-mate. Through him he came to appreciate and respect the Scot's sterling virtues, and to overlook his dry, phlegmatic manner. ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the public. Originally a lawyer, he was in succession a mechanician, a poet, and an editor, meeting with far less success in each of these departments than usually attends men of less varied gifts, but of more tranquil and phlegmatic composition. But who is ignorant that there is a class of minds characterized by qualities like those I have mentioned; minds with many bright and even beautiful traits; but aimless and fickle as the butterfly; that settle upon every ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... niin sallittu" ("It is so ordained") is a sort of motto amongst this Northern people. Whether it is that they are phlegmatic, wanting in energy, fatalists, or what, one cannot say, but certain it is that they sit down and accept the inevitable as calmly as the Mohammedan does when he remarks: "It is ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... a highly nervous temperament, and it is just this sort of man who keeps his head in an emergency, whilst your level-headed, phlegmatic individual loses his balance. His first thought was of the children, his second of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the reputation of being dangerous and difficult of access. But the evidence of those who knew him best point to his having been phlegmatic rather than morose. He was "umbrageous," ready to be discomposed by the action of others, but, if not vexed or startled, he was elaborately courteous. He had a great dislike of any abrupt movement, and if he was startled, he had ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... habitation. Here they were met by an Indian, who, to Sir Christopher's inquiry if all was well, answered, sententiously, "All well." On arriving at the house, they found the soldier, Philip, who manifested his joy at seeing them again in a manner contrasting somewhat with that of the phlegmatic native. ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... seemed to have drawn them together—every feature and limb was round and fleshy, and, if a kind of brutal cunning had not marked the face, it might have been mistaken for an automaton, so unmixed was the phlegmatic fluid. The vital spark was buried deep in a soft mass of matter, resembling the pith in young elder, which, when found, is so equivocal, that it only appears a moister part of the ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... 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! We are in the land of Horace, and nunc est bibendum!—Seriously, do you ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... amazed by 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 ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... the phlegmatic attitude of a strong man who feels himself vanquished; his countenance, cold, silent, entirely English, revealed the consciousness of his dignity in a momentary resignation. Moreover, he had already thought, in spite of the vehemence of his anger, that it was scarcely prudent ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... 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 aspect of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Canton or Ava. Climate is not, therefore, able to change the colour of a nation; but it seems to have a greater effect on the temperament. Cold can produce a change of temperament from the melancholic and choleric to the phlegmatic and sanguine, and heat acting on the human frame, is capable of producing a contrary revolution. Hence, rosy cheeks and lips are frequently observed among the mountain Hindus of Nepal, although they are very little fairer than ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... farmer, as he is depicted by these white-handed rhetoricians who, like John Paul, "would never lay hand to a plow, unless said plow should actually pursue him to a second story, and then lay hands on it only to throw it out of the window," and the phlegmatic, overworked, horny-handed tillers of the soil are no more alike than Fenimore Cooper's handsome, romantic, noble, and impressive red man of the forest and the actual Sioux or Apache, as regarded by the cowboy ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... so well 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 state ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was typing up applications, examination reports and supply orders in the Childress Barber College, joking and flirting with barber students between classes, and naively declaiming to her ostensible employer, phlegmatic Oxvane Childress, how lucky it was for her that she was able to get a job right across the ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... four humors colored all the conceptions of disease; upon their harmony alone it was thought that health depended. The four temperaments, sanguine, phlegmatic, bilious and melancholic, corresponded with the prevalence of these humors. The body was composed of certain so-called "naturals," seven in number—the elements, the temperaments, the humors, the members or parts, the virtues or faculties, the operations or functions and the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... said, was an avowed enemy of the feline tribe. Unlike Scarlatti, who was passionately fond of chords of the diminished cats, the phlegmatic Johannes spent much of his time at his window, particularly of moonlit nights, practising counterpoint on the race of cats, the kind that infest back yards of dear old Vienna. Dr. Antonin Dvorak had made his beloved friend and master a present of a peculiar bow ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... car, some chickens, and a pair of boots. There was a fusty little tavern down the street, full of laughing soldiers. In the corner a fat, middle-aged woman sat weeping quietly on a sack. The host, sullen and phlegmatic, answered every question with a shake of the head and a muttered "N'importe." The money he threw contemptuously on the counter. The soldiers thought they were spies. "As speaking the langwidge," I asked him what ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... go,—oui?—then go!"—with a chuckle. "All right, gluck Zu!" And so shuffled out. Latent fever? Doubtless, yet hardly from broken bones, the doctor thought,—with no suspicion of the subtile, intolerable passion smouldering in every drop of this man's phlegmatic blood. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... music sometimes discouraged 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 of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... end of which 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 the swiftness of a cat which has fallen ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... necessary things to the end that he might have funds to back her heavily when she ran; and the high trials she had given him when asked the question, and which had gladdened his heart and brought an exclamation of satisfaction from his phlegmatic trainer; the girlish interest of his daughter in the expected triumph—all these contingencies were as less than nothing should the boy, with the look of a demon in his eyes, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... if she's willing!' With the phlegmatic dogmatism that was part of him, Somers added: 'When you have decided to marry, take the first nice woman you meet. ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... friendly, the chiefs, after the usual salutations have been exchanged, generally ride out and accompany the commander of the party some distance, holding a friendly talk, and, at the same time, indulging their curiosity by learning the news, etc. Phlegmatic and indifferent as they appear to be, they are very inquisitive and observing, and, at the same time, exceedingly circumspect and cautious about disclosing their ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... Grecian, as I have said elsewhere; supplying the poverty of his language by his musical ear, and by his diligence. But to return: our two great poets, being so different in their tempers, one choleric and sanguine, the other phlegmatic and melancholic; that which makes them excel in their several ways is, that each of them has followed his own natural inclination, as well in forming the design, as in the execution of it. The very ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Some might be found, as well, to discredit the notion that there would supervene, on the consigning to the limbo of inutile political systems of the disabling regime that now governs, an epoch, which would witness the shaking off, by the heavy, phlegmatic red man of the present, of his dull lethargy, with the casting behind him of former inaction and unproductiveness; and his being moved to assert a healthy, genuine, wholesome activity, to be directed to lofty or soulful purpose, or expressed in high and honourable endeavour. And it might be set ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Phlegmatic rather than emotional, and wholly secretive, he had accustomed himself to regard romantic ideality, and susceptibility to sentimentality as a species of intellectual anaemia; holding himself always thoroughly in hand, when subjected to the softening influences that now and then invaded ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... The phlegmatic physician continued his investigations with true German thoroughness and deliberation. It was well that the child's worst symptoms had been relieved before he came, for he seemed bent on having the whole history of the case ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... temperaments into phlegmatic or lymphatic, sanguine, choleric, and nervous or melancholy, is a fairly good foundation for preliminary observation, especially as each of the four subdivides itself easily into two types—the hard and soft—reforms itself easily into some cross-divisions, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... be close to three weeks before they would see that familiar field and hangar again, and in that time if all went well they would circle the huge globe upon which they and their fellow-men lived. It was truly a most inspiring thought—one to have filled less phlegmatic blood than theirs ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... with anglomania, had brought out his own hunting establishment, which was exclusively Britannic, and placed it under orders of the Master of the Hunt. Now, one of his men, a little Englishman,—fair, pale, insolent, and phlegmatic, scarcely able to speak a word of French, and dressed with a neatness which distinguishes all Britons, even those of the lower classes,—had posted himself on one side of this open space. John Barry wore a short frock-coat, buttoned tightly at the waist, made of scarlet cloth, with buttons ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... repeated indignantly; "of course I want to! If this were only next Thursday night—But between now and Friday I'll do nothing but fret away my strength. Oh, I'm not saying I don't need the rehearsals! But I don't need them strung out through a week. That system's well enough for phlegmatic singers; it only drains me. Every single feature of operatic routine is detrimental to me. I usually go on like a horse that's been fixed to lose a race. I have to work hard to do my worst, let alone my best. I wish you could hear me sing well, once," she turned to Fred ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Individuals who are phlegmatic, matter-of-fact, and not very intense in their feelings might be inclined to ridicule this anxiety and suffering on the part of the parents, for so slight a cause; they would fail to understand it. But any mother with children of her own would understand perfectly and be ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... to the conclusion, in his heavy, phlegmatic way, that perhaps, as it was getting dark and he was very hungry, it would be as well to go and get something to eat. So, moving his huge body, and his short, stumpy legs, he prepared to look ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... down solemnly 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
... and who had said, "O, never fear—you will speak well!" he would have said nothing. The shy sprite in his own eyes would have read in his neighbor's eyes the dreadful truth that his sympathetic neighbor would have indubitably betrayed—a fear that he would not do well. The phlegmatic and stony Englishman neither felt nor cared whether Hawthorne spoke well or ill; and, although pleased that he did speak well, invested no particular sympathy in the matter, either for or against, and so spared Hawthorne's shyness the last bitter drop in the cup, which would have been a recognition ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... all, as though his eye had power to pierce the dust-cloud, and now he, too, lost his phlegmatic calm. He threw up his arms as if in prayer and shouted, as though his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... face with patient expectation. If Gyp had had a tail he would doubtless have wagged it, but being destitute of that vehicle for his emotions, he was like many other worthy personages, destined to appear more phlegmatic than ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... are not worth anything," she replied nonchalantly. "As a nation, you might sometimes give us the impression of being phlegmatic and slow-witted. Both ideas may have some basis of fact, yet not be absolutely true. We are not all abnormally quick in America. Look at ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... epidemics of credulity and suspicion, in short, enthusiasm and panic, especially if he is French, that is to say, excitable and communicative, easily thrown off his balance and prompt to accept foreign impulsion, deprived of the natural ballast which a phlegmatic temperament and concentration of lonely meditations secure to his German and Latin neighbors; and all this we shall see at work.—These constitute some of the brute forces that control human life. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a little crestfallen, it may be, by my phlegmatic reception, so different from what he had looked for; with much apparent alacrity he commenced the survey; throwing open the cupboards on the first floor, and peering into the closets on the second; measuring ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... fluttering or chafing of her brown fingers, and not unfrequently by an impatient stamp, or other movement of her foot that exposed fairy toe and instep. Contemplation of the one rested and refreshed the observer; of the other, amused and excited him. Mr. Dorrance's phlegmatic nature found supreme content in dwelling upon the incarnation of patrician tranquillity at his right hand, and he regarded the actions of his frisky would-be tormentor very much as a placid, well-gorged salmon would survey, from his ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... six weeks 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, with the pole in the middle ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... little thought of getting out of it. This being so they looked for the same static conditions after death as they saw before it. A changeless heaven appalled them with no sense of monotony, nor did a changeless hell do anything to shake their nerves. Their nerves were not easily shaken. They were a phlegmatic race, placid, unimaginative, reposeful. ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... he, Martial, the phlegmatic sceptic, the man who boasted of his indifference and his insensibility, who had thus ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... opinions as to Carbury Hall, and its proprietor. The proprietor after a few weeks followed them up to London, and made a most matter-of-fact offer to the mother for the daughter's hand. He was at that time thirty-six, and Henrietta was not yet twenty. He was very cool;—some might have thought him phlegmatic in his love-making. Henrietta declared to her mother that she had not in the least expected it. But he was very urgent, and very persistent. Lady Carbury was eager on his side. Though the Carbury Manor House did not exactly suit her, it would do admirably for Henrietta. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... the diplomatic representatives of all the nations. That is the British ambassador, that stolid-faced, distinguished-looking, elderly man; and this is the French ambassador, dapper, volatile, plus-correct; here Russia's highest representative wags a huge, blond beard; and yonder is the phlegmatic German ambassador. Scattered around the table, brilliant splotches of color, are the uniformed envoys of the Orient—the smaller the country the more brilliant the splotch. It is a state dinner, to be followed by a state ball, and they ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... were proclaiming a foreign army the liberators of their country, while Jacobins growled fiercely against the Pope. Kosciusko, in Poland, organised a futile revolution, and fell in the cause of national freedom. Even phlegmatic Englishmen caught the spirit of the times, hated intensely or worshipped enthusiastically that liberty which some saw as an imperial goddess for the sake of whose bare limbs and pale, noble face death might be gladly met; while others ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... our wond'ring eyes With deeds magnanimous like these surprize, And lest some wretch, phlegmatic, dull, and cold, Without applause such actions should behold, Aloud to list'ning crowds your worth proclaim, Yourself the herald of your deathless fame. To spacious Berks your dignity avow, From Buscot's meads, to Windsor's lofty brow, Till LOVEDEN's daring insolence is o'er, ...
— An Heroic Epistle to the Right Honourable the Lord Craven (3rd Ed.) • William Combe
... defence of his holy sepulchre. [31] At the parliament 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; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... misery has now been actually acquired. We are prevented from enjoying the fruits of this acquisition, from making full use of the discoveries and inventions of the great intellects of our race, by nothing but the phlegmatic faculty of persistence in old habits which still keeps laws and institutions in force when the conditions that gave rise to them ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... and fervour of the lad had the effect of exciting even the constable's phlegmatic nature; so, after a short conversation, he summoned a comrade, and set off for the pass at a round trot, led ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sudden and violent passions into which he was apt to fall if thwarted or overlooked were purely Spanish; there seemed to be nothing of the patient, phlegmatic Netherlander about this side of him. Indeed it was this temper of his perhaps more than any other desire or tendency that made him so dangerous, for, whereas the impulses of his heart were often good enough, they ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Isaacs," he said aloud, coming up to us, "you know you won the game. Nobody stopped the ball after you hit it, and the saices say it ran right through the goal. So cheer up; you have got something for your pains and your tumble." It was quite true; the phlegmatic saices had watched the ball instead of the falling man. Miss Westonhaugh, who was really a sensible and self-possessed young woman, and had begun to be sure that the accident would have no serious results, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... 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
... qualities that compose what we commonly call a taste, vary exceedingly in 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 of gross and merely sensual pleasures, or so occupied in the low ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Lord Evandale, in his quaint, phlegmatic British fashion, "at disturbing the last sleep of the poor unknown body which did expect to rest in peace until the end of the world. The dweller below would willingly dispense with ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... For one to become an excellent tailor, all that is needed 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... not add much to our knowledge. You know what to expect—if the comparison will be pardoned —of a horse with certain points; but you wouldn't dare go on a journey with a man merely upon the strength of knowing that his temperament was the proper mixture of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. Science is not able to teach us concerning men as it teaches us of horses, though I am very far from saying that there are not traits of nobleness and of meanness that run through families and can be calculated to appear in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... help putting these things together in my mind during the glowing twilight. I felt as if walking in a cold shadow; an unconquerable sense of impending danger oppressed me. I tried to relieve myself by discussing the signs with the captain, but the phlegmatic Hollander only scoffed at my suspicions, and bade me ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... was?" said the Englishman with an expression of curiosity, which a close observer would have been astonished at discovering in his phlegmatic countenance. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... seen, by these figures, how a quiet or tranquil life affects longevity. The phlegmatic man will live longer, all other things being equal, than the sanguine, nervous individual. Marriage is favorable to longevity, and it has also been ascertained that women live longer ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... become a party to a series of cruelties, that may break the spirit, and, perhaps, shorten the life of their children. Unfortunately, the most promising minds are those that soonest yield to the effect of harsh discipline. The phlegmatic, the dull, and the commonplace vegetate easily through this state of probation. The blight that will destroy the rose, passes ever harmlessly over the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... enjoined deeds of heroism, cours d'amour, bombastic Troubadour songs and so forth, although it is to be observed that these last absurdities, which have an intellectual side, were principally at home in France; while among the material phlegmatic Germans the knights distinguished themselves more by drinking and robbing. Drinking and hoarding their castles with plunder were the occupations of their lives; and certainly there was no want of stupid love-songs in the courts. What has changed the ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... 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 attended ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... returned to his aunt's with the news that it was too late, for that all means of exit was closed. Dame Plomaert took the news philosophically. She was a woman of phlegmatic disposition, and objected to sudden movement and changes, and to her it seemed far less terrible to await quietly the fortunes of the siege than to undergo the fatigues of a journey on horseback and the uncertainty of an ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... flavors—flavors many and flue, imitating often in their delicacy those subtle blendings which nature produces in high-flavored fruits. The recipes of our cookery-books are most of them of English origin, coming down from the times of our phlegmatic ancestors, when the solid, burly, beefy growth of the foggy island required the heat of fiery condiments, and could digest heavy sweets. Witness the national recipe for plum-pudding: which may be rendered: Take a pound of every indigestible substance ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... except that one fact which, as he firmly believed, 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 fancied he ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... frosts, during a century otherwise so full of movement as the sixteenth in England, repressed and killed all germinations of free intellectual or social intercourse amongst ourselves. One was the national reserve;' and this was strengthened by concurring with a national temperament—not phlegmatic (as is so falsely alleged), but melancholic, dignified, and for that reason, if there had been no other, anti-mercurial. But the main cause of this reserve lay in the infrequency of visits consequent upon the difficulties of local movement. The other frost ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the veterans of the Imperial Guard were knocking at the gates of Brussels, a famous ball was given. Goodwood of the year nineteen-fourteen, mutatis mutandis, did but repeat that scene, the same phlegmatic enjoyment of the festival, the same light-heartedness and sure confidence under the great shadow, and the ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... was tenderer than she knew, for now he still further appealed to her. From men in the valley, this solicitation might probably have denoted no more than ordinary politeness, but she knew from experience that the phlegmatic mountaineers must be moved by strong emotion to sympathize with one in pain. "It's ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... in addition to becoming a little phlegmatic, was becoming decidedly critical in his outlook on life. He could not make out what it was all about. In distant ages a queer thing had come to pass. There had started on its way in the form of evolution a minute cellular organism which had apparently reproduced itself by division, had early ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... example in our literary history that so loudly accuses our tardy and phlegmatic feeling respecting authors, as the treatment De Lolme experienced in this country. His book on our Constitution still enters into the studies of an English patriot, and is not the worse for flattering and elevating the imagination, painting everything beautiful, to encourage our love as ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... serve as a prop. Two toes before and two behind for clinging. Usually seen clinging erect on tree-trunks; rarely, if ever, head downward, like the nuthatches, titmice, etc. Woodpeckers feed as they creep around the trunks and branches. Habits rather phlegmatic. The flicker has better developed vocal powers than other birds of this class, whose rolling tattoo, beaten with their bills against the tree-trunks, must answer for their love-song. Nest in hollowed-out trees. Red-headed Woodpecker. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... increase the difficulty of this ascent. Unlike the guides of the valley of Chamouni, or the nimble-footed Guanches, who could, it is asserted, seize the rabbit or wild goat in its course, our Canarian guides were models of the phlegmatic. They had wished to persuade us on the preceding evening not to go beyond the station of the rocks. Every ten minutes they sat down to rest themselves, and when unobserved they threw away the specimens of obsidian and pumice-stone, which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... party-colored sandstone out of its thread-like gorge into the wide chasm of the Mississippi. A small steamer lay at anchor and tooted a discordant horn to signify to the world that she intended to be up and doing. A crowd of phlegmatic-faced revelers stood upon the bank and watched her with absorbed indifference, while a smaller number pushed aboard and prepared for true joy by laying in a store of cracker-jack and ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... replied the phlegmatic pilot; "a darned pity it is," he added; "but if you must, you must. Darn the luck! We'd a-beat them into shucks in another quarter, I reckon. Darn ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... lonely spot, casting timid glances around him. He was not a nervous man at ordinary times, but like many country people, he had a vein of superstition running through his phlegmatic temperament, and the events of the night had swept away his calmness. The croaking of the frogs and the whispering of the trees filled him with uneasiness, and he kept glancing backwards and forwards from the lake to the wood, as though he feared the murderer ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... never bothering to look from behind his paper. Phlegmatic old Buzz, McGee thought, what was the use of getting excited over an ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... or never escape them; they have, moreover, a coarse, thick pronunciation, and when you hear them speak, you almost imagine that it is some German or English peasant attempting to express himself in the language of the Peninsula. They are constitutionally phlegmatic, and it is very difficult to arouse their anger; but they are dangerous and desperate when once incensed, and a person who knew them well told me that he would rather face ten Valencians, people infamous ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... this in the words of the old Lord Chief Justice Fortescue—"More men," says his lordship, "are hanged in Englonde in one year than in Fraunce in seven, because the English have better hartes; the Scotchmenne likewise never dare rob, but only commit larcenies." At all events, the phlegmatic temper of Englonde secures her from making bulls. The propensity to this species of blunder exists in minds of a totally different cast; in those who are quick and enthusiastic, who are confounded by the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... sunlight of childhood. It was a land of the lotos. The people were narcotized. Was it the sea air? I think I read somewhere in an old philosopher, called Berkeley, that the damp salt air of the sea has a curious phlegmatic effect on the blood, and will coagulate it and produce gout and sundry disorders. However that be, there was a weary weight on everything around Kilronan. The cattle slept in the fields, the fishermen slept in their coracles. It was a ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... hard, too hard," said Miss Du Prel. "I used to think I was bad in that way, but I am phlegmatic compared with you. One ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... their prosperity unexampled; their love of liberty indomitable; their pugnacity proverbial. Peaceful in their pursuits, phlegmatic by temperament, the Netherlands were yet the most belligerent and excitable population of Europe. Two centuries of civil war had but thinned the ranks of each generation without quenching the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... put on your mules, sir, in the French service?' he asked. Yes, that was all this phlegmatic Englishman had to answer to these burning words of mine. That was his reply to what would have made a Frenchman weep ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 was plain ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... ignominy, with some, proceeds from a callous and indifferent temperament,—a cold, phlegmatic, stoical insensibility, alike to kindness or unkindness. It was not so with Jesus. The tender sensibilities of His holy nature rendered Him keenly sensible to ingratitude and injury, whether this was manifested in the malice of undisguised ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... to the chapel at seven in the morning of the day preceding his execution, are perplexing. What purported to be a detailed account was promptly published in Barcelona, on Jesuit authority, but one must not forget that Spaniards are not of the phlegmatic disposition which makes for accuracy in minute matters and even when writing history they are dramatically ificlined. So while the truthfulness, that is the intent to be fair, may not be questioned, it would not be strange if those who wrote of what happened in the chapel in Fort Santiago during ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... as he himself tells us, been subject from his earliest manhood, and he attributes to overtoil in boyhood this tendency which was probably a part of his natural temperament. To a disposition like his, raptures, exaltations, agonies came as naturally as a uniform neutral-tinted existence to more phlegmatic spirits. But we may be sure that every cause of self-reproach which his past life had stored up in his memory tended to keep him more and more familiar with the lower pole in that ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Temperament," in Joseph Jastrow's The Psychology of Conviction.] The analysis in its fundamentals is perhaps still as doubtful as it was in the fifth century B. C. when Hippocrates formulated the doctrine of the humors, distinguished the sanguine, the melancholic, the choleric, and the phlegmatic dispositions, and ascribed them to the blood, the black bile, the yellow bile, and the phlegm. The latest theories, such as one finds them in Cannon, [Footnote: Bodily Changes in Pleasure, Pain and Anger.] Adler, [Footnote: The Neurotic Constitution.] Kempf, [Footnote: The Autonomic Functions ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... that in the case of girls, puberty usually occurs earlier in brunettes than in blondes. In general, it makes its appearance earlier in those of a nervous or bilio-nervous temperament than in those whose temperament is phlegmatic or lymphatic. In the United States fourteen and a half years is the usual age of puberty in girls. In tropical lands, however, it is not uncommon for a girl to be a mother at twelve. Country girls (and ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... oppose the excess rather than the defect, because it is of more common occurrence: for human nature is more disposed to take than to forgo revenge. And the Cross-grained are worse to live with [than they who are too phlegmatic]. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... phlegmatic, introduced Anthony ponderously to the problems of attention, right face, about face, and at ease. His principal defect was his forgetfulness. He often kept the company straining and aching at attention for five minutes while he stood out in front and explained ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
