"Temperament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stepping about the pews to please him. Nathan felt a cold thrill, partly from pleasure, and partly from awe, running up his back, and a strong pain across his forehead, seldom known to one of his temperament. Again and again he drew his hand across his brows, until he felt that he was near swooning, and like to fall; and he clung desperately to his hold. When the fit was over, he dared venture no more, but hastened ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... sentiment amongst the French people, and it is very possible that the Prince of Malors may wish to ingratiate himself by any means with the French army. This sort of thing scarcely sounds like practical politics, but one has to bear in mind the peculiar temperament of the man himself, and the nation. I personally believe that the Prince of Malors would consider himself justified in abusing the hospitality of his dearest friend in the cause of patriotism. At any rate, this is my view, and I am acting upon it. All danger from that source will ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ardent temperament; men attracted her, although, since she had been grown up, she had never exchanged anything that could be construed into a love passage with a member of the opposite sex, opportunities for meeting those whom she considered her equals being wanting ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Elizabeth, who was then the English queen, managed so to embarrass and interfere with the scheme, that the King of Denmark gave his daughter to another claimant. James was a man of very mild and quiet temperament, easily counteracted and thwarted in his plans; but this disappointment aroused his energies, and he sent a splendid embassy into Denmark to demand the king's second daughter, whose name was Anne. He prosecuted ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... peaceful home The fair-haired orphan was a fount of joy, Spreading her young heart like a tintless sheet For Love to write on. Sporting 'mid the flowers, Caroling with the birds, or gliding light As fawn, her fine, elastic temperament Took happiest coloring from each varying hour Or changing duty. Kind, providing cares Which younglings often thoughtlessly receive Or thankless claim, she gratefully repaid With glad obedience. Pleas'd was she to bear Precocious part in household ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... not hold young Weldon's vacillant temperament for long; neither could Diana. As a matter of fact his heart, more staunch than he himself suspected, had never wavered much from Louise. Yet pride forbade his attempting to renew their former relations. It was now some ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... that the last occasion of a disagreement between herself and the sister nearest to her in years, and furthest from her in temperament, was the most intolerable. Never in her life, she thought, had she so longed to murder Sissy as at this minute. She—Split—had no time to waste besieging the impregnable fortress of Sissy's mulishness, when the hardening process ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... feelings, has long regarded him the complete embodiment of industry and temperance in all things. He rises early and retires early, eats moderately of simple food, never uses a drop of stimulant, and does not even smoke a cigar. In temperament he is among the happiest of human beings, always looks at the bright side of circumstances—loves to hear of the prosperity of his neighbors, and hopes for favorable turns of character, even in the most depraved. The exaltation ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Julius to use. It was not easy to rouse the disciplined and equable temperament of Lord Holchester's eldest son. No two men were ever more thoroughly unlike each other than these two brothers. It is melancholy to acknowledge it of the blood relation of a "stroke oar," but it must be owned, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... tedium of such a state to a man of the temperament of the gallant commander,' etc., the termination of the article was indulgent. Rosamund recurred to the final paragraph for comfort, and though she loved Beauchamp, the test of her representative feminine sentiment ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was not of an excitable temperament ordinarily, but his senses were so affected by the horrors he saw and the pestilential air he breathed that his head began to swim, and only by an especial draft upon his resolution was he able to command himself. There was a pause consequent upon his entrance, and his quick ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... make it almost insolvable. A water- logged country, of which nothing can surely be predicted but the uncertainty of its harvests, inhabited by a people of most peculiar mental constitution, alien in race, temperament, and religion, having scarcely one point of sympathy ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... Guy," Mrs. Dunbar remarked, "with his love of adventure. He must have been of the same temperament, for I am sure I will soon have to pack up my kit and go traveling if I am to be with my own good looking boy," and she gave one of her happy, rippling laughs. Audrey Dunbar was still a girl, and "her boy's" tour ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... she said, "I can't tell you how I enter into your feeling. I don't agree with you, but we are not so far apart in temperament, if we are in doctrine. I'm afraid that you'll think that I'm merely tempting you when I say that it seems to me that your conscientiousness is entirely right, and that your conviction ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... her parting! "If I decide to go on, I'll write you in a few days." But he need not have felt so. She had made up her mind to accept his offer. As for the complications involved in such curiously intimate relations with a man of his temperament, habits, and inclinations, she saw them very vaguely indeed—refused to permit herself to see them any less vaguely. Time enough to deal with complications when and as they arose; why needlessly and foolishly annoy herself and hamper herself? Said she to herself, ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... with false news and false hopes until their Government had fled to Bordeaux, realizing the gravity of the peril. The Terrible Year would have seemed no worse than this swift invasion of Paris, and the temperament of the nation, in spite of the renewal of its youth, had not changed enough to resist this calamity with utter stoicism. I know the arguments of the strategists, who point out that Von Kluck could not afford ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... is too much a matter of fact to have ever interested the poetic temperament of the Irish; Schools of Poetry, Heraldry, and Music, were opened (says the Irish historians), 'time immemorial.' St. Patrick found the Academies of Lismore and Armagh in a flourishing condition, when he arrived on his great mission; and the more modern College of Clonard (founded in the fifth ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... was still a guest at the court of the king of Sparta, the latter received an invitation from his friend Idomeneus, king of Crete, to join him in a hunting expedition; and Menelaus, being of an unsuspicious and easy temperament, accepted the invitation, leaving to Helen the duty of entertaining the distinguished stranger. Captivated by her surpassing loveliness, the Trojan prince forgot every sense of honour and duty, and resolved to rob his absent ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... "countenances," is, I think, mistaken both in the thought conveyed—(for it was never a popular belief that the stars governed men's countenances)—and in the usage, which requires an antithesis of the blood,—or the temperament of the four humours, choler, melancholy, phlegm, and the red globules, or the sanguine portion, which was supposed not to be in our own power, but to be dependent on the influences of the heavenly bodies,—and the countenances which are in our power ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... his father's stern and steady pride, but there were differences of temperament that led to frequent clashes of will between them. Reuben Hallowell loved both his motherless children, but he understood his son less well than his daughter. What would be the result of that interview, Cicely wondered, sitting quaking beside the candle that burned ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... consequently won the confidence, love, and esteem of his people. In his school he was watchful and patient. He studied character, and classified his pupils; and was thereby enabled to deal with each pupil as he knew their temperament demanded. Some children are tender, affectionate, and obedient; while others are coarse, ugly, and insubordinate. Some need only to have the wrong pointed out, while others need the rod to convince them of bad conduct. And happy is that teacher ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... had only let her. Once, seeking explanation, she had opened her heart a little to Mrs. Munday. It was disappointment, Mrs. Munday thought, that she had not been a boy; and with that Joan had to content herself. Maybe also her mother's illness had helped to sadden him. Or perhaps it was mere temperament, as she argued to herself later, for which they were both responsible. Those little tricks of coaxing, of tenderness, of wilfulness, by means of which other girls wriggled their way so successfully into a warm nest of cosy ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... cortex anterior to the motor centres, even if extensive, may produce few or no symptoms, and in consequence this region has been called a "silent" area. Occasionally there results a change in temperament or intelligence, and the region is on this account supposed to be concerned with the higher psychical functions. There is evidence that the pre-frontal cortex has a centre for the conscious initiation of movements, and that lesions produce "apraxia," i.e., inability to perform, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... name of Frontoni, and it is important that thou should'st not mistake the man. Jacopo, of that family, is a youth of some five-and-twenty, of an active frame and melancholy visage, and of less vivacity of temperament than is wont, at ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... between the two lads was not readily mended, and for some time they spoke to each other no more than was necessary. Their natural antipathy of temperament made resentment an easy passage to hatred, and in Philip the transition seemed to have begun; there was no malignity in his disposition, but there was a susceptibility that made him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of repulsion. The ox—we may venture to assert it ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... father, a man of genuine aesthetic instincts, Edward derived his artistic tendencies and his Celtic sensitiveness of temperament, together with the pictorial instinct which was later to compete with his musical ability for decisive recognition; for the elder MacDowell displayed in his youth a facility as painter and draughtsman which his parents, who were Quakers ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... hers, is not unaccompanied with a sense of relief. Great, nevertheless, must have been the blind poet's embarrassment as the father of three little daughters. Much evil, it is to be feared, had already been sown; and his temperament, his affliction, and his circumstances alike nurtured the evil yet to come. He was then living in Petty France, Westminster, having been obliged, either by the necessities of his health or of the public service, to give up his apartments in Whitehall. The house stood till 1877, a ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... no longer in your employment, sir, I can speak freely without appearing to take a liberty. In my opinion you and Lady Florence were quite unsuitably matched. Her ladyship is of a highly determined and arbitrary temperament, quite opposed to your own. I was in Lord Worplesdon's service for nearly a year, during which time I had ample opportunities of studying her ladyship. The opinion of the servants' hall was far from favourable to her. Her ladyship's temper caused a good deal of adverse ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... said to be the handsomest man of his time, and it is claimed that his wife Aminah was of a noble family. She was of a nervous temperament, and fancied she was visited by spirits. She was inclined to epilepsy, which may explain her visions. Mohammed was her only child. As soon as he was born, his mother is said to have raised her eyes to heaven, exclaiming: 'There is no God but God, and I am his Prophet.' It is ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... gulls stay at their bath I do not know. Probably some of the busy and conscientious ones just hurry in for a dip and hurry back again. Others, of a more pleasure-loving temperament, make the trip more than once, like a boy I knew, whose proud boast it was that he had gone in swimming seven times in one afternoon. The very idle and self-indulgent ones, I reckon, spend nearly the whole day in their ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... consisted altogether in "unearthly screams," "jumping up and down," tangled hair, sweating brow, glaring eyes, etc., etc. Upon these things, which his discriminating admirers were glad to overlook as mere matters of temperament and constitution, and in spite of which they were charmed with his graceful and truly vigorous speech, his biographer loves to dwell. He has much to say of the length and complexity of the sentences, but nothing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... certainly cannot doubt the truth of the assertions. I believe every one of them. You see, you are not making any allowance for temperament or early environment. Those who are humbly born in a kingdom are lifted by a monarch's praise to the very pinnacle of pride and joy and superiority. Think of the compliments paid this man by royalty. Think, too, of his hot blood, his quick imagination. You can't ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... placed him upon the topmost turret of contemporary literary fame. Since the publication of the work he was fairly prosperous, although his temperament was of that gently procrastinating and gracious kind that buys peace with a faith in men and things. Mary had an eager, alert and enthusiastic way of approaching things that grew on the easy-going ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... railway. But how little these things matter after all. When they are at hand, they seem indispensable, but when they cannot be obtained, they are hardly missed. A little plain food, and a philosophic temperament, are the ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... visitor for some time. He talked to-day, on my asking him some questions, and talked better than I expected. He is plainly full of intelligence, full of enthusiasm for his religion, and, I suspect, full of bigotry. I do not believe he will die a Catholic priest. A young man of his temperament must find it hard to live without family ties, and I shall expect to hear, if I ever hear of him again, that some good little Irish girl has made him ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... may be depriving the United States Navy of a future officer who would be most valuable to his country in time of need. Have we the right to punish when we are forced to admit that none of us has ever attempted to help Mr. Jetson to escape from the fruits of his temperament? Mr. President, how would you attempt to extinguish a fire? By fanning it? Yet, when a member of this class is smouldering in his own wrath, it is proposed to meet his sullenness by casting him out of our friendship. Do we ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament, and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not wholly tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that there was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I became more disturbed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he knows and loves) has provided some of his most admirable studies from life. To that class belongs the sympathetic study which faces page 1 in the present volume. The broad humours of Whitechapel could scarcely fail to appeal irresistibly to an artist of Reynolds' peculiar temperament, and few men have depicted them with such relish or—thanks to his rare gift of ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... would seem to be that, finding, in his temperament and circumstances, some predisposing causes of melancholy, he refused to sit down under the curse and let it poison his life, but took vigorous measures with himself and his surroundings; cultivated cheerfulness as a duty, and repelled gloom as a disease. He "tried always ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... is So tender and particular; How nature, as unnatural And contradicting nature's source, Which is but love, seems most of all Well-pleased to harry true love's course; How, many times, it comes to pass That trifling shades of temperament, Affecting only one, alas, Not love, but love's success prevent; How manners often falsely paint The man; how passionate respect, Hid by itself, may bear the taint Of coldness and a dull neglect; ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... allege that Lord Gough was entirely unacquainted with the ground, as he had previously known it, especially the country to the left of the enemy. It was generally supposed by his lordship's censors that the attack was a wanton waste of life, and arose from the brave, rash, and unreflecting temperament of the general, and the irritation caused by the sudden and severe artillery fire opened upon him. On the other hand, the Duke of Wellington declared that he would, in Lord Gough's place, have acted as he had done; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... educated Englishman who allows his English feelings play is apt to feel about them. What is more, he has the boldness to say so. He makes all kinds of reserves to save the credit of those with whom he cannot sympathise. He speaks of the privileges of Saints; the peculiarities of national temperament; the distinctions between popular language and that used by scholastic writers, or otherwise marked by circumstances; the special characters of some of the writers quoted, their "ruthless logic," or their obscurity; the inculpated passages are but few ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... also, in my experience, a great difference in our national character, which depends upon whether the crossing has taken place with the weak Laplander, or with the well-grown, strong, bold Fin. It makes a difference in temperament, as great as between minor and major in the same piece of music. That touch of rich colour in our nation, of which the poet Wergeland's endless wealth of imagery and flight beyond logic are a representation, is certainly Finnish—at any rate, there is very ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... walk straight, boldly, his head high, jostling those who annoyed him, according to his natural temperament. ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... a peculiar significancy in this, indicative both of higher civilization and gentler temperament, than had before been manifested in architecture. Rudeness, and the love of change, which we have insisted upon as the first elements of Gothic, are also elements common to all healthy schools. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the afternoon, and after he had seen Dare, and given him a sleeping draught, and had talked reassuringly of a mental shock and a feverish temperament he apologized for his delay in coming. He had been kept, he said, drawing on his gloves as he spoke, by a very serious case in the police-station at D——. A man had been arrested on suspicion the previous night, and he seemed to have sustained some fatal internal ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... noticeable for the extreme spareness of his person—his lower limbs much resembling those of John Randolph; and, also, for the whiteness of his whiskers, in violent contrast to the blackness of his hair—the latter, in consequence, being very generally mistaken for a wig. His temperament was markedly nervous, and rendered him a good subject for mesmeric experiment. On two or three occasions I had put him to sleep with little difficulty, but was disappointed in other results which his peculiar constitution ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sort of man to carry through the burden of a half-discovered secret. It needs a special temperament for this—one that is able to inspire fear in whomsoever it may be necessary to hold in check—a temperament with sufficient self-reliance and strength to play an open game steadily through to the end. Since Durnovo's plain-spoken threat ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... said the old antiquarian sadly—but his tones were always sad. "I am sorry. I am always sorry when anyone leaves who possesses the true artistic temperament. The town feels more deserted. There are so many things around us that appeal only to the few. But you have made quite a long stay amongst us; people generally come one day and depart the next. And now you are bound ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... happy temperament generally, though some had a sad and gloomy countenance. Physically they were well proportioned. Some of the men and women had fine figures, strong and robust, and many of the women were powerful and of unusual height. The ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... stout, kind-hearted woman, the fine condition of whose temperament was clearly the result of her physical prosperity—appeared at the door which led to the dwelling-house above, bearing in her hands a huge tureen of potato-soup, for her motherly heart could not longer endure the thought of dinnerless boys. Her husband being engaged at ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... was remarkably pretty, with black plaits of hair confined by a coloured handkerchief, a round baby face, large eyes, long lashes, small nose, and pouting lips, with white teeth, of which she was very proud: a temperament which was all sunshine or thunder and lightning in ten minutes. She had a nice, plump little figure, encased in a simple, tight-fitting cotton gown, which, however, showed a stomach of size totally disproportionate to her figure. Seeing this, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... business is horrid," agreed Mr. Towne, who was dripping water at every step. "But what is a chap to do? I tried the other sort of drama—on the stage, you know; but I did not seem to have the temperament ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... changed in the last few years," she said. "I heard that he had malaria in India, and that perhaps accounts for it, but he shows signs of his mother's delicacy. She was not strong, and I always thought he had her highly strung nervous temperament, though he must have learned to ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... she submitting with an air that seemed to say, "I only give in because I can't resist." Wishing to save her honour I withdrew in time, but in the second combat I held her for half an hour to my arms. However, she was naturally of a passionate disposition, and nature had endowed her with a temperament able to resist the most vigorous attacks. When decency made us leave the closet, she ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... base of temperament; But as the water-lily starts and slides Upon the level in little puffs of wind, Though anchor'd to the bottom, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... gave colour and charm to his life. A sunny frankness and openness of spirit breathes in the pleasant chat of his books, and what he was in his books he showed himself in his daily converse. AElfred was in truth an artist, and both the lights and shadows of his life were those of the artistic temperament. His love of books, his love of strangers, his questionings of travellers and scholars, betray an imaginative restlessness that longs to break out of the narrow world of experience which hemmed him in. At one time he jots down news of a voyage to the unknown seas of the north. At another ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... unable to take equal interest in all its details. Much is included because it belongs there, but has to be described and criticised of necessity, not desire. While the Author concentrates himself con amore upon the parts which, in accordance with his temperament, attract his sympathies, or rivet his attention by their characteristic types, he accepts the rest as unavoidable stuffing, in order to escape the reproach of ignorance or defect. In the Essay there is no padding. Nothing is put in from external considerations. ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... painting, is the gallery, and the best, perhaps, the fields: the fields (or in the case of the Venetians, largely the waters), to which, with their qualities of air, of light, their whole train of sensations and moods, the artistic temperament, and the special artistic temperament of a local school, can very ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... manner revealed a calm and phlegmatic temperament. There was nothing indolent about him, but his appearance spoke of tranquillity. He was one of those who never seemed to expect anything from anybody, who liked to work when he thought proper, and whose philosophy ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... of a demonstrative temperament and easily pleased. She threw her arms round her father's neck and kissed him as rapturously as though he had made her a present fit for ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... this feeling. We are all of opinion, however, that the old gentleman's danger, even at its crisis, was very slight, and that he merely laboured under one of those transitory weaknesses to which persons of his temperament are now and then liable, and which become less and less alarming at every return, until they wholly subside. I have no doubt he will remain a jolly old widower for the rest of his life, as he has already ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... mind firmly, and partly thought out his plan of operations. Then he rested, and so sanguine was his temperament that he began to regard the deed itself as almost achieved. Decision is always soothing after doubt, and he fell into a pleasant dreamy state. A gentle wind was blowing, the forest was dry and the leaves rustled with the low note that is like the softest chord of a violin. It ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... positions, that of tenor in one of the large New York churches. This experience has been of great value to him in his practice among singers. He understands them temperamentally as well as physically. Moreover, it has led him, in writing this book, to consider questions of temperament as well as principles of physiology. Great as is the importance that he attaches to a correct physiological method of voice-production, he makes full allowance for what may be called the psychological factors involved therein—mentality, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... sunshiny day—one of those days so peculiar to the Southern climate, when the blood hounds through every vein as if thrilled by electricity, and a man of lively temperament can scarcely restrain his legs from dancing a 'breakdown.' We rode rapidly on through a timbered country, where the tall trees grew up close by the roadside, locking their huge arms high in the air, and the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... The poet's temperament inclined him to melancholy, but his intercourse was always cheerful. One biographer says he was strong and healthy—another, that he was neither. In all probability he was naturally strong, but weakened by a life full of emotion. He talks of growing ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... pleasant and jest-loving men in Florence, I shall conclude this notice of him. He died at the age of seventy-eight, and he was of the company of the Misericordia, because he was very poor, and had spent more than he had earned, that being his temperament, and in his misfortunes he went to S. Maria Nuova, a hospital of Florence. He was buried in the year 1340, like the other poor in the Ossa, the name of a cloister or cemetery of the hospital. His works were valued during ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... would be asked to fill in the main city branch of his bank, the Banfield teller fell asleep. There is, however, a somnolence unworthy of the name of sleep. Such was Evan's unconsciousness. It may have been that he had a more sensitive temperament than most bankboys, but, at any rate, it is a fact that whenever anything out of the ordinary occurred in his life of routine he was cursed with sleeplessness. Dreams had a liking for him, the kind of dreams that incline ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... when you were in my power. Recollect, sir, also, that the yacht is still in possession of the smugglers, and that you are in no condition to insult with impunity. My lord, allow me to observe, that we men are too hot of temperament to argue or listen coolly. With your permission, your friend, and my friend, and I, will repair on deck, leaving you to hear from your daughter and that lady all that has passed. After that, my ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... though nothing is more foreign to his nature. It brought it home to me—this rising up of a Nation in self-defense. It is not the marching into battle of an army that has chosen soldiering. It is the marching out of all the people—of every temperament—the rich, the poor, the timid and the bold, the sensitive and the hardened, the ignorant and the scholar—all men, because they happen to be males, called on not only to cry, "Vive la France," but to see to it that she does live if dying for her can keep her alive. ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... bravely, but it gave way at last; not, however, until that fatal winter journey to New Hampshire, when cold, exposure, and fatigue did their worst for her weak body. Religious enthusiast, exalted and impressionable, a natural mystic, she had probably always been, far more so in temperament, indeed, than her husband; but although she left home on that journey a frail and heartsick woman, she returned a different creature altogether, blurred and confused in mind, with ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... perceived that he could not win him over to his side. In the Spanish Council of State they took it into consideration that Henry VIII, if anything was undertaken against him, would at all times have the King of France on his side, and in his passionate temperament might be easily instigated to take steps which they would rather avoid.[132] After Catharine's death they made mutual advances, which it is true did not bring about a good understanding, but yet excluded actual hostilities. It would ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... of the chamber, they produced little effect within it. Nevertheless, it was plain to every candid observer that he possessed many of the requisites of the orator—a good voice, a copious flow of words, considerable energy and enthusiasm, a sanguine temperament and jovial and generous disposition. In the sessions of 1845-46, M. Rollin took a still more prominent part. His purse, his house in the Rue Tournon, his counsels and advice, were all placed at the service of the men of the movement, and by the beginning of 1847 he seemed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... of an empiric. It is evident that the author believes what he writes, that the facts in mesmerism are facts to him; to those unprepared by previous experience for the fallacies which the enthusiastic temperament is led into, the book would be irresistible; to those, however, accustomed to physical or phsycological investigation, the last half of the work does much to unravel the web which the first half has been engaged in weaving. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... Flexen had at the time shown himself somewhat unbelieving in the matter of Mr. Manley's conclusions about the character and temperament of Grey and Olivia, the impression they had made on him grew stronger. He was too good a judge of men not to perceive that the budding dramatist had the intelligent imagination which makes for real shrewdness, and he was not disposed ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... passage of Morton's life when he was before for some days Gawtrey's companion; yet those conversations had sunk deep in his mind. He was struck, and almost awed, by the profound gloom which lurked under Gawtrey's broad humour—a gloom, not of temperament, but of knowledge. His views of life, of human justice and human virtue, were (as, to be sure, is commonly the case with men who have had reason to quarrel with the world) dreary and despairing; and Morton's own experience had been so sad, that these opinions were more influential ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the hundred thousand mysterious influences which a man exercises over a woman who loves him, I doubt if there is any more irresistible to her than the influence of his voice. I am not one of those women who shed tears on the smallest provocation: it is not in my temperament, I suppose. But when I heard that little natural change in his tone my mind went back (I can't say why) to the happy day when I first owned that I loved him. I ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... keenest perception of the ludicrous, and as her perceptions were quick, and little jokes usually struck her, in vulgar parlance, "all of a heap," her little explosions of laughter were instantaneous and violently short-lived. Yet her natural temperament was grave and earnest, and her habitual expression, ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... toil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year." His naturally robust frame was overtasked, and his nervous constitution received a fatal strain. His shoulders were bowed, he became liable to headaches, palpitations and fits of depressing melancholy. From these hard tasks and his fiery temperament, craving in vain for sympathy in a frigid air, grew the strong temptations on which Burns was largely wrecked,—the thirst for stimulants and the revolt against restraint which soon made headway and passed all bars. In the earlier portions of his career a buoyant humour bore him up; and amid thick-coming ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... to cite the source of the information, when possible to give explanatory details, and to report any relative points of value and interest. Throughout the article occasional facts will be given to show in what degree character, habit, and temperament influence longevity, and in what state of mind and body and under what circumstances man has obtained ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... nature were not suited to hardy action. His temper was soft and gentle and yielding; reluctant to refuse anything that presented itself to him as an act of kindness; loving to please and willing to confide; not trained to confine acts of good-will within the stern limits of duty. He was of the temperament called melancholic, scarcely concealed by an exterior of lightness of humor,—having a deep and fixed seriousness, jesting lips, and wanness of heart. And this man was summoned to stand up directly against a power with which Henry Clay had never directly grappled, before which Webster at last ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... across slowly to peer into the inner court, shrouded in deep shadows, shuddered and moved back towards the other two, whose mentality, psychology or temperament responded not in the least to light ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... might have thought I'd heard good news from home. But I'd had a peek or two into the camp kitchen since Zaretti's food construction squad had moved in, and, believe me, it was no place for an artistic temperament, subject to creeps up the back. There was about a ton of cold-storage turkeys bein' unpacked, bushels of onions goin' through the shuckin' process, buckets of soup stock standin' around, and half a dozen murderous-lookin' assistant chefs was sharpenin' ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... there is no touch of ecstasy; no spark of the inspiration which in a St. Francis, a St. Teresa, or a Charles Wesley, scales the heights of hymnody. And, as the unimaginative Roman temperament lacked the instinct of adoration, so was it deficient in that other constituent of supernatural faith, the belief in immortality. There might be a shadowy world—the poets said so—Odysseus visited its depths and brought back its ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... ease-loving man, not inclined to clown for the amusement of his world. He was loved by his friends, being tolerant, and understanding the art of social life. He was successful, and must therefore have had enemies, but he was careless to improve hostilities. For the temperament which is so plain in the best of his writings must have been present in his life—an unobtrusive, because a never directly implied, superiority and an ironical humour. The picture of swaggering snobbishness which Thackeray was inspired to make of him is proved bad by all that we know. A swaggerer ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... warehouse called "The Foundry," and here the Wesleys met in a vast body for a service of song and praise. Methodism is largely a matter of temperament—it fits the needs of a certain type. The growing mind is not content to have everything done for it. The Catholics and Episcopalians were doing too much for their people, and not letting the people ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Returning then to a city thus disposed, he immediately applied himself to alter the whole frame of the constitution; sensible that a partial change, and the introducing of some new laws, would be of no sort of advantage; but, as in the case of a body diseased and full of bad humours, whose temperament is to be corrected and new formed by medicines, it was necessary to begin a new regimen. With these sentiments he went to Delphi, and when he had offered and consulted the god, he returned with that celebrated ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... dawn; the princess concealed him; and when night returned they again engaged in the same innocent pleasures. Thus day after day sped rapidly by. Imagine, if you can, the youth's felicity; he was of an ardent temperament, deeply enamoured, barely a score of years old, and he had been strictly brought up by serious parents. He therefore resigned himself entirely to the siren for whom he willingly forgot the world, and he wondered at his ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... added, that old men are not the only ones with whom composers run this risk. There are men in the prime of life, of a lymphatic temperament, whose blood seems to circulate moderato. If they have to conduct an allegro assai, they gradually slacken it to moderato; if, on the contrary, it is a largo or an andante sostenuto, provided the piece is prolonged, they will, by dint of progressive animation, attain a moderato long before ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... Rigdon's mental and religious temperament was just of the character to be attracted by a novelty in religious belief. He, with his brother-in-law, Adamson Bentley, visited Alexander Campbell in 1821, and spent a whole night in religious discussion. When they parted the next day, Rigdon declared that "if he had within the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... mind and temperament the influence of five years of affluent life in Rome can be appreciated best by recalling that the great city was then, in fact, the meeting-place of the nations—their meeting-place politically and commercially, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... their privilege and tradition), the King's health. Then the cigarettes went round, chairs turned a little sideways, the port circulated a second time. The conversation was no longer general. In pairs or by threes, according to taste, temperament or individual calling, the members of the mess and their guests settled down to a complacent enjoyment of the most pleasant half-hour in a ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... history of man. All those that I have seen at Kathmandu, not only from the territory of Gorkha, but from Mostong, Kuti, Lasa, and Degarchi, are as black as the natives of 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 ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... received were of a kind to stimulate the imagination abnormally. A long series of little misfortunes, connected with each other as to suggest a sort of weird fatality, so worked upon my melancholy temperament when I was a boy that, before I was of age, I sincerely believed myself to be under a curse, and not only myself, but my whole family, and every individual who ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... my religious temperament was as clearly traceable to the hard Calvinism of my fathers, as the stratified sandstone is traceable to the old granite rock, but that it had undergone a sea change as had the sandstone, or in my ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... would, a priori, be unreasonable to expect that the working-day which would bring the greatest net advantage to both should be of the same duration. So also it may well be possible that the more energetic nervous temperament of the American operative may qualify him or her for a shorter and intenser working-day than would suit the Lancashire operative. It is the inseparable relation of the three factors—duration, intensity, and earnings—which is the important point. But in considering earnings, not merely the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... with a touch of the prig in him. He was a Catholic with a Puritan temperament and a Gallic imagination. The idolatry of Toinette had, as a matter of fact, spoiled him a little; it was so much that he weakly questioned the reality of it, as if it were too good to be true. All the time he was in Ottawa and on the journey those fool thoughts hobbled around him and ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... driver, "if it ain't that bran new mail-boy!" Thereupon he went up and looked at him; but not being of a magnetic temperament, he didn't ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... ourselves as best we could, fished out the litter, and went on, minus the man who had been drowned. I do not know if it was owing to his being an unpopular character, or from native indifference and selfishness of temperament, but I am bound to say that nobody seemed to grieve much over his sudden and final disappearance, unless, perhaps, it was the men who had to do his share ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... "Dick's temperament is nervous and perhaps he had some grounds for feeling a strain. I expect you have noted that he ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... our starting-point. From the same master whose influence led him to the study of external nature, he learned also the study of human nature. To the interpretation of mother-love he brought all the fresh ardor of youth, and a sunny temperament which saw only joy in the face of Nature. One after another of the series of his Florentine pictures gives us a new glimpse of the loving relation between ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... believe that instances of this kind are frequent among persons of a certain temperament, and when such occur in an early period of society, they are almost certain to be considered as real supernatural appearances. They differ from those of Nicolai, and others formerly noticed, as being of short duration, and constituting no habitual or constitutional ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... about her, but of course to her he's only a kid," he volunteered. "She's funny about that, too. She's emotional, of course, full of genius, and full of temperament. She says she needs a safety-valve, and Gardner is her safety-valve. She says she can sputter and rage and laugh, and he just listens and quiets her down. To-night she called him her 'bread-and-butter'—did you ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... said Dr. Spencer. "Worth at least twenty pounds. That boy has the temperament of an orator, if the morbid were ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Bermuda, but had been sent thither by the synod of his church from Nova Scotia. He was a tall, handsome man, at this time of some thirty years of age, of a presence which might almost have been called commanding. He was very strong, but of a temperament which did not often give him opportunity to put forth his strength; and his life had been such that neither he nor others knew of what nature might be his courage. The greater part of his life was spent in preaching to some ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... Corsicans, and imbued with that feeling of cold-blooded and demoniacal ferocity which developed itself during the Reign of Terror, rendering that period of French history for ever infamous, were of course those from whom I had most to fear. But the Corsicans, their naturally excitable temperament raised to frenzy by the atrocities of the French, rendered suspicious by frequent treachery, and impetuously rushing into a system of the most hideous reprisals, were almost equally dangerous, their creed being that he who was not with them must necessarily be ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... ("I repent as much as the man who slew his greyhound"). The fable indeed, from this point of view, seems greatly to have attracted the Welsh mind, perhaps as of especial value to a proverbially impetuous temperament. Croker (Fairy Legends of Ireland, vol. iii. p. 165) points out several places where the legend seems to have been localised in place-names—two places, called "Gwal y Vilast" ("Greyhound's Couch"), in Carmarthen and Glamorganshire; ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... "I would like to see you do it!" He wheeled round instantly—and if some of his London friends could have seen the look of his face at this moment, they might have altered their opinion about the obliteration of certain qualities from the temperament of the Highlanders of our ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... name here, if you have one, and can write." Whereupon, and the name (with infinite hard breathing) being signed, the commissioner would proceed to fill in the man's appearance, height, etc., on the official form. In this task of literary portraiture he seemed to rely wholly upon temperament; for I could not perceive him to cast one glance on any of his models. He was assisted, however, by a running commentary from the captain: "Hair blue and eyes red, nose five foot seven, and stature broken"—jests as old, presumably, as the American marine; and, like the similar ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... talk public affairs, the women had been content to listen, but Madeline's temperament was too strong ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... but devilish vague. I presume, however, that you wish entertaining experience from which a man of your philosophical temperament can ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... latent in the heart of all young people worth their salt sprang into sudden life. Lady Agatha glanced at her, noticed her expression, and smiled a rich, sweet, gratified smile. She had made a disciple. To make a disciple was very pleasant to one of her temperament. Like most women, she ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... was at Home she would suck Lemons and complain about Draughts and tell why she didn't like the Other Girls' Voices. She began to act like a Prima Donna, and her Mother was encouraged a Lot. Lutie certainly had the Artistic Temperament bigger than ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... inclined to think that Margaret was more right than she knew. There was really no inherent fitness between her temperament and that of Wyvis Brand; and his position in the County was one which would have fretted her inexpressibly. She, who had been the petted favorite of a brilliant circle in town and country, to take rank as the ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... policy of the English government appealed to many who had little sympathy with its express and implied advocacy of democracy. It is doubtless true that many were carried along with the revolutionary movement who by temperament and education were strongly attached to English political traditions. It is safe to conclude that a large proportion of those who desired to see American independence established did not believe ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... terrible thing that could happen to the pioneers, and Mr. Ware stretched out his line longer and longer, and thinner and thinner. Paul Cotter was full of excitement; he had been in deadly conflict once before, but his was a most sensitive temperament, terribly stirred by a foe whom he could yet neither see nor hear. Almost unconsciously, he placed himself by the side of Henry Ware, his old partner, to whom he now looked up as a son of battle and the ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for these changes of mood, which, if they were trying at times—and certainly they were trying—were interesting also and amusing. He knew what an affliction the sensitive, nervous, artistic temperament is; what a power of suffering it hides beneath the more superficial power to be pleased; and he pitied the Boy, who was an artist in every sense. He also thought there had been mistakes ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... could never have seen; she even sang to him old songs and snatches of wonderful melodies which, in her childhood, had still survived the advancing wave of silence that has overwhelmed the Bohemian people within the memory of living man, bringing a change into the daily life and temperament of a whole nation which is perhaps unparalleled in any history. He listened, he smiled, he showed a faint pleasure and a great understanding in all these things, and he came back day after day to talk and listen again. But that was all. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... any allusion in his sermons to this feature of Calvary Church's architecture. People had wondered sometimes that with his imaginative, poetical temperament he never had done so, especially once when a sermon on the crucifixion had thrilled the people wonderfully. It might have been his extreme sensitiveness, his shrinking ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... makes a mistake. He knows if an attack is coming he may only have a few seconds in which to act. His rifle is loaded with the S.O.S. grenade and all he has to do to let it off is to press the trigger. All varieties of temperament are represented in these lonely sentries, hence occasionally a mistake ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... hour of her absence, in her acquaintance with you and your family, expresses much uneasiness respecting your untempered devotion to study. I am the more disturbed by her fears, because your letters avow a self-devotion to your work, and I know there is no gentle dulness in your temperament to counteract the mischief. I fear Nature has not inlaid fat earth enough into your texture to keep the ethereal blade from whetting it through. I write to implore you to be careful of your health. You are the property of all whom you rejoice ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... state, especially for the later half of his life, was profoundly morne, there is no other word for it. This arose in part from temperament, from a quick sense of the littleness and wretchedness of mankind . . . This feeling, acting on a harsh and savage nature, ended in the saeva indignatio of Swift; acting on the kindly and sensitive nature of Mr. Thackeray, it ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... wouldn't be a bad idea to stamp them out," here Seaton threw back his head with the challenging gesture which was characteristic of his temperament—"But what is called 'the liberty of the press'(it should be called 'the license of the press') is more of an octopus than a mosquito. Cut off one tentacle, it grows another. It's entirely octopus in character, too,—it only lives ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... continues. But there was in him, as in Linnaeus, a survival of certain theological ways of looking at the universe and certain theological conceptions of a plan of creation; it must be said, too, that while his temperament made him distrust new hypotheses, of which he had seen so many born and die, his environment as a great functionary of state, honoured, admired, almost adored by the greatest, not only in the state but in the Church, his solicitude lest science should ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a figure singularly representative, of plebeian family, but a family long adopted into the closest circle of the aristocracy, the leader and impersonation of the great moneyed classes in Rome. Wealth had for several generations been the characteristic of the Crassi. They had the instinct and the temperament which in civilized ages take to money-making as a natural occupation. In politics they aimed at being on the successful side; but living as they did in an era of revolutions, they were surprised occasionally in unpleasant ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude |
