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Temper   Listen
verb
Temper  v. i.  
1.
To accord; to agree; to act and think in conformity. (Obs.)
2.
To have or get a proper or desired state or quality; to grow soft and pliable. "I have him already tempering between my finger and my thumb, and shortly will I seal with him."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Temper" Quotes from Famous Books



... Agents were sent to Algiers to ransom the captives and to obtain a treaty by presents and the payment of a fixed tribute. Such a treaty was made in the summer of 1796. In March of the succeeding year, the Dey showed so much ill-temper at the backwardness of our payments, that Joel Barlow, the American Commissioner, thought it necessary to soothe his Highness by the promise of a frigate to be built and equipped in the United States. Thus, with Christian meekness, we furnished ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... but we will take possession of those sheep before you get into Denver." I told him to "crack his whip," and to go to that warm place from which no "hoss trader" returned if he wanted to, but for him not to interfere with me or the sheep. Away he went. My temper was at its best and thoroughly under control, so I told the boys to not feel the least alarm, no "yaller backed hoss trader" would get those sheep, without getting into a "considerable ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... caught her, and are sure of her—that she is yours, the rapturous evanescent darling! when some well-meaning earthly wretch interposes and trips you, and off she flies and leaves you floundering? A lovely melody nearly grasped and lost in this fashion, tries the temper. Apollo chasing Daphne could have been barely polite to the wood-nymphs in his path, and Mr. Pericles was rude to the daughters of his host. Smoothing his clean square chin and thick moustache hastily, with outspread thumb ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... slammed heavily; then there was a quick step on the stairs, and on the landing-place above the first flight he met the master of the house, somewhat flurried, as it seemed, and not looking comfortable, either as regarded his person or his temper. "By George, he's been drinking!" Conway said to himself, after the first glance. Now it certainly was the case that Dobbs Broughton would ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... offset, in the eyes of the neighborhood, the matter of the flowers, the poetry-books, and the cooking. He had courage, and he had a temper, both proved. A few years previously, during the "tobacco-war" which upset the State, when the entire countryside was terrified by the outrages of the Night-Riders who had taken justice into their own hands, after the ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... legislator in the Connecticut Valley to get to his State Capitol than it does to-day to go from there to Washington. But no one, I think, has ever called attention to the enormous differences in living, in business, in political temper between the days (which practically lasted until the last century) when a citizen, a merchant, an employer of labor, or a laboring man, still more a corporation or association, and lastly, a man even in his most intimate relations, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... delightfully interesting; of Snobmore's manners that they are gentlemanlike; of Screwby's dinners that they are luxurious; of Jawkins's conversation that it is lively and amusing; of Xantippe, that she has a sweet temper; of Jezebel, that her colour is natural; of Bluebeard, that he really was most indulgent to his wives, and that very likely they died of bronchitis. What? a word against the spotless Messalina? What an unfavourable view of human ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... put in her shot. (And Mrs Polsue indeed should have been warier: for the pair were tried combatants. But a tendency to lose her temper, and, losing it, to speak in haste, was ever ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... well with the temper of the commander-in-chief, it was determined in a council of war, held at the Little Meadows, that twelve hundred select men, to be commanded by General Braddock in person, should advance with the utmost expedition against fort Du Quesne. Colonel ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... any matter, and dropped it out of my mind. But now it was different; I wanted it all the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest; I couldn't get it out of my mind; and so at last I lost my temper and said hang a man that would make a suit of armor without any pockets in it. You see I had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some other things; but it was that kind of a helmet that you can't take off by yourself. That hadn't occurred to me when ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... own lesson, and you cannot learn that lesson in the next period. The boy has one set of lessons to learn, and the young man another, and the grown-up man another. Let us consider one single instance. The boy has to learn docility, gentleness of temper, reverence, submission. All those feelings which are to be transferred afterwards in full cultivation to God, like plants nursed in a hotbed and then planted out, are to be cultivated first in youth. Afterwards, those habits which have been merely ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... intended to give the conversation this turn. He feared that his client was working himself into an unreasonable humor, in which he would be ready to transfer to Mr. Carnegie the reproaches that were due only to himself. He was of a suspicious temper, and had already insinuated that the people who had kept his grandchild must have done it from interested and ulterior motives. The lawyer could not see this, but he did see that if Mr. Fairfax was bent on making a contest of what might be amicably arranged, no power on earth could hinder ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... magicians by their lots and divinations—though, for that matter, it may well be that they lied—devised that the king should seek a man born of no earthly father, him he must slay, and taking of his blood, slake and temper therewith the mortar of the work, so that the foundations should be made fast, and the castle might endure. Thereat the king sent messengers throughout all the land to seek such a man, and commanded that immediately ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... this was no more than hopes. I set a greater value upon his admirable virtues, his equality of temper, his resolution, the courage with which he bore up against fear and pain; for, how were his physicians astonished at his patience under a distemper of eight months continuance, when at the point of death he comforted me himself, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... popularity in the House of Commons is very great, and even surprising; it is a proof of the influence which personal character may obtain when unadorned with great abilities and shining parts; his remarkable bonhommie, unalterable good nature and good temper, the conviction of his honesty and sincerity, and of his want of ambition, his single-mindedness, his unfeigned desire to get out of the trammels and cares of office, have all combined to procure for him greater personal ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... great and high-minded wish. There was no circumstance so minute that calumny could not insert into it a venomous claw. Mr Kenrick was one of the most exemplary, generous, and pure-minded of men; his only fault was quickness of temper. His noble character, his conciliatory manners, his cultivated mind, his Christian forbearance, were all in vain. He was poor, and he could not be a toady: these were two unpardonable sins; and he, a ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... For whenever the temper of the Women is thus exasperated by confinement at home or hampering regulations abroad, they are apt to vent their spleen upon their husbands and children; and in the less temperate climates the whole male population of a village has been sometimes destroyed in one ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... and achieved for its author universal celebrity; not only, because in it Auber rises to heights, which he never reached either before or after, but because it is purely historical. The "Muette" is like a picture, which attracts by its vivid reproduction of nature. In the local tone, the southern temper, Auber has succeeded in masterly fashion, and the text forms an admirable background to the music. Its subject is the revolution of Naples in the year 1647 and the rise and ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... said the Officer uneasily to himself. "I fear the beast is of a sulky temper. What ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall

... how his young companions sympathised with his distress, Ossaroo was by no means pleased. The stings of the bees had nettled the Hindoo's temper, and the laughter of the boys exasperated him still more. He resolved, therefore, that they should both have a taste of the same trouble; and, without saying another word, he rushed between the two; of course, carrying the swarm of bees along ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... of Pointe a Puiseaux, at Sillery, exactly fronting the mouth of the Etchemin River Imagine a roomy, substantial, one story cottage equally well protected in winter against the piercing north, east and west winds, surrounded by large oaks and pines to temper the rays of an August sun, and through whose foliage the cool river breeze murmurs in the vernal season, wafting pleasure and health to the inmates Add one of those unrivalled river landscapes, peculiar ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... walked into the room even as she spoke. Dirty he was, dishevelled and hollow-eyed, a very travesty of his former self. But there was a spring in his bearing that fires of adversity had failed to rob of its temper. He entered with a swing, a certain jauntiness—a dash of nonchaloir—pushing his way through the group of astonished financiers in the doorway and marching up to Van Diest and the American with a very fine air of "you be damned" about the ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee

... left hand. His right, the palm half open, rested on the edge of the table just above his thigh. He didn't really believe the foreman would start anything, but one never knew, especially with a man of such evidently uncertain temper. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... took the Wildcat's message to an inner office. Two minutes later the answer came back in the person of a gentleman who was trying to hold his temper. "You're fired! You started with your car in Chicago, left it in Wyoming, and here you are! Git out of ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... because he come out late that afternoon cussin' like the devil. He had one whale of a temper when he got started, the boss did. He took me with him in the buss and we cruised around the country for a while. Every time he spotted a straight stretch of road without too many trees, he'd come down ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... disturbances in Cape Colony."[293] Lord (then Mr.) Courtney, in proposing a vote of thanks to the guests of the evening, declared that the annexation of the Republics was "a wrong and a blunder"; adding that the Liberal policy would some day be "to temper annexation, if not to abrogate it." Both Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer revealed the aims of their mission with perfect frankness. The former, after alluding to Mr. Chamberlain's luncheon as a display of the "Imperial spirit of the servile senate who decreed ovations ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... with thy foreboding sorrows; Raise thy sad soul to better hopes than these, Lift up thy eyes, and let them shine once more, Bright as the morning sun above the mist. Exert thy charms, seek out the stern protector, And sooth his savage temper with thy beauty; Spite of his deadly, unrelenting, nature, He shall be mov'd to pity, ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... whom we bribed,—we pretended we were married, and we had a charming time together—a time of real romance, till he began to get tired and want change— all men are like that! Then he became a bore with a bad temper. He certainly behaved very well when he knew the child was coming, and offered to marry me ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... ultimatum, "Then all is over between you and me." And in the end, very conscious of his folly, very much incensed by her perversity, disgusted, dejected, and, as his travelling-companion had occasion to observe, in the very devil of a temper, he had left Victoria by the eleven o'clock Continental express. "Never forget," Miss Sandus whispered in his ear, as he paid her his adieux, "never forget that sound old adage—'journeys end in ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... Dilettante will have been in boyhood a shorn lamb, for whom it was necessary to temper the wind of an English education by a liberal admixture of foreign travel. A prolonged course of interrupted studies will have filled him with culture, whilst a distaste for serious effort, whether mental or physical, and an innate capacity for mastering no subject thoroughly will have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various

... scorn for that scorn of mankind which is a transmuted disappointment of preposterous claims; to watch with peculiar alarm lest what I called my philosophic estimate of the human lot in general, should be a mere prose lyric expressing my own pain and consequent bad temper. The standing-ground worth striving after seemed to be some Delectable Mountain, whence I could see things in proportions as little as possible determined by that self-partiality which certainly plays a necessary part in our bodily sustenance, but has a starving effect ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... ever I be going to leave you. My heart is just broke, but do, master Oscar, be good to your little brother, and don't put on him. He has a high spirit, and it is no doubt cantankerous, but he must be honourably treated, and there's never a finer temper ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... rude appliances must Shakspere bring before his audience the midnight battlements of Elsinore and the moonlit garden of the Capulets. The dramatists had to throw themselves upon the imagination of their public, and it says much for the imaginative temper of the public of that day, that it responded to the appeal. It suffered the poet to transport it over wide intervals of space and time, and "with aid of some few foot and half-foot words, fight over York and Lancaster's long jars." Pedantry undertook, even ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... the more ardent spirits all over India. On one occasion, as far back as 1895, when the Congress held its annual session in his own city of Poona, he had attempted to commit it to the aggressive doctrines which he was already preaching in the Deccan, but he soon discovered that the temper of the majority was against him. He was, however, far too tenacious ever to accept defeat. He bided his time. He knew he had to reckon with powerful personal jealousies, and he remained in the background. His opportunity did not come till ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... said "Oh, you have no idea what a terrible child she is! We can do nothing with her, she is stubborn and has an awful temper and it is impossible to control her. We are intending to send her to the ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw

... aristocracy and give us another. You must not judge us by what you saw in Piccadilly, and while you are still smarting from that smasher on your eye. London, I grant you, is not, and never was, a fair specimen. But, even in London, you must not be deceived. You don't know its real temper; and then, as to not being worth saving—why, the worse men are the more they want saving. However, we are both agreed about this—crew, Liverpool, the Prince Regent, and his friends." A strong word was about to escape before "crew," but the Major saw that he was in ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... she said, "I've been with you twenty-five years, Miss Rachel, through good temper and bad—" the idea! and what I have taken from her in the way of sulks!—"but I guess I can't stand it any longer. My ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Things settled down; commerce revived; and the acute distress passed away. The whole nation went mad over the wrongs of Queen Caroline; and the demand for political reform became for the time less intense. But it soon appeared that, although this crisis had been surmounted, the temper of the nation had profoundly changed. The supreme power still belonged constitutionally to the landed interest. But it had a profoundly modified social order behind it. The war had at least made it necessary to take into account the opinions of larger classes. An appeal ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... begun to dig. The rector scolded him, but the fellow answered that he had not taken service as a gardener. He received a good box on the ear for that. At this he threw away his spade and swore valiantly at his master. The old rector lost his temper entirely, seized the spade and struck at the man several times. He should not have done this, for a spade is a dangerous weapon, especially in the hands of a man as strong as is the pastor in spite of his years. Niels ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... good temper. It had long been a grievance to him that Schumann—grumbling old plodder!—instead of packing up his few sticks and being drafted into the civil service, should have remained so long stuck fast to the battery, thus preventing his own promotion. Now at last the old man had disappeared, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... truth of what Farwell was saying dashed Glenn's temper with fear. Hard and cruel as he was, he was not devoid of affection of a clammy sort, and for an instant Priscilla as a helpless girl wandering among strangers replaced Priscilla, the rebellious ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... abstinence and reckless indulgence; that he was often day after day drunk, and that drunkenness made him savage and ferocious,—such are the facts clearly shown by Mr. Moore's narrative. Of the natural peculiarities of Lord Byron's temper, he thus speaks to the Countess ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... think persons with turned up noses show crossness more easily than the other kind, and Potter had the expression in his eyes that Vic has when her shoes are tight and Mother is in a trying mood at the same time. I shouldn't be surprised if he has a horrid temper, although he thinks of so many funny things. And though he is so nice to me, he can't help saying things sometimes which show that he has a prejudice against England. That seems extraordinary, and shows one how conceited we English really are; for one is quite ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... the competency of existing agencies to account for changes in past geological times—was ignored by all alike. Macculloch's influence on the development of geology, which might have had far-reaching effects, was to a great extent neutralised by his peculiarities of mind and temper; and, after a stormy and troublous career, he retired from the society in 1832. In all the writings of the great pioneers in English geology, Hutton and his splendid generalisation are scarcely ever referred to. The great doctrines of Uniformitarianism, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... total of his energy represents a minus quantity one may not pick out the plus quantities, hold them up for admiration, and ask an admiring public to help regarding them. It is a favourite design of Satan to temper evil with a show of good and thus lure the unwary into the trap. The only way the world has known of defeating Satan is by shunning him. I invite Englishmen, who could work out the ideal the believe in, to join the ranks of the non-co-operationists. W.T. Stead prayed for the reverse ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... greatly changed since we last beheld him. In the place of the sprightly, impetuous youth, our readers must imagine a warrior, past the middle age; one whose scanty hair was already deeply tinged with gray. Thirty years had left many wrinkles on his brow; but where impatience and fiery temper had once sat visible to all, age and experience had substituted ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... a temper," he said with a jerk of his thumb toward the officer. "We arrested that Swedish girl in the uniform of the woman's battalion. One shoots that breed on sight, you know. But we were in such a hurry to finish with the Romanoffs——" He shrugged: "You see, comrades, we should ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... and after a while the only man on the job who had a watch began to lose his temper and refused to answer any more inquiries concerning the time. So presently Bert was sent up to the top of the house to look at a church clock which was visible therefrom, and when he came down he reported that it was ten ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... trackless wilderness, and on the opening of a wagon road to the new mines had built a wayside station which eventually developed into the present hotel. He had been divorced in a Western State by his wife "Rosalie," locally known as "The Prairie Flower of Elkham Creek," for incompatibility of temper! ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... a bigger chance in life? He had taken them out of the byways, but was he leading them to the highways? The whining, peevish submission on the part of the larger boys and girls; the unmistakable interrogation that always lurked in their eyes; the frequent outbursts of temper; the quarrels that came up every day among them—all of these went to prove they were sliding back into the byways. There was no gainsaying that, he would say to himself. Insolence, insubordination grew apace. Once Frederick, in the heat of passion over a well-deserved rebuke, called ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... whenever a song should be announced. At the singing school Brother Friedsam could not abide the least defect; he rated roundly the brother or sister who made any mistake; he scourged their lagging aspirations toward perfection. If it is ever necessary to account for bad temper in musicians, one might suggest that the water-gruel diet had impaired his temper and theirs; certain it is that out of the production of so much heavenly harmony there sprang discord. The brethren and sisters grew daily more and more indignant at the severity ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... the poisonous East, Over a continent of blight, Like a maleficent Influence released From the most squalid cellarage of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the abominable - The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light - Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, Hard on the skirts of the embittered night; And in a cloud unclean Of excremental humours, roused to strife By the operation of some ruinous change, Wherever ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... thought that a story-teller is born, as well as a poet. It is, I think, certain, that some men have such a peculiar cast of mind, that they see things in another light than men of grave dispositions. Men of a lively imagination and a mirthful temper will represent things to their hearers in the same manner as they themselves were affected with them; and whereas serious spirits might perhaps have been disgusted at the sight of some odd occurences in life, yet the very same occurrences shall ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... household affairs of her master. For a month the old man, now grown excessively timid, saw the laughing and kindly face of his mistress change to something terrible and gloomy and sullen. He was made to endure flashes of angry temper purposely displayed, precisely like a married man whose wife is meditating an infidelity. When, after some cruel rebuff, he nerved himself to ask Flore the reason of the change, her eyes were so full of hatred, and her voice so aggressive and ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... uncommon severity, and that the legal satellites, not usually the gentlest persons in the world, had insulted MacGregor's wife, in a manner which would have aroused a milder man than he to thoughts of unbounded vengeance. She was a woman of fierce and haughty temper, and is not unlikely to have disturbed the officers in the execution of their duty, and thus to have incurred ill treatment, though, for the sake of humanity, it is to be hoped that the story sometimes told is ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... bring him back at once. I have been dying to cable and make it up with him, but of course as I have determined not to, I can't. I am sorry to hear Hurstbridge got under the piano and then banged the German Governess's head as she tried to pull him out; but what can you expect, Mamma? His temper is the image ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... most excellent. To bestow perfect deportment, dignified control of the body and limbs, with an easy, graceful movement on all occasions, there is nothing like dancing. To eliminate the depressing effects of grief, mental or business cares, harassing trials of temper, physical exhaustion, or disturbed spiritual equilibrium, dancing is a remedy of marvelous potency. For the key to the reason why this is true, we are indebted to the wonderful discoveries in psychology and psychurgy made by that able scientist, renowned ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... far from his own country, dwelling in those of other men, gains very often a disposition and character of a fine temper, for, in seeing abroad diverse honourable customs, even though he might be perverse in nature, he learns to be tractable, amiable, and patient, with much greater ease than he would have done by remaining ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... may continue. There is some difficulty of breathing, palpitation of the heart on slight exertion, from a fright or from excitement, tendency to faint feeling or even fainting, headache, a tired feeling, hard to stir or do anything, irritable temper, poor or changeable appetite, the digestion is disturbed, there is constipation, coldness of the hands and feet, difficult menstruation, irregular menstruation, leucorrhea, amenorrhea, and sometimes there is a slight fever. The color is often of a yellowish-green ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... Thomson, on the spot. The duty Mr. Thomson undertook was not without danger; for a somewhat extensive notoriety as an attache of the "Tribune" was not likely to insure him the most cordial reception at the South. Had his presence been discovered, the temper of the people of Savannah would speedily have betrayed itself; and had his purpose been suspected, their wrath would assuredly have culminated in wreakages of a nature unfavorable to his personal comfort. But with caution, and the aid of Masonic influences, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... is nothing here now except a faint tradition of the French Acadians; and the sentimental traveler who laments that they were driven out, and not left behind their dikes to rear their flocks, and cultivate the rural virtues, and live in the simplicity of ignorance, will temper his sadness by the reflection that it is to the expulsion he owes "Evangeline" and the luxury of his romantic grief. So that if the traveler is honest, and examines his own soul faithfully, he will not know what state of mind to cherish as he ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... I am quite aware that no reproach, not even the spectacle of my present misery would touch your callous and, permit me to frankly add, your abominably selfish nature; but I do want to ask quite calmly and without any display of temper: what the blazes you wanted to come this way round, and why you ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... lifelike. Punshon will expect something of the sort, and he will not trouble you, for he knows that when I am fuddled I am quarrelsome. 'Tis a diverting world, Anastasia, wherein, you now perceive, habitual drunkenness and an unbridled temper may sometimes prove commendable,—as they do to-night, when they aid persecuted innocence!" Here Simon Orts gave an ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... the meat in the sand, and when inclined to eat dig it up, and, taking it to the water-trough, wash it clean. I have only known one puma kept as a pet, and this animal, in seven or eight years had never shown a trace of ill-temper. When approached, he would lie down, purring loudly, and twist himself about a person's legs, begging to be caressed. A string or handkerchief drawn about was sufficient to keep him in a happy state of excitement for an hour; and when one ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... inspiration," submitted Mrs. Allison. "Why do you not suspend your judgment for a while until you learn more about the Governor,—at any rate give him the benefit of a doubt until you have some facts," mildly replied Mrs. Allison with that gentle manner and meekness of temper which ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... young hero was to learn what work meant for the first time in his life. He wrote most of the day, often half the night; but although he chafed angrily at the confinement, beat many a tattoo on the floor with his heels, and went for a hard ride more than once that he might keep his temper, the result was that mass of correspondence, signed "George Washington," which raised the commander of the American forces so high in the estimation of Europe, adding to his military renown the splendour of a ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... who lived with her husband, the Count, near the Vijver. She was childless and very jealous of other women who were mothers and had children playing around them. On this day, when the beggar woman, with her two babies on her back, came along, the grand lady was in an unusually bad temper. For all her pretty clothes, she was not a person of fine manners. Indeed, she often acted more like a snarling dog, ready to snap at any one who should speak to her. Although she had cradles and nurses and lovely ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... and feasting for the past half hour while waiting for a truant ward. Jerome took pity upon me and fed me to keep me in a good temper. ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... them, than for the general perception of those universal springs of action which control all society, the patient unfolding of those traits of humanity with which commonplace writers get out of temper and rudely dispense. The place and the people are of the simplest, and the language is of the simplest; and what happens from day to day, and from year to year, in the period of the action, might happen in any little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... manner suspended. Its equipoise was totally gone. I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North. He was a man of admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding fitted for every sort of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and with a mind most perfectly disinterested. But it would be only to degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honor the memory of a great man, to deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and spirit of command that the time required. Indeed, a darkness ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... a hot morning when Cissy walked alone to chapel early next Sunday. There was a dry irritation in the air which even the northwest trades, blowing through the seaward gorge, could not temper, and for the first time in her life she looked forward to the leafy seclusion of the buried chapel with a feeling of longing. She had avoided her youthful escort, for she wished to practice alone for an hour before the service with the new harmonium that had taken the place of the old accordion ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... and he began the code called the Slete Partidas, which, however, was only promulgated by his great-grandson. Unhappily for himself and for Spain, he wanted the singleness of purpose required by a ruler who would devote himself to organization, and also the combination of firmness with temper needed for dealing with his nobles. His descent from the Hohenstaufen through his mother, a daughter of the emperor Philip, gave him claims to represent the Swabian line. The choice of the German electors, after the death of Conrad ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... to engender a fastidious contempt for the ordinary business of the world, and gradually to render us unfit for the exercise of the useful and domestic virtues which depend greatly upon our not exalting our feelings above the temper of well-ordered and well-educated society."[16] He phrased the same matter differently when he said: "'I'd rather be a kitten and cry, Mew!' than write the best poetry in the world on condition of laying ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... is always difficult to know the temper of speaker and audience from a printed report, it is due alike to Dr. R., to the whole Assembly, and the galleries, to say, that he, in reading these resolutions, and throughout his speech, evinced great good-humour ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.

... upon your hospitality until midnight,' answered Greif with a laugh, in which his natural good temper reappeared once more. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... is at present engaged in a History of the Commonwealth of England.—Esto perpetua! In size Mr. Godwin is below the common stature, nor is his deportment graceful or animated. His face is, however, fine, with an expression of placid temper and recondite thought. He is not unlike the common portraits of Locke. There is a very admirable likeness of him by Mr. Northcote, which with a more heroic and dignified air, only does justice to ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... i.e. make the final adjustment outside the flame, and to that end have the neck rather too thick (as to glass) before it is taken out. It is not necessary to wait till the neck gets cold before the end can be cut off. Make a scratch as before—this will probably slightly damage the temper of the file knife, but that must be put up with. Hold the tube against the edge of the table, so that the scratch is just above the level of the rim, and strike the upper part a smart blow with the handle of the glass knife rather in the direction of its length. ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... these: the legs became shorter, the snout and neck likewise shortened, the shoulders and hams increased their power to take on flesh, and the frame was strengthened to carry the added burden of flesh. As the animal grew heavier it roamed less widely, and as it grew accustomed to man its temper ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... about there for? muttered Stubb, looking on from the forecastle. That Parsee smells fire like a fusee; and smells of it himself, like a hot musket's powder-pan. At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and as perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near by, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab's bent face. Would'st thou brand me, Perth? wincing for a moment with the pain; have I been but forging my own branding-iron, then? Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... and barbarous dissonance Of savage Thracians and Croatian boors; The loud Centaurian broils with Lapithae Sound harsh, and grating to Lenaean god; Chase brutal feuds of Belgian skippers hence (Amid their cups whose innate temper's shown), In clumsy fist wielding scymetrian knife, Who slash each other's eyes, and blubber'd face, Profaning Bacchanalian solemn rites: Music's harmonious numbers better suit His festivals, from instruments or voice, Or Gasperani's hand the trembling ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... that's the name that's given me, For, as you all can plainly see, My hair is red as red can be— In fact it's fiery scarlet! And as my hair, my temper is; So if a page my hair should quiz, I waste no time, but straight pull his, And thrash the saucy varlet! So that is why the name I've got, And as, when I am waxing hot I frequently dismiss the lot, They ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg

... forgotten how the shepherds conquered and ruled them for generations. Nevertheless, there is some reason why the calling of the shepherds should be despised. Many of them are rude and fierce men. Living out of doors so constantly makes their manners rough and their temper harsh. They are often quarrelsome. Such bloody fights as I used to see among them, at the wells in the south country, where they brought their flocks to water and each one wanted the first chance at the well, I hope ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various

... replied with a laugh. "Your father thought to take me yesterday. How is the good knight? Not suffering, I trust, greatly either in body or temper?" ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... sudden sally against the enemy's 9 outposts, and after a slight skirmish, in which they tested each other's temper, both sides withdrew without advantage. Soon after, Caecina entrenched a strong position between a Veronese village called Hostilia[36] and the marshes of the river Tartaro. Here he was safe, with the river in his rear and the marsh ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... very formidable number. The Associations in the counties increase, though not rapidly: yet it will be difficult for the Court to stem such a torrent; and, I imagine, full as difficult for any man of temper to direct them wholesomely. Ireland is ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... being sincere people, they could not help; and that outbreak to Kalliope had made the sisters so uneasy, that they would have willingly endured the ridicule of a broken engagement to secure Adeline from the risks of a rough temper where gentlemanly ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... influence,—India and the orient,—the mongoose is a fairly decent citizen, and he fits into the time-worn economy of that region. As a destroyer of the thrice-anathema domestic rat, he has no equal in the domain of flesh and blood. His temper is so fierce that one "pet" mongoose has been known to kill a full grown male giant bustard, and put ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... outraged and vindictive Castlemaine. Here was a splendid opportunity of paying off old scores, of showing to her Royal lover the kind of woman for whom he had supplanted her, and of reinstating herself in his good graces. One night, as he returned in an evil temper from a fruitless visit to Miss Stuart's apartments, from which he had been sent away on some frivolous pretext, he was accosted by my Lady Castlemaine, who, with ill-concealed triumph, told him that at the moment La belle ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... and led him away to the road between herself and Miss Graves. The other gentlemen relieved the burdened Edinburghian of portions of his load, and fell into natural pairs with the ladies, Miss Du Plessis and Wilkinson bringing up the rear. There was a pleasant lake breeze to temper the heat of the fine August morning, which gave the dominie license ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... taken all the conceit out of him for the time. The impotency of his own will, even when he was bent on doing the right thing, his want of insight and foresight in whatever matter he took in hand, the unruliness of his temper and passions just at the moments when it behooved him to have them most thoroughly in hand and under control, were a set of disagreeable facts which had been driven well home to him. The results, being even such as we ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... audience who paid their dollar or half-dollar each to be amused. No one could gauge better than he the capacity of the crowd to feed on pure fun, and no one could discriminate more clearly than he the fitness, temper, and mental appetite of the constituents of his evening assemblies. The prosiness of an ordinary Mechanics' Institute lecture was to him simply abhorrent; the learned platitudes of a professed lecturer were to him, to use one ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... percensere Caesaris res, totum profecto terrarum orbem enumeret: For he must go very far that would sum up your perfections: Your skill in the customes of Nations, the situations of Kingdomes, the Advantages of places, the temper of the Climates; so as the Ages to come shall tell with delight, where you fought valiantly, where you suffered gallantly, Quis sudores tuos hauserit campus, quae refectiones tuas arbores, quae somnum saxa praetexerint, ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn

... board, after going ashore to see the port-admiral, in a furious temper, and his junior and the crew ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... after times, Mr. Gladstone traced one great defect in the education of Oxford. 'Perhaps it was my own fault, but I must admit that I did not learn when I was at Oxford that which I have learned since—namely, to set a due value on the imperishable and inestimable principle of British liberty. The temper which too much prevailed in academical circles was that liberty was regarded with jealousy and fear, something which could not wholly be dispensed with, but which was to be continually watched for ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Sikhandin, O king, rushed against Drona's son, Aswatthaman, however deeply piercing the angry Sikhandin stationed (before him) with a keen-edged shaft, caused him to tremble, Sikhandin also, O king, smote Drona's son with a sharp-whetted shaft of excellent temper. And they continued in that encounter to strike each other with various kinds of arrows. And against the heroic Bhagadatta in battle, Virata, the commander of a large division, rushed impetuously, O king, and then commenced (their) combat. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... They're grey, and your eyebrows stick out like a porch roof (beetling, they're called in novels), and your mouth is a straight line with a tendency to turn down at the corners. Oh, you see, I know! You're a snappy old thing with a temper. ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... your pardon, Joe Carstairs," he said, holding out his hand, which I shook heartily. "I wish I hadn't got such a beastly bad temper. I do try not to show it, but it makes me wild ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... have added to the obligation by going theirs, but this they declined absolutely to do. On the contrary, they accompanied us every foot of the way, keeping up a running fire of allusions to the 'Thing that bites' that jarred upon my nerves and discomposed my temper. ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... Jane, shrugging her shoulders. "I expect she's in a temper;" and she rose from her knees and ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger

... quite a different expression came into the man's face. His embarrassment, or ugliness of temper, or whatever it was, was gone. He jumped up again, insisted upon filling Cruthers's glass himself, and when Cruthers tasted it and winked both of his eyes over it, and then got up and shook Diffendorfer's hand a second time to let him know how good he thought it was, and how proud he was of ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... nights, and disturb good people in their beds. But he is out, if he thinks the whole World is blind! for there is one JOHN PARTRIDGE can smell a knave as far as Grub street, although he lies in the most exalted garret, and writeth himself "Squire"! But I will keep my temper! and ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... little cabins built by their own hands on the edge of the snow-filled gulch, that a new life had blossomed for them suddenly—a perfect spring in winter. The girl's wonderful health and unfailing spirits were in themselves a delight, and she was possessed of such a sweet and even temper, that it seemed to smooth out and round off the hard edges of their rough, comfortless existence. Nothing seemed to have the power to disturb her, the most irritating and annoying incident never even ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... characteristic of him that he had come to see the Duchessa not knowing what he should say, and that he had blurted out the whole truth, and then lost his temper in support of it. He was a hasty man, of noble instincts, but always inclined rather to cut a knot than to unloose it—to do by force what another man would do by skill—angry at opposition, and yet craving it by ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... tears and repeating verses for the whole night. This is sad work. The very grave gives up its dead, and time rolls back thirty years to add to my perplexities. I don't care. I begin to grow over-hardened, and, like a stag turning at bay, my naturally good temper grows fierce and dangerous. Yet what a romance to tell, and told I fear it will one day be. And then my three years of dreaming and my two years of wakening will be chronicled doubtless. But the dead will feel ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... she was just return'd home from taking a short Country airing, threw herself into a violent Passion, and swell'd with Invectives. What, in God's Name, my Dear, said Zadig, has thus ruffled your Temper? What can be the Meaning of all these warm Exclamations? Alas! said she, you would have been disgusted as much as I am, had you been an Eye-witness of that Scene of Female Falshood, as I was Yesterday. I went, you must know, to visit the disconsolate Widow ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... Cadiz. Desirous of visiting countries so calculated to excite the curiosity of a European, he did not hesitate to confine himself with us during seventy-four days in a narrow boat infested with mosquitos. His amiable disposition and gay temper often helped to make us forget the sufferings of a voyage which was not wholly exempt from danger. We passed the mouth of the Apurito, and coasted the island of the same name, formed by the Apure and the Guarico. This island is in fact only a very low spot of ground, bordered by two great rivers, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... she called Laura, should not have the satisfaction of seeing a trace of emotion in her, or Tristram either. He had answered immediately, "Yes," and had walked on by her side, in an absolutely raging temper. ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... them might radiate for others, as for me, shafts of light to penetrate the past." The result is unique in the revelation afforded in the Puritans' own words of their daily walk and conversation and of that inner temper which governed their public acts. The range is from orders for clothes and directions for an Atlantic voyage to the soul searchings of Cotton Mather and the spiritual ecstasies of ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle

... streets by bonefires, it being the King's birth-day and day of Restauration; but, Lord! to see the difference how many there were on the other side, and so few ours, the City side of the Temple, would make one wonder the difference between the temper of one sort of people and the other: and the difference among all between what they do now, and what it was the night when Monk come into the City. Such a night as that I never think to see again, nor think it can be. After I come home I was till one in the morning with Captain ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... favour of the Jacobins for him, had prejudiced Louis XVI. against his new minister. The minister, on his side, expected to find in the king a spirit opposed to the constitution, a mind trammelled by routine, a violent temper, an abrupt manner, and using language imperious and offensive to all who approached him. Such was the caricature of this unfortunate prince. It was necessary to disfigure him in order to ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... this arise? Has the God of heaven, in anger, here changed the order of nature? In every other region, without exception, in a similar degree of latitude, the same sun which ripens the tamarind and the anana, ameliorates the temper, and disposes it to gentleness and kindness. In India and other countries not very different in climate from the southern parts of the United States, the inhabitants are distinguished for a softness and inoffensiveness of manners, degenerating almost to effeminacy; ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... bad temper, Sophy; that I can see," expostulated the mother. "Well, Alice, perhaps you can tell me what all this fuss is about? I hope to goodness you gave the ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... Owen lost his temper; but, recovering it suddenly, he went down the room with Lady Southwick to show her a Wedgewood dessert service which he had bought some years ago for Evelyn, pressing it upon her, urging that he would ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... after some years spent in penance, became once more minister, and ultimately King of Munster. As he advanced in years, he learned to love peace, and his once irascible temper ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... wholly obscured and the swinging lantern afforded the only beacon to steer by. The close-growing trees impinged sharply on shins and elbows, and overhanging boughs frequently occasioned still more serious encounters. Patience and temper were nearly exhausted when a sudden glare shot out of the darkness, and the intendant pulled up before an open door whence issued a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... the counsels of Spain and the Empire. Please to observe that these two Courts, which had made incredible solicitations to him while he wavered, began, as soon as his purpose was fixed, to draw back,—a fatality due to the phlegmatic temper of the Spaniard, dignified by the name of prudence, joined to the astute politics of the house of Austria. You may observe at the same time that the Count, who had continued firm and unshaken three months together, changed his mind as soon as his enemies had granted what ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... have no scruples of conscience in making use of Mrs. Commissary, if I can," said Lady Mabel. "I hope she is of a sociable temper?" ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... which was now discharged. The only debt of gratitude which she had ever acknowledged, was to the old French teacher, who, although she never got nearer the pronunciation or the orthography of her name than Mademoiselle l'Ocalle, had yet, in the overflowing benevolence of her temper, taken such notice of the deserted child, as amidst the general neglect might pass for kindness. But she had returned to France. For no one else did Honor profess the slightest interest Accordingly, she left the house where she had passed nearly all her life, without expressing any desire ...
— Honor O'callaghan • Mary Russell Mitford

... its doing any good. I was perfectly sincere when I wrote it, and am so still. But it is difficult for me to withstand the thousand provocations on that subject which both friends and foes have for seven years been throwing in the way of a man whose feelings were once quick, and whose temper was never patient.' ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... indicator of true character, but I beg to differ. To me the eye tells everything, and I have never yet looked directly into a person's eyes without being able to satisfy myself as to their disposition. Cruelty, vanity, deceit, temper, sensuality, and all the other vices display themselves at once; and so with vulgarity—the glitter of the vulgar, of the ignorant, petty, mean, sordid mind, the mind that estimates all things and all people ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... love. For my part, I find it quite easy to practise perfection, now that I realise it only means making Jesus captive through His Heart. Look at a little child who has just vexed its mother, either by giving way to temper or by disobedience. If it hides in a corner and is sulky, or if it cries for fear of being punished, its mother will certainly not forgive the fault. But should it run to her with its little arms outstreteched, and say; "Kiss me, Mother; I will not do it again!" what mother would not ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... believer, one of those excited beings who did not allow the miracles to be called in question. And thus he often suffered from his duties at the Verification Office, where he was ever ready to growl with anger when anybody disputed a prodigy. The appeal to the doctors had made him quite lose his temper, and his superior had to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... childhood and school-time, through the ordeal of adolescence, through close contact with stirring and enormous events, to that decisive stage when it has found the sources of its strength, and is fully and finally prepared to put its temper to the proof. ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... to a great change in the temper of the home. After the funeral the family settled down to a seemingly peaceful continuance of the old life; but it was a matter of seeming merely. The situation stood with Callum and Owen manifesting a certain degree of contempt for Aileen, which she, understanding, reciprocated. She ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... recover his temper. Her quivering face shewed him that she was suffering from the miserable accident of the interruption ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... valued as a useful method of keeping touch between the men who were directing the war and the journalists of America. Without frightening anyone by making official inquiries, it was easy to find out the temper of the men who kept America informed. Those concerned had only to drop in at the next Strachey tea ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... neighbors. Each hour of the day these neighbors presented a different face, were arrayed in totally different raiment, were grave or gay, glowing with color or shrouded in mists, according to the mood and temper of the sun, the winds, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... something about him, something in his atmosphere, so to speak, that I did not like. Before we parted that evening I felt sure that in one way or another he was a wrong-doer, not straight; also that he had a violent temper. ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... Whig, unhappily for the Whig party, which, before the unhonoured and unlamented close of his life, was more than once brought to the verge of ruin by his violent temper and his crooked politics. His Whiggism differed widely from that of his father. It was not a languid, speculative, preference of one theory of government to another, but a fierce and dominant passion. Unfortunately, though an ardent, it was at the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 24th Illinois Regiment a very clever officer who has an intolerably red nose. He says he can't "help it;" he strives to temper it, but it is no go. A friend inquired of him, how much it cost to color it out here; his ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... "Bart" Cloud, not yet won over to good temper. "Every little freshman thinks he can buy a pair of moleskins and be a football man. Look at that fellow over yonder, the one with the baggy trousers and straw hat. The idea of that fellow coming down here just out of the hayfield and having the cheek ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... in it, about a man's being determined to conquer his wife, break her spirit, bend her temper, crush all her humours like so many nut-shells—kill her, for ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... caned as English boys are when their bad marks foot up beyond a certain aggregate; girls are more prone to cliques; their punishments must be in appeals to school sentiment, to which they are exceedingly sensitive; it is hard for them to bear defeat in games with the same dignity and unruffled temper as boys; it is harder for them to accept the school standards of honor that condemn the tell-tale as a sneak, although they soon learn this. They may be a little in danger of being roughened by boyish ways and especially by the crude and unique language, almost a dialect in itself, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... obscure in form and shape, would appear in just proportions; and many of the sources of our present anxiety might become the means of our richest satisfaction. Let us imitate the noble examples upon record; remembering that no place or time is unsuitable to a devout temper, or impossible to be improved to pious purposes. Isaac meditated in the fields, and Mary in the stable; and a devout spirit will transform either into a temple of praise ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... and we didn't eat much the day after, either. She used to feed us—I wish I could eat like that now! I can see her brown eyes following us about, full of fire, but soft and kind, too. She had a great temper, they said, but everybody liked her, and some loved her. She'd had one girl, but she died of consumption, got camping out in bad weather. Aunt Cynthy—that was what we called her, her name being Cynthia—never got over her girl's death. She blamed herself for it. She had had those fits of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... your favour, gave you only a drop of wine to drink, and how this brought reproaches upon me for a couple of days. You don't know, my lady, you have no idea of his disposition! it's really dreadful; and when he has had a little wine he shows far more temper. On days when her venerable ladyship is in high spirits, she allows him to have his own way about drinking, but he's not allowed to have wine on any and every day; and why should I have to suffer inside and all ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... little slave boys in the house, on whom she vented her bad temper in a special manner. One of these children was a mulatto, called Cyrus, who had been bought while an infant in his mother's arms; the other, Jack, was an African from the coast of Guinea, whom a sailor had given or sold to my master. Seldom a day passed without these boys receiving ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... was a very able document. In all official papers of importance the President appeared at his best. He had the inestimable advantage of Mr. Seward's calm temper and of his attractive and forcible statement of the proper argument. Few among the public men of the United States have rivaled Mr. Seward in the dignity, felicity, and vigor which he imparted to an ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... had fallen back into its former state of unhappiness. Pascal and Clotilde remained entire afternoons without exchanging a word; and there were continual outbursts of ill-humor. Even Martine was constantly out of temper. The home of these three had ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... seas be established; and that the territorial claims of France and Italy, the perplexing problems of the Balkan states, and the restitution of Poland be left to such conciliatory adjustments as may be possible in the new temper of such a peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of the peoples whose political fortunes and affiliations ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... temper of this servant in the Lord's parable. I am afraid it is by no means the temper of many of us nowadays. The servant said IN HIS HEART, that his master would be long away. It was his heart put the thought into his ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... waist, and their temper began to give way under the strain. When they lay down in damp clothes beside the fire at nights, Blake was annoyed to find his sleep disturbed by a touch of malarial fever. He had suffered from it in India, and now it had attacked him again, ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... tea-party, and the "Do Good Society," all growing wiser and better as they grow older, and becoming more and more Christ-like as they follow in his steps. And we may be sure that Etta Mountjoy, cured of her erratic moods and wayward temper, first by being anchored to the rock of ages, and then by the safeguards and helps which the church of Christ throws around its members, will be still foremost in leading the little phalanx, her energy ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... Resolution to speak to the Phantom, let what will be the Consequence, is entirely suitable to his Heroical Disposition; and his Reflection upon his Father's Spirit appearing in Arms, is such as one would naturally expect from him; and the Moral Sentence he ends his short Speech with, suits his virtuous Temper, at the same Time that it has a good Effect upon the Audience, and answers ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... not remarkable, that the same temper of weather, which raises this general warmth in animals, should cover the trees with leaves, and the fields with grass, for their security and concealment, and produce such infinite swarms of insects for the support and sustenance ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... a tall, thin man, full bearded, with large eyes. He had an air of habitual sadness, or gravity approaching it, and was commonly reputed to have an irritable temper, but I saw nothing of it. I think he would have made an acceptable commander of the corps if fortune had left him in that position. His place in the regular army (Major of the Fourth United States Cavalry [Footnote: He and General Sturgis were the two majors of the same regiment.]) ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... lost in the woods and a storm coming on! It was a situation to try the patience of a saint. And the girls were not saints. They were just happy, fun-loving, lovable specimens of young American girlhood who could upon occasion show rather alarming flashes of temper. ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler

... lost flesh and color; and long indulgence of a fretful, peevish temper had drawn down the corners of her mouth, lined her forehead, and left its ugly pencilings here and there over the once pretty face, so that it already began to look old and care-worn. She was very gayly dressed, in the height of the fashion, and rather ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... perception, good judgment, and the power of readily adapting means to ends, which, with Americans, is termed 'faculty,' and with Englishmen bears the homelier name of 'handiness.' Morally, they are conscientiousness, command of temper, industry and perseverance; and these are the very qualities a good school education must develop and cultivate. The object of such an education is not to put into the pupils so much History, Geography, French ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... their tails.—Ver. 701. Pliny the Elder remarks that the temper of the lion is signified by his tail, in the same way as that of the horse by his ears. When in motion, it shows that he is angry; when quiet, that he ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... we were greeted at last by old Ocean's roar; Ocean, the strongest of creation's sons, "that rolls the wild, profound, eternal bass in Nature's anthem." The officers, Mr. Tietkens and Mr. Young, except for occasional outbursts of temper, and all the other members of the expedition, acted in every way so as to give me satisfaction; and when I say that the personnel of the expedition behaved as well as the camels, I cannot formulate ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... murdered. The Sultan was engaged in a war with Persia. There was no eastern bulwark in Europe to the ever menacing power of the Turk and of Mahometanism in Europe save Hungary alone. Supported and ruled as that kingdom was by the House of Austria, the temper of the populations of Germany had become such as to make it doubtful in the present conflict of religious opinions between them and their rulers whether the Turk or the Spaniard would be most odious as an invader. But for the moment, Spain and the Emperor had their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the mistake of losing his temper, and the further mistake of showing that he had lost it, and when giants do this, it means that they know they are in the wrong and don't care. He insulted Michele most grossly, and the knight very properly drew his sword and went for him, and a terrible ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... bad—you abandoned girl!" she exclaimed, losing her temper altogether. "My heart is broken with you. Go to your room, and stay there. I feel as if I could never endure the sight ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... nearly 46 years, and removed to the White House. Whatever his feelings may have been at the severing of his old associations he carefully kept them to himself, and entered upon his new life with the cheerful composure and steadiness of temper which he possessed in a remarkable degree. He was now more than 80 years old, and the cares of office had begun to weigh heavily upon him: the long-continued drag of the Transit of Venus work had wearied him, and he was anxious to carry on and if possible complete his Numerical Lunar Theory, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... incident, preserved for us by Languet, which happened about this time, reveals somewhat of Catharine's temper and of the doubts that pervaded the young king's mind. On Corpus Christi day, the queen mother, in conversation with her son, recommended to him that, while duly reverencing the sacrament, he should not entertain so gross a belief as that the bread which was carried around in the procession was ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... should say, to be enacted, not merely in the face of audiences like this, but in the face of the nation, and to some extent, by my relation to him, and not from anything in myself, in the face of the world; and I am anxious that they should be conducted with dignity and in the good temper which would be befitting the vast audiences before which it was conducted. But when Judge Douglas got home from Washington and made his first speech in Chicago, the evening afterward I made some sort of a reply to it. His second speech ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... a gorgeous day. We were actually going to advance. The news put us in marvellous good temper. For the first time in my recollection we offered each other our bacon, and one at the end of breakfast said he had had enough. The Staff was almost giggling, and a battalion (the Cheshires, I think) that we saw pass, was absolutely shouting with joy. You would have thought ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... with a show of temper—she snatched the four of diamonds from its lawful place and laid it brazenly far outside ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... was not pliable, his was the sort of look to make it so. A calmly good-humoured brow, with a clear keen eye, and in both all that character of firm strength to which a woman's temper is apt to give way. If it had been a question of temper in the ordinary sense. But the lady of Chickaree had nothing of the sort belonging to her that was not as ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... in fact it is not so. A man finds another act towards him with unconscious impudence or arrogance, and at once flies into a rage; there is a fierce wrangle, and at the end he finds no purpose served, for nothing was at stake. He has lost his temper for nothing. In his heat he may tell you "he wouldn't let so-and-so do so-and-so," but on the same principle he should hold a street-argument with every fish-wife who might call him a name. He may ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... holy maiden, do thou lead mine host; My chiefs and warriors shall submit to thee. This sword of matchless temper, proved in war, Sent back in anger by the Constable, Hath found a hand more worthy. Prophetess, Do thou receive it, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Last night he wished to make me promise to take him along, and he wept for an hour in bed. This morning again, he tried everything to persuade me. Oh, how sly and coaxing he is! But when he saw that he could not gain his point, the young gentleman got into a temper. He went off to the fields, and I have ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... Throughout there is a vein of daemonic. The second (Allegro) melody grows to a high point of pathos,—nay, anguish, followed later by buoyant, strepitant, dancing delight, with the melting answer, in the latest melody. The daemon is half external fate—in the Greek sense, half individual temper. The end is almost sullen; but the charm is never failing; at the last is the ever ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... to the highest honours, estranged him from the men who had fought his way to the Crown. Warwick saw that the Yorkists could still be rallied round the elder of Edward's brothers, the Duke of Clarence; and the temper of Clarence, weak and greedy of power, hating the Woodvilles, looking on himself as heir to the crown yet dreading the claims of Edward's daughter Elizabeth, lent itself to his arts. The spring of 1469 was spent in intrigues ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... in two, and gave rise to the new religion. A ceremony in which it was implied that the intoxication of their worshippers was pleasing to the gods, and not obscurely hinted that they themselves indulged in similar excesses, was revolting to the religious temper of those who made the Zoaroastrian reformation; and it is plain from the Gathas that the new system was intended at first to be entirely free from the pollution of so disgusting a practice. But the zeal of religious reformers outgoes in most cases the strength and patience of their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson



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