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I think what you see [in Salome the play backstage] is an artist having this fit of temperament.
Sep 10, 2025
My temperament is not inclined toward more self-promotion than is absolutely necessary for my professional well-being.
I wasn't really a performer by temperament.
Fear is like the strong medicine used to fight serious diseases; it purges, but it also alters your temperament and wears out the body organs. A person who is driven by fear will always be the weaker for it
In or orchestra we have many nationalities, types, and temperaments.
Markets and exchanges are merely mechanisms which reflect the temperament of man
To my mind, what is most important now is the defeating of the worst candidate for president that I have seen in my lifetime, Donald Trump, who is not qualified to be president by temperament, not qualified to be president by the ideas that he has brought forth.
It's not that you make up your ideas to justify your temperament but that it's the temperament first.
Race and temperament go for much in influencing opinion.
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. ...Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known. ...Art is Individualism.
The same is true of Love, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure.
Reading requires a loner's temperament, a high tolerance for silence, and an unhealthy preference for the company of people who are imaginary or dead.
At the root of the shy temperament is a deep fear of social judgment, one so severe it can sometimes be crippling. Introverted people don't worry unduly about whether they'll be found wanting, they just find too much socializing exhausting and would prefer either to be alone or in the company of a select few people.
...the power-loving temperament is more dangerous when it either prefers or is forced to operate in what is materially a void. Wehave everything to dread from the dispossessed.
I had always imagined Rosa Parks as a stately woman with a bold temperament, someone who could easily stand up to a busload of glowering passengers. But when she died in 2005 at the age of ninety-two, the flood of obituaries recalled her as soft-spoken, sweet, and small in stature. They said she was "timid and shy" but had "the courage of a lion." They were full of phrases like "radical humility" and "quiet fortitude.
As for me, I am unfortunate enough not to posses a happy temperament like Najdorf, who views every happening in a rosy light and avoids any possibility of self-criticism. I am one of those unlucky skeptics who never overlook the dark side of even the happiest experience.
I believe that a core problem with undergraduate education, especially at research universities like Harvard, Stanford, NYU, etc, is that most teaching is done by PhDs, who by temperament, training, interests, and rewards are researchers first. So they spend most of their time and energy probing a snip of a field's cutting edge. In my view, the attributes needed to be a transformative undergraduate instructor are pretty orthogonal to that. It would seem that undergraduate education would be superior if there was a separate track for teaching faculty.
That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards.
Dorothy is th cool type of temperament who quite frequently thinks that two is a crowd.
It is cowardly to fly from natural duties and take up those that suit our taste or temperament better; but it is also unwise to take an exaggerated view of personal duties, which shuts out the proper care of the mind and body entrusted to us.
Pain is a sensation produced by something contrary to the course of nature and this sensation is set up by one of two circumstances: either a very sudden change of the temperament (or the bad effect of a contrary temperament) or a solution of continuity.
He who gets the better of an irascible temperament conquers his worst enemy.
He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.
People generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments.
Every nursing mother, in the midst of her little dependent brood, has far more right to whine, sulk or scold, as temperament dictates, because beefsteak and coffee are not prepared for her and exactly to her taste, than any man ever had or ever can have during the present stage of human evolution.
There are many people of cosmopolitan temperament who are not from the elites of their societies or the world; and while, for a variety of reasons, I think a cosmopolitan spirit does naturally go with city life, that's the life of a very large proportion of human beings today. And I don't think rural people can't be cosmopolitan, in my sense.
I actually prefer it if I don't know what I'm supposed to do. If you've got an equal temperament piano keyboard, then you know what you're going to get if you play certain chords. But I actually like it if you don't know where the notes are, because then you do it intuitively. You're working out a new language, basically. New rules.
No virtue fades out of mankind. Not over-hopeful by inborn temperament, cautious by long experience, I yet never despair of human virtue.
I like cats. I used to have a lot of cats, but I don't anymore, now I just have a dog. It does take a certain temperament to have a cat, as they do have certain personalities.
.. since it was true that study, even when done properly, can only teach us what wisdom, right conduct and determination consist in, they wanted to put their children directly in touch with actual cases, teaching them not by hearsay but by actively assaying them, vigorously molding and forming them not merely by word and precept but chiefly by deeds and examples, so that wisdom should not be something which the soul knows but the soul's very essence and temperament, not something acquired but a natural property.
the temperaments of children are often as oddly unsuited to parents as if capricious fairies had been filling cradles with changelings.
British girls are as temperamental as Americans.
Through an experience that simultaneously involved my sensibility and intelligence, I realized early on that the imaginative life, however morbid it might seem, is the one that suits temperaments like mine. The fictions of my imagination (as it later developed) may weary me, but they don't hurt or humiliate. Impossible lovers can't cheat on us, or smile at us falsely, or be calculating in their caresses. They never forsake us, and they don't die or disappear. --The book of Disquiet
Great and glorious events which dazzle the beholder are represented by politicians as the outcome of grand designs whereas they are usually products of temperaments and passions.
Two things, almost incompatible, are united in me in a manner which I am unable to understand: a very ardent temperament, lively and tumultuous passions, and, at the same time, slowly developed and confused ideas, which never present themselves until it is too late. One might say that my heart and my mind do not belong to the same person.
Mr. Rihani is a man of ardent poetic temperament, a clever poet, and a man of unworldly ideals.
One of the aphorisms occurred to me now and I wrote it under the picture: "Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept." That was clear to me now.
Certain temperaments respond to anxiety by pulling inward. Their instincts tell them ' Don't go out to meet the world - you'll have a panic attack. Inside is where safety is.
The horse is your mirror. He never flatters you. He reflects your temperament. He also reflects your ups and downs. Don’t ever be angry with your horse: you might as well be angry with your mirror.
I was very shy when I was younger. But I did have a terrible temperament. I would get angry very quickly, but the rest of the time I was this big goofball, playing the drums in a band and making out with girls.
When I am angry I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.
A good cook is not necessarily a good woman with an even temper. Some allowance should be made for artistic temperament.
The word realist means nothing to me, because I would subordinate reality to temperament. Give me what is true and I applaud; but give me what is individual and alive and I applaud even more.
Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave.
Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
Compulsory sports for those who by temperament or physique do not qualify may be a disaster. . . . The repercussions may be extreme . . . and they may be very long-lasting, even throughout adulthood.
Your attitude is more important than the events happening around you. Artists develop a syndrome taught in art schools. It is a malady titled, 'Artistic Temperament'... rudeness, excuses, slovenliness, laziness, clutter, addictions, non-commercial attitudes, un-professionalism... and a good reason for failure.
I am now of all humors that have showed themselves humors since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present twelve o'clock at midnight.
I am not interested only in telling a story, but I want to tell it my way. I don't want my accent, my temperament, my narrative style to be compromised to fit into a mold of the Hollywood type.
Others make a point of trying to attain the precision and poise they see in those who have the ability to choose from a great number of horses those with [...] qualities found in only a very small number of horses. This leads to a circumstance in which these imitators of such studied poise mortify the spirit of a noble horse, and remove from it all of the goodness of temperament Nature has given it.