Temperament
There are conflicting accounts of Van Meter's personality, although all agree that he was an inveterate clown and prankster. Of his criminal side, the director of research at the state prison at Michigan City said:
This fellow is a criminal of the most dangerous type. Moral sense is perverted and he has no intention of following anything but a life of crime ... He is a murderer at heart and if society is to be safeguarded, his type must be confined throughout their natural lives.
While not long afterwards, the chaplain at the very same facility described him as follows:
Van Meter ... is ready to prove that he is no longer the man who got off on such a bad start.
Read more about this topic: Homer Van Meter
Famous quotes containing the word temperament:
“The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs.... Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic—a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“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.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)