Tempers

Famous quotes containing the word tempers:

    ... continual hard labor deadens the energies of the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas become confined, the mind barren, and, like the scorching sands of Arabia, produces nothing; or, like the uncultivated soil, brings forth thorns and thistles. Again, continual hard labor irritates our tempers and sours our dispositions; the whole system become worn out with toil and fatigue; nature herself becomes almost exhausted, and we care but little whether we live or die.
    Maria Stewart (1803–1879)

    When was it that the particles became
    The whole man, that tempers and beliefs became
    Temper and belief and that differences lost
    Difference and were one? It had to be
    In the presence of a solitude of the self....
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We
    all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we
    are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in
    others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we
    grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins
    the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a
    charm to any character, and so our struggle with them
    dies away.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)