Temperamental Quotes & Sayings

British girls are as temperamental as Americans. — Ivor Novello

I'm reading the Gospels at the moment and I can find no evidence of the kind of Christ people seem to have invented and created. There is no evidence of Christ, meek and mild. I can find Christ the compassionate, the gentle, but I also find a very temperamental, aggressive, passionate and often angry man a lot of the time. We will go for a man with that sort of breadth who is an enormous figure. I do believe Christ lived as a person. I don't think there is any disputing that. — Franco Zeffirelli

It reveals us to ourselves, it represents those modulations and temperamental changes which escape all verbal analysis, it utters what must else remain forever unuttered and unutterable; it feeds that deep, ineradicable instinct within us of which all art is only the reverberated echo, that craving to express, through the medium of the senses, the spiritual and eternal realities which underlie them. — Hugh Reginald Haweis

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

He explained what he saw in her eyes, which was not sadness or disappointment but understanding. Sympathy, he said, and wit. At some level sympathy implied knowledge and knowledge had a melancholy aspect. He believed that was universally true, no exceptions. When you knew too much you felt a natural distress but that was something quite different from fundamental personal sadness, sadness as a trait, like blue eyes. Her distress was not temperamental but intellectual. — Ward Just

Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it's too assertive to the naked eye. — Gordon Ramsay

Courage is temperamental, scientific, ideal. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm very emotional, very explosive, very temperamental. — James Fox

I thought it must be difficult for him, for boys. They get temperamental when they can't shape the world into what they want it to be. It's easier for girls. Girls are raised knowing that the world is unshapable. So they know better than to fuss. — Joshua Gaylord

In most writers, style is a welcome, an invitation, a letting down of the drawbridge between the artist and the world. Shaw had no time for such ruses. Unlike most of his countrymen, he abominated charm, which he regarded as evidence of chronic temperamental weakness. — Kenneth Tynan

The moment you say, 'Please, give me a reason for this', then you are being impossible and temperamental. — Montserrat Caballe

Most films I've worked on have had large casts, but they've been wonderful people. I think the monkey in Pirates of the Caribbean is the most temperamental costar I've had. It would throw tantrums like you wouldn't believe. — Geoffrey Rush

It was an amazing performer. Very temperamental, it spent a lot of time in its trailer. — Tilda Swinton

There is a haphazard sort of doing good, which is nothing but temperamental pleasure-seeking. — Fanny Lewald

When the temperamental and unconventional people are not mere plagiarists of dead eccentrics, they lack, in almost every case, thehistoric sense. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

If they're not temperamental, I don't want them. It's in the nature of a great artist to be that way. — Sol Hurok

For at the beginning of the twentieth century, the nation had been struggling to find its way. Terror had raged, a second civil war had threatened to split the nation into new feuding armies, and the inequities of industrial life had brutalized too many lives. Three men who were caught up in those traumatic times, shaped by them, found with their talents, energy, and ideals a way out of it, both for themselves and for the nation. Darrow, Billy, D.W. were all flawed - egotists, temperamental, and too often morally complacent. But as their careers and lives intersected in Los Angeles at the tail end of the first decade of the twentieth century, each in his own way helped to move America into the modern world. They were individuals willing to fight for their beliefs; and the legacy of their battles, their cultural and political brawls, remains part of our national consciousness. — Howard Blum

I am an impatient, temperamental reader. Anything long-winded, high-flown or gushing irritates me, so does everything that is vague and indistinct, in fact anything that unnecessarily holds the reader up, whether in a novel, a biography or an intellectual argument. — Stefan Zweig

You must have six boxes of cat food in that cupboard."
"Moshe gets cranky if I don't keep a variety."
After tasking his breakfast, Alan found it better than he had expected. "I have a hard time understanding anyone as strong-willed as you being intimidated by a temperamental cat."
Shelby lifted her shoulders and continued to eat. "We all have our weaknesses.Besides,as roommates go, he's perfect.He doesn't listen in on my phone calls or borrow my clothes."
"Are those your prerequisites?"
"They're certainly in the top ten."
Watching her,Alan nodded. She'd plowed hre way through the toast in record time. "If I promised to restrain myself from doing either of those things, would you marry me? — Nora Roberts

Just who am I?" the rough baritone asked in the infuriatingly amused tone one might use with a temperamental child. You're a monster, she wanted to say. A giant - huge and thickly muscled and terrifying. But she flung back her answer like her papa's own daughter. "You're the rebel bastard Glen Lyon. — Kimberly Cates

Once more the legend flourished that the number of years lived constitutes some kind of temperamental bond, so that people of the same age are many minds with but a single thought, bearing one to another a close resemblance. The young were commented on as if they were some new and just discovered species of animal life, with special qualities and habits which repaid investigation. — Rose Macaulay

I am very fussy; I am very detailed; I nag a lot. So in a sense, I am like Mr. Ping. I am temperamental, I am emotional, I'm fussy, and I'm very exact. And I want people to not fail; I want them to execute - all those things Mr. Ping wants in other people. Or animals. — James Hong

I like temperamental men.' 'There aren't any. Men don't know how to be really angry or really happy
and the ones that do, go to pieces. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Curly: Wait a minute! Y'know I'm temperamental.
Moe: Ya, 95 percent temper,5 percent mental — The Three Stooges

You're welcome to join us again sometime," Bella said....
"Right. Well, I don't know." Sam looked at the ground. scuffing one boot in the dirt. "I'm usually not very good company."
"I'm hanging out with a teenager and a temperamental cat." Bella said with a small smile. "The bar is set very low around here. — Deborah Blake

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a body of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. — Samuel Ullman

Denny thought our parents needed a combination of material goods and temperamental changes before he could return home.
"If Dad buys Ma a car, then she'll love him, and they'll get back together and she won't be all crazy anymore," he said. For years he held out the possibility that those things would happen and all would change. "If we had more things, like stoves and cars," he told me at night in our bedroom, "and Ma wasn't like she is, we could go home. — John William Tuohy

If you've ever wondered what we're missing by sitting at computers in cubicles all day, follow Jessica DuLong when she loses her desk job and embarks on this unlikely but fantastic voyage. Deeply original, riveting to read, and soul-bearingly honest, "My River Chronicles" is a surprisingly infectious romance about a young woman falling in love with a muscle-y old boat. As DuLong learns to navigate her way through a man's world of tools and engines, and across the swirling currents of a temperamental river, her book also becomes a love letter to a nation. In tune with the challenges of our times, DuLong reminds us of the skills and dedication that built America, and inspires us to renew ourselves once again. — Trevor Corson

You do not need to be temperamental or upset to be a novelist. Don't embrace the tortured artist rhetoric that any life difficulties might serve to benefit and enhance your writing. That's damaging. Counterintuitive. Writing can be so incredibly lonely, and when you're alone with your thoughts for long enough to produce a hundred thousand words of your own headspace, it can be scary. Suffering is not good for your art. Mental health care is. So talk to someone other than your future readers about the problems you are facing. Someone you know and trust. There is no shame in asking for help. — Bryant A. Loney

Our love is true because the truth is love isn't always kind or patient, sometimes it's raw and passionate and impulsive and can even be cruel. Believe it or not sometimes you have to work at it and when we we're good; we're not even great we're phenomenal. Sometimes I'm temperamental asshole and you're just a crazy grade A bitch! But we work for God's sake so don't throw us away! We are just two imperfect people living in an imperfect world with a slightly imperfect love, is there anything more perfect than that? I love you Sienna, I love you now and I will always love you." He said so sincerely with a look so pure it startled her and set all the nerves in her body alight with an exhilarating intense fire that she tried to extinguish immediately with pails of water. — Ali Harper

The favorite game of temperamental people is Try to Guess Why I'm Ticked Off. (Contestant number one, Why do YOU think he's pissed off? Why, I'm not sure, Bob, but I'm going to go with 'Because I Left the Faucet Dripping.' BEEP. I'm sorry, that's incorrect. The correct answer is: 'Because You Happen to Exist.') — Deb Caletti

There was a moment of silence before Istas said, "I was unaware the telepathic girl possessed a temper. This is pleasing. Temperamental people are more likely to participate in carnage." "Sweetie, what have we talked about?" asked Ryan. Now it was Istas' turn to sigh. "Humans are discomforted by excessive discussion of their squishy interiors." "Which means . . . ?" "No referencing carnage more than once in a single conversation. — Seanan McGuire

I have no idea why, but I'm grinning back at her. This temperamental, wild creature in front of me who has the nerve to put me in my place. — A. Zavarelli

Inspiration was a temperamental guest. It dropped in unannounced, then left without so much as a goodbye, slipping out a window in the dead of night or sauntering out the front door, leaving the house empty, drafty, and cold. — Eric Wilson

Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse. — Sarah Addison Allen

Most football players are temperamental. That's 90 percent temper and 10 percent mental. — Doug Plank

No one dared agree with her. She was temperamental in the best of times, and pregnancy wasn't one of them. No one wanted to risk their neck, not when her apron said it all: K*SS MY *SS - Would you like to buy a vowel? — Jill Shalvis

The Greeks understood perfectly that if there were divine beings they are capricious, unkind, malicious mostly, temperamental, envious and mostly deeply unpleasant because that you can say well yes, all right, if there is going to be god or gods then you have to admit that they're very at the very least capricious. They're certainly not consistent. They're certainly not all loving. — Stephen Fry

Sam Wood, the director, made most of his money as a real estate agent; there was nothing of the temperamental artist about him. — Gloria Swanson

I certainly have gotten caught up in the music business at various times in my life, mostly because you want to get along with whatever record company you're dealing with. I don't want to be flaky. I don't want to be some temperamental, hard-to-work-with musician. — Frank Black

I pass to the Stationery Department. I buy several fountain and stylographic pens - it being my experience that, though a fountain pen in England behaves in an exemplary manner, the moment it is let loose in desert surroundings, it perceives that it is at liberty to go on strike and behaves accordingly, either spouting ink indiscriminately over me, my clothes, my notebook and anything else handy, or else coyly refusing to do anything but scratch invisibly across the surface of the paper. I also buy a modest two pencils. Pencils are, fortunately, not temperamental, and though given to a knack of quiet disappearance, I have always a resource at hand. After all, what is the use of an architect if not to borrow pencils from. — Agatha Christie Mallowan

I have a bad reputation for being temperamental. — Ted Kotcheff

Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed. — Patrick Rothfuss

I'll tell ya, I'm a genuinely nice guy. I really am. A real nice guy. But I think I'm temperamental. — Lou Reed

I want to be intoxicated by the darkened ether of midnight, running through my fingers as sparkling stardust. I crave the taste of the ocean's salty tears, as her temperamental tides crash and break against the rocks. I yearn for the sweet scent of sun on my skin and the earthy musk of dirt giving way under my bare feet. I want to lay naked in golden fields, as i gaze up at an endless sky, dreaming my dreams, as Mother Nature's love washes over me like spiritual sunshine. — Jaeda DeWalt

Coercion from outside, strong temperamental inclinations and passions within ourselves, do nothing to effect the essence of our freedom. They simply define its action by imposing certain limits on it. — Thomas Merton

You knew those people could be temperamental. — Brad McKinniss

Family trees full of nuts have nothing on me. My family is temperamental. Half temper, half mental. — Kelly Moran

The man was more temperamental than she was. Not an easy feat. (Mina's view of Diego.) — Maria Grazia Swan

First loves were supposed to be flimsy and temperamental. They were supposed to burn bright and fade fast. They weren't supposed to stick. They weren't supposed to eat away at a man's heart, his capacity for life. — Alessandra Torre

Will had discovered, even before coming to the City, that his muse was, like all muses, an incredibly finicky and temperamental mistress. He'd had several good short stories over the years, a few of them bordering on brilliant, and some of them had even been published; but these gifts from his imaginary goddess of inspiration were, in truth, frustratingly infrequent. She would hang around and whisper in his ears for hours, or days, or weeks, and then suddenly go off on an extended vacation without informing Will of her whereabouts or when she planned to return. — Chris Lester

Horses calm me. I love being around them. They smell great, they are beautiful to look at, they are loving, demanding, temperamental, and they settle you. — Shania Twain

Stud males might be emotional, temperamental, and developmentally stunted, at the mercy of their androgens, but that didn't make them incapable of generosity, friendship, cleverness, or creativity. — Elizabeth Bear

That pissed me the hell off. I took in a deep breath and blurted out everything without thinking twice. "Fuck you! You want to know who I am, Marcus. Well here it goes! I am temperamental, over-sensitive, and outspoken. I'm honest! I cry at stupid love movies, and I'm a sucker for a romantic novel. I don't allow people to walk all over me, I have trust issues, and I have insecurities. I've slept with four men in my entire life! And the one thing I don't do is take shit from men who try to act like they're better than me as if they don't have any hidden skeletons! I'm not keeping shit hidden, how 'bout you? You can fuck off. I'll find my own way home. Have a nice fucking life!" - Mia — E.L. Montes

Lyon is full of temperamental gourmets, eternally engaged in a never-ending search for that imaginary, perfect, unknown little back-street bistro, where one can dine in the style of Louis XIV for the price of a pack of peanuts. — Roy Andries De Groot

Those entering the Saloon Bar of the 'The Midnight Bell' from the street came through a large door with a fancifully frosted glass pane, a handle like a dumb-bell a brass inscription 'Saloon Bar and Lounge,' and a brass adjuration to Push. Anyone temperamentally so wilful, careless, or incredulous as to ignore this friendly admonition was instantly snubbed, for this door would only succumb to Pushing. Nevertheless hundreds of temperamental people nightly argued with this door and got the worst of it. Given proper treatment, however, it swung back in the most accomplished way, and announced you to the Saloon Bar with a welcoming creak. — Patrick Hamilton

You have to have a temperamental attraction to dangerous ideas ... — Jim Holt

One who has loved truly, can never lose entirely. Love is whimsical and temperamental. Its nature is ephemeral, and transitory. It comes when it pleases,and goes away without warning. Accept and enjoy it while it remains, but spend no time worrying about its departure. Worry will never bring it back. — Napoleon Hill

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature. — Winston Churchill

I'm mad, they say. I am temperamental and dizzy and disagreeable. Well, let them talk. I can take it. Only one person can hurt me. Her name is Ida Lupino. — Ida Lupino

I've had lots of good career advice over the years. I've learned that you must always arrive knowing your lines, you must hit your marks, you must be punctual and cheerful and kind. I'm always irritated with young people who misbehave and young actors who are temperamental. I don't think there's any need for it. — Jacki Weaver

I used to have terrible tantrums. I was temperamental when I was younger. Actually, what I needed was a swift kick in the pants. What a brat! — Dorothy Hamill

It might be marvelous to be a man - then I could stop worrying about what's fair to women and just cheerfully assume I was superior, and that they had all been born to iron my shirts. Better still, I could be an Irish man - then I would have all the privileges of being male without giving up the right to be wayward, temperamental and an appealing minority. — Katharine Whitehorn

If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected . — Sun Tzu

You can always wake up on the wrong side of the bed and, boo-hiss, everyone suffers. We can all be temperamental. — John Lydon

I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often merely temperamental. But it is not always a sign of coldness. It may be pride. There can be nothing more humiliating than to see the shaft of one's emotion miss the mark of either laughter or tears. Nothing more humiliating! And this for the reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of emotion fail to move, then it must perish unavoidably in disgust or contempt. — Joseph Conrad

Your head could fit in the muzzle of this thing," Vik said, awestruck. "Seriously. Come on and let's see."

"I'm not sticking my head in a cannon thing. Stick your own head in."

"I have highly temperamental hair. It'll get nestlike. You don't care when your hair gets nestlike, Tom. You can't possibly. — S.J. Kincaid

To be strong enough to know when you are weak, brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

Not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of the difficulty and challenge.

Not to substitute words for actions.

To be proud and unbending in honest failure but humble and gentle in success.

To seek out and experience a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of lift, an appetite of adventure over love of ease.

To seek a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination and to exercise a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity.

To be modest so that you will appreciate the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

To be serious, yet never to take yourself too seriously; to cry, but also to laugh.

To discover the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what is next, and the joy and inspiration of life. — Mark Weber

Love is temperamental. tiring. it makes demands. love uses you. changes its mind. — Janet Fitch

Isn't it funny.I'm enjoying my hatred so much more than i ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that's something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It's hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you. — Janet Fitch

Why do you always refer to vehicles as she?

Because they can be temperamental and expensive and sometimes difficult to start, but every man wants one. — Beverly Long

The modern Presidents Club was founded by two men who by all rights should have loathed each other. There was Harry Truman, the humble haberdasher from Missouri, hurled into office in the spring of 1945, summoning to the White House Herbert Hoover, a failed Republican president who had left town thirteen years earlier as the most hated man in America, his motorcades pelted with rotten fruit. They were political enemies and temperamental opposites. Where Truman was authentic, amiable, if prone to eruptions of temper, Hoover could be cold, humorless, incapable of small talk but ferociously sure of the rightness of his cause. — Nancy Gibbs

My co-workers expect me to be late and temperamental. — Eva Gabor

Here I sit like a brainless robot writing the uncensored, chaotic, evil thoughts springing about in my temperamental female brain. — Coco J. Ginger

You didn't just write the play, Bertie," Peaseblossom said suddenly. "You ordered the Players about, shouted, and threw an artistic hissy fit. Do you know what that makes you?"
"A temperamental fusspot?" Mustardseed guessed.
"Crazier than a bag full of crazy?" Moth said.
"Close," Peaseblossom said. "It makes her a Director. — Lisa Mantchev

There should be two main objectives in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader's attention or check his habitual pace of reading - he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic. — Robert Graves

If you study a great work of art, you'll probably find the artist was a kind of genius. And geniuses are different to you and me. So let's have no talk of temperamental, self-absorbed and petulant babies. Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on. I love them all. — Charles Saatchi

them. In earlier years, I liked my father in some ways. He was social, chatty, witty; people enjoyed being with him and he paid special attention to me. He indulged me. He sometimes gave me rarities I longed for, or some version of them, like a garter snake, instead of a poisonous one. In later years, he seemed to be as aware of me as the stray cat that wandered in one day and never left. Mother had two moods. She was either temperamental, meaning short-tempered and unhappy, or she was melancholy, meaning listless and unhappy. — Amy Tan

Chief among our gains must be reckoned this possibility of choice, the recognition of many possible ways of life, where other civilizations have recognized only one. Where other civilizations give a satisfactory outlet to only one temperamental type, be he mystic or soldier, business man or artist, a civilization in which there are many standards offers a possibility of satisfactory adjustment to individuals of many different temperamental types, of diverse gifts and varying interests. — Margaret Mead

Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes.
I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever from human view. After that it exists only in my mind's eye.
Like other artists, my river is temperamental; there is no predicting when the mood to paint will come upon him, or how long it will last. But in midsummer, when the great white fleets cruise the sky for day after flawless day, it is worth strolling down to the sandbars just to see whether he has been at work. — Aldo Leopold

I am not temperamental. I just know what I want and if I don't have it, I try to get it. — Paulette Goddard

I'm a mess," he said, halfway joking but halfway not. "I'm demanding and temperamental and I'm terribly high maintenance."
I laughed without even meaning to. "Do you honestly think I don't know all that by now?"
"Then how could you possibly love me?"
I held him tighter, kept kissing his neck. "How can I not? — Marie Sexton

If networks of women are formed, they should be job related and task related rather than female-concerns related. Personal networks for sociability in the context of a work organization would tend to promote the image of women contained in the temperamental model - that companies must compensate for women's deficiencies and bring them together for support because they could not make it on their own. But job-related task forces serve the social-psychological functions while reinforcing a more positive image of women. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Capablanca used to talk calmly and moderately about everything. However, when our conversation turned to the problems of the battle for the world championship, in front of me was a quite different person: an enraged lion, although with the fervour typical only of a southerner, with his temperamental patter, which made it hard to follow the torrent of his indignant exclamations and words. — Alexander Koblencs

no longer dealing with reasonable, intelligent adults but with temperamental lunatics who had about as much self-control as hormonal teenagers. — Olivia Rigal

I liked Columbia, but it was like high school in that there was this big social world that I was not part of. I existed on the side, far away. That might be temperamental, my own fear of large groups, more than anything else. But I had a handful of professors who meant a lot to me. — Graham Moore

Corinne suggested a different reason, indicating that her dying father had expressed concern about Theodore's intimacy with Edith, given Charles Carow's fiscal and temperamental instability. If Theodore discussed the issue with Edith that night, he might well have triggered the volatility that he would obscurely explain to Bamie as a clash of tempers "that were far from being of the best. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

An actor has no more right to be temperamental than a bank clerk. — Fredric March

When faced with difficulties, a humble, understanding, appreciative and selfless person finds it easy to win a friend. On the other hand, a temperamental, egoistic, condensing, self-absorbed, self-conceited and narrow-minded person who lacks the basic sense of humility easily loses friends when in distress. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Mark it down. God does not save us because of what we've done. Only a puny god could be bought with tithes. Only an egotistical god would be impressed with our pain. Only a temperamental god could be satisfied by sacrifices. Only a heartless god would sell salvation to the highest bidders. — Max Lucado

To succeed in the game of power, you have to master your emotions. But even if you succeed in gaining such self-control, you can never control the temperamental dispositions of those around you. And this presents a great danger. — Robert Greene

I don't think they're more temperamental people now. With social media we hear a lot more about it. The nastiness you get online, there were always mean girls - always - they didn't have such a big forum as they do now. Mean girls ought to get a life, I think. — Jacki Weaver

She could not resist, so she asked, "Why do men refer to vehicles in the feminine form?" ...
Amelia groaned. "You're going to say it's because they're temperamental like women, aren't you?"
"Of course not," defended Rick. "Far from it. Men have a great deal of respect for their cars and their women. I was talking to a friend about this the other day and we both agreed that we see a vehicle as a piece of artwork."
"What do you mean?" asked Amelia as she leaned against the door and faced him.
"The body of a car, especially a classic, has pleasing curves to the male eye. Just like women. It tends to work better with tender loving care. Just like women. Not only that, cars get us men excited and so do women. — Linda Weaver Clarke

As patriarchy enforces a temperamental imbalance of personality traits between the sexes, its educational institutions, segregated or co-educational, accept a cultural programing toward the generally operative division between "masculine" and "feminine" subject matter, assigning the humanities and certain social sciences (at least in their lower or marginal branches) to the female - and science and technology, the professions, business and engineering to the male. Of — Kate Millett

Aloft, he looked frail, diseased, and temperamental, as we expected a European to look. — Jeffrey Eugenides