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I was the shyest human ever invented, but I had a lion inside me that wouldn't shut up! (Ingrid Bergman)
-b.1904 d.1983...
By temperament I am not unduly excitable and certainly not trigger-happy. I think twice before I shoot and very often do not shoot at all. By professional standards I do not waste a lot of film; but by the standards of many of my colleagues I probably miss quite a few of my opportunities. Still, the things I am after are not in a hurry as a rule. I am a photographer of London. (Bill Brandt, photographer)
Some have the temperament and tastes of genius, without its creative power. They feel acutely, but express tamely. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
Temperament lies behind mood; behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture; and finally the power of climate and environment; and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these. (John Burroughs)
-from The Franklin's Tale...
One cannot be avenged for every wrong; according to the occasion, everyone who knows how, must use temperance. (Geoffrey Chaucer)
The artistic temperament is a disease which afflicts amateurs. (G. K. Chesterton)
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. (G. K. Chesterton)
Few artists can afford artistic temperament. (Mason Cooley)
Art is nature as seen through a temperament. (Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot)
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. (Robertson Davies)
When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music. (Denis Diderot)
There is no personal charm so great as the charm of a cheerful temperament. (Henry van Dyke)
It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools. (E. M. Forster)
I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador – an adventurer, if you want it translated – with all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort. (Sigmund Freud)
When did the word 'temperament' come into fashion with us? Perhaps it came in when we discovered that artists were human beings. (Katharine Fullerton Gerould)
Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify. (Sydney J. Harris)
Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist. (Hans Hofmann)
Artistic temperament... sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling. When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony. (Madeleine L'Engle)
The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den. (Lewis H. Lapham)
The artist at her best – wild, passionate, rebellious, and human – is often too large and truthful a creature for society's taste. The artist at her most outlandish – profane, eccentric, even a little mad – is at least as disquieting a figure. (Eric Maisel)
Style is the hallmark of a temperament stamped on the material in hand. (Andre Maurois)
Children with Hyacinth's temperament don't know better as they grow older; they merely know more. (Hector Hugh Munro)
Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end. (Iris Murdoch)
There are highly gifted spirits who are always infertile simply because, owing to a weakness in temperament, they are too impatient to wait out their pregnancy to term. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Perhaps other cities are ready to celebrate the artist and will allow you to get away with more of an artistic temperament, but not a place like Pittsburgh. (Marie Nugent-Head)
If I wasn't an actor, I think I'd have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights. (Sir Laurence Olivier)
What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects. (Walter Pater)
A man's happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny. (Francois de La Rochefoucauld)
Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament and not of income. (Logan Pearsall Smith)
Warm weather fosters growth: cold weather destroys it. Thus a man with an unsympathetic temperament has a scant joy; but a man with a warm and friendly heart overflowing blessings, and his beneficence will extend to posterity. (Hung Tzu-Cheng)
'Artistic temperament,' a syndrome used by non-professionals to excuse laziness, sloppiness, and bad behaviour, isn't an option. (Lesley White)
Life is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament. (Oscar Wilde)
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)
Painting is nature seen through a temperament. (Emile Zola)
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