"Phlegmatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and pointed; his complexion, of a yellow hue; and his cheeks, hollow. His countenance, which is of a melancholy cast, expresses much sagacity and reflection: his manner is grave and deliberate, but at the same time open. On the whole, his aspect announces him to be of a temperate and phlegmatic disposition; but warm and tenacious in the pursuit of his object, and impatient of contradiction. Such, at least, is the judgment which I should form of BONAPARTE from his ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... rather discouraging to the exacting coach. Presently, after a particularly atrocious shot, Stillwell strode in distress here and there, and finally stopped a dozen paces or more in front of the teeing-ground. Ed, who for a cowboy was somewhat phlegmatic, calmly made ready for ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... it is proper to omit and when to redouble the copulative, is of considerable importance."—Blair's Rhet., p. 113. "Cicero, for instance, speaking of the cases where killing another is lawful in self defence, uses the following words."—Ib., p. 156. "But there is no nation, hardly any person so phlegmatic, as not to accompany their words with some actions and gesticulations, on all occasions, when they are much in earnest."—Ib., p. 335. "William's is said to be governed by coat, because it follows William's"—Smith's New Gram., p. 12. "There are many occasions in life, in which silence ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... throws down his last to save his all. The mason with his trowel in his hand, rushes from the half-finished wall; Pat drops his hod between heaven and earth and slides down the ladder, muttering: "Oi'll have me moaney or Oi'll have blood!" The fat phlegmatic Dutchman, dozing behind his bar, wakes to the situation and waddles down the street, puffing and blowing like an engine, and muttering: "Mine Got in Himmel—mine debosit ish boosted!" And thus they ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... that we may appear as unlike that rogue Peter as it is possible. I would not for a hundred pounds carry the least mark about me that might give occasion to the neighbours of suspecting I was related to such a rascal." But Martin, who at this time happened to be extremely phlegmatic and sedate, begged his brother, of all love, not to damage his coat by any means, for he never would get such another; desired him to consider that it was not their business to form their actions by any reflection ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... in consequence of the possession of this temperament! Whether the balance is equally maintained or not is a question only to be answered by the individual, but I incline to the belief that life is smoother to the phlegmatic than the artistic temperament!—though I should not believe it would be possible to find any person possessing the latter who would be willing to renounce it, in spite of its disadvantages, so I must perforce conclude it to be ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... manhood, and he attributes to overtoil in boyhood this tendency which was probably a part of his natural temperament. To a disposition like his, raptures, exaltations, agonies came as naturally as a uniform neutral-tinted existence to more phlegmatic spirits. But we may be sure that every cause of self-reproach which his past life had stored up in his memory tended to keep him more and more familiar with the lower pole in ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... The plight of these phlegmatic brains is better than that of those who prematurely boil, and who impatiently break the silence before their time. Our county conventions often exhibit a small-pot-soon-hot style of eloquence. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... them, Adan," he said to his more phlegmatic friend, "than that sergeant, should he get here before we leave. Come, come, ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... of patients, nurses, and students that they are dealing with a less highly strung population than ours. Indeed, the surgeons who know both countries tell me that here in Germany they have more endurance of this phlegmatic kind. They suffer more like animals. Their patience reaches down to the very roots of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... G—— at the King's Theatre. He must have admired the beauty, grace, and promise of the youthful Rosina, had he been ten times a Dutchman; and if he heard of her intended emigration to America, as he possibly might have done, it most likely excited no particular emotion in his phlegmatic bosom. He could not have imagined that the exportation of a little singing-girl to New York should interfere with a potential venture of his own in fair linen. The gods kindly hid the future from his eyes, so that he might enjoy the comic vexation her lively sallies caused to Doctor Bartolo in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... old Ben had no need to try his hand at him. Young Ben was a born farmer, as was his father. He had come honestly by his nickname. In face, figure, expression, and manner he was a five-hundred-year throwback to his Holland ancestors. Apple-cheeked, stocky, merry of eye, and somewhat phlegmatic. When, at school, they had come to the story of the Dutch boy who saved his town from flood by thrusting his finger into the hole in the dike and holding it there until help came, the class, after one look at the accompanying picture in ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... that thing before him was Big Ivan—Big Ivan the giant, the man without nerves, the man of iron, the Cossack turned freebooter of the seas, who was as phlegmatic as an ox, with a nervous system so low that what was pain to ordinary men was scarcely a tickle to him. Well, well, trust these Nulato Indians to find Big Ivan's nerves and trace them to the roots of his quivering soul. They were certainly doing it. It was inconceivable that a man could suffer ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... or woman is bound to suffer; but the nervous man or woman may rise to heights that the naturally calm can never reach and can seldom see. To whom do you go for counsel? To the calm, no doubt; but never to the phlegmatic-never to the calm who are calm because they know no better (like the man in Ruskin "to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose because he does not love it"). You go to the calm who have fought for their calmness, who have known what it is to quiver in every nerve, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... worth anything," she replied nonchalantly. "As a nation, you might sometimes give us the impression of being phlegmatic and slow-witted. Both ideas may have some basis of fact, yet not be absolutely true. We are not all abnormally quick in America. Look at our messenger boys, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a spot like that to rouse excitement in the breast of the usually phlegmatic Andrew Thorne? Why had he been in such haste to drag Lynch thither, and what had passed between the two before the older man came to his sudden and tragic end? Was it possible that somewhere within that four square miles of desolate ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... me no information with regard to my patient; and the sole idea I had formed of her was of a strong, sturdy Sark woman, whose constitution would be tough, and her temperament of a stolid, phlegmatic tone. There was not ordinarily much sickness among them, and this case was evidently one of pure accident. I expected to find a nut-brown, sunburnt woman, with a rustic face, who would very probably be impatient and unreasonable under the pain ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... manner, Herr Count," responded the colonel. "I have had the peculiar misfortune which sometimes overtakes a married man; my wife deceived me, and ran away with her lover, whom I do not even know. As mine is not one of those phlegmatic natures which can meekly tolerate such an indignity, I am searching for the fugitives—for what purpose I fancy you can guess. For four years my quest has been fruitless; I have been unable to find a trace of the guilty pair. A lucky chance at last led me to this secluded ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... say, that man's made of 'impenetrable stuff;' and, being too wise for whimsicality, is too phlegmatic for genius, and too crabbed for mellowness." Mark, what a set of merry open-faced rogues surround Punch, who peeps down at them as cunningly as "a magpie peeping into a marrow bone; "—how luxuriantly they laugh, or ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to deflect the energy of his keen intelligence from following the line marked out for it. That he was to dispatch without quarter the flower of the youth of Florence troubled him, as I take it, no whit. He was too imperturbable, too phlegmatic for that. Had he been of our race he might, perhaps, have sighed over their fate, for we that are of the race of Rome have some droppings of the old Roman pity as ingredients in our composition. Messer Griffo was ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... if the man on the other side is roaring in vociferous cachinnation. Successful dramatists play upon the susceptibility of a crowd by serving up raw morsels of crude humor and pathos for the unthinking to wheeze and blubber over, knowing that these members of the audience will excite their more phlegmatic neighbors by contagion. The practical dictum that every laugh in the first act is worth money in the box-office is founded on this psychologic truth. Even puns as bad as Mr. Zangwill's are of value early in a play to set on some ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... birth. He displayed his wisdom by holding his peace at all times, except when very hard pressed by hunger or pain, and appeared to regard life in general in a grave, earnest, inquiring spirit. Nevertheless, we would not have it understood that Will was a slow, phlegmatic baby. By no means. His silence was deep, his gravity profound, and his earnestness intense, so that, as a rule, his existence was unobtrusive. But his energy was tremendous. What he undertook to do he usually did with ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... want you," replied the baron—a phlegmatic man, who, nevertheless, saw the quivering lip, and turned away hastily. For he knew that mademoiselle would never forgive herself, or him, if she ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... century otherwise so full of movement as the sixteenth in England, repressed and killed all germinations of free intellectual or social intercourse amongst ourselves. One was the national reserve;' and this was strengthened by concurring with a national temperament—not phlegmatic (as is so falsely alleged), but melancholic, dignified, and for that reason, if there had been no other, anti-mercurial. But the main cause of this reserve lay in the infrequency of visits consequent upon the difficulties of local movement. The other frost lay in the Spanish stateliness and the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... add that, desperate as your case seems to be, I participate in your sanguine hopes? I do not deem them entirely romantic, but share in that which the phlegmatic would call the frenzy of your mind; and half-persuade myself that ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... The subject-class never affiliated with the master-class. Two or three hundred years ago a new people was introduced into the north of Ireland. The north is essentially Scottish. Its inhabitants are Protestant and phlegmatic. In the south, the religion is Romanist, and the people are mercurial. They are of the same color. They have had the same history for centuries. For nearly five hundred years, the Turk has been a disturbing factor in Europe. ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... neutral tint, against which such a girl as Charlotte Marsden appeared as the glowing embodiment of the vivid and intense spirit of the present age. Her naturally energetic and mercurial nature had been cradled among the excitements of the gayest and giddiest city on the continent. A phlegmatic uncle had remarked to her, in view of inherited and developed characteristics, "Lottie, what in ordinary girls is a soul, in you is a ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... I lay on fabric cushions piled in one corner of my tent. But sleep would not come; my thoughts ran like a tumbling mountain torrent, and as aimlessly. I hoped that Jetta was sleeping. De Boer was now at the center table with his men. Hans was guarding Jetta. He was a phlegmatic, heavy Dutchman, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... their language, and changed their national name to Wahuma, their traditional idea being still of a foreign extraction. We note one very distinguishing mark, the physical appearance of this remarkable race partaking more of the phlegmatic nature of the Shemitic father, than the nervous boisterous temperament of the Hamitic mother, as a certain clue to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did the year after, another, a little before the fire; the old women, and the phlegmatic hypochondriac part of the other sex, whom I could almost call the old women too, remarked, especially afterward, though not till both those judgments were over, that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... phlegmatic. "So? Nice talk about you and Sim Gage! Was you two married? I know you ain't. You come out to marry him, ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... marry you," she responded haughtily, and completed her triumph. Something stronger than passion—that something compounded partly of moral fibre, partly of a phlegmatic temperament, guided her at the critical moment. His words had been casual, but her reception of them charged them with seriousness almost before he was aware. A passing impulse was crystallized by the coldness of her manner ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... of joy, and with a rapid movement, of which so phlegmatic a man might have been thought incapable, he threw himself ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... "The phlegmatic will portray his words with signs of labour and deliberation, while the playful haste of the volatile will scarcely sketch them; the slovenly will blot and efface and scrawl, while the neat and orderly-minded will view themselves ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... that Lester, in addition to becoming a little phlegmatic, was becoming decidedly critical in his outlook on life. He could not make out what it was all about. In distant ages a queer thing had come to pass. There had started on its way in the form of evolution a minute ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... establishment in the Rue de Grammont appeared a signboard with the name of Van Klopen, dressmaker, and in the thousands of handbills distributed with the utmost profusion, he called himself the "Regenerator of Fashion." This was an idea that would have never originated in the brain of the phlegmatic Dutchman, and whence came the funds to carry on the business? On this point he was discreetly silent. The enterprise was at first far from a success, for during nearly a month Paris almost split its sides laughing at the absurd pretensions of the self-dubbed "Regenerator of Fashion." Van Klopen ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... with so sovereign a confidence; her beautiful countenance shone, as is it were, with such intrepid joy, that Rodin, notwithstanding his phlegmatic audacity, was for a moment frightened. Yet he did not appear in the least disconcerted; and, after a moment's silence, he resumed, with an air of almost contemptuous compassion: "My dear young lady, we may perhaps never meet again; ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... he looked at the odd-looking instruments the medical man was taking from the case, but Thorndyke watched his movements with phlegmatic indifference. He stood erect; threw back his shoulders; expanded his massive chest and struck it with his clenched fist in ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... however, did not return to his hiding-place in the hold, though he was rather an incubus on board. Phlegmatic, methodic, and by no means communicative, he carefully avoided the seamen, who had always some prank to play off on him, and he kept to his own provisions. He was thin enough in all conscience, and his additional weight but imperceptibly added to the cost of navigating ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... Sanguine are merry still, laughing, pleasant, meditating on plays, women, music, &c. Phlegmatic, slothful, dull, heavy, &c. Choleric, furious, impatient, subject to hear and see strange apparitions, &c. Black, solitary, sad; they think they are ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... yellowish tawny complexion. The keenness of the wind and the glare of the snow, render them subject to painful disorders in the eyes: they are also afflicted with many diseases, which tend to render them short lived. They are a quiet, orderly, and good-humoured people; but of a cold, phlegmatic, and indolent disposition. They never wash themselves with water, but lick their hands, and then rub their faces with them; in the same manner as a cat washes herself with her paws. In most of their ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... that the more he was polished the worse he smelt. He urged the attendant to bury him without unnecessary delay, as it was obvious that he couldn't possibly "keep" long in such warm weather. But the phlegmatic attendant paid no attention to Mark's commands and continued to scrub with renewed vigour. Mark's consternation changed to alarm when he discovered that little cylinders, like macaroni, began to roll from under the mitten. They were too white ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... model—to-day a jester, to-morrow a little Infanta—without any other desire than to rise in rank among the members of the royal household, to see a cross of red cloth sewed on his black jerkin. He was a lofty soul, enclosed in a phlegmatic body that never tormented him with nervous desires nor disturbed the calm of his work with violent passions. When he died the good Dona Juana, his wife, died too, as though they sought each other, unable to remain apart after their long, uneventful ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... inoffensive, and bashful, with but little energy of mind, with no ardor of feeling, and singularly destitute of all passions. He was perfectly exemplary in his conduct, perhaps not so much from inherent strength of principle as from possessing that peculiarity of temperament, cold and phlegmatic, which feels not the power of temptation. He submitted passively to the arrangements for his marriage, never manifesting the slightest emotion of pleasure or repugnance in view of his approaching alliance with one of the most beautiful and fascinating princesses of Europe. Louis ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... her fan. The dull, slow rage was simmering within her. Even her vanity could not misinterpret the meaning of Hector's devotion to Mrs. Brown. He was deeply in love, of course, and she, Morella, was robbed of her hopes of being Lady Bracondale. Her usually phlegmatic nature was roused in all its narrow strength. She was like some silent, vengeful beast ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... guessed it in the boathouse. I knew that something must have happened or been discovered to disperse that truculent party of sportsmen so soon and on such good terms with themselves. They had not got us; they might have got something better worth having; and your phlegmatic attitude suggested what. As luck would have it, the cases that I personally had collared were the empty ones; the two prizes had fallen to you. Well, to allay my horrid suspicion, I went and had another ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... I will satisfy every body. I cannot never forgive myself if I bring him into any disgrace." "Disgrace!" exclaimed Forester, starting up, and repeating the word in a tone which made every person in the room, not excepting the phlegmatic magistrate, start and look up to him, with a sudden feeling of inferiority. His ardent eye spoke the language of his soul. No words could express his emotion. The master-tailor dropped his day-book. "Constable—call a constable!" ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... am a sinner," exclaimed Asa, usually one of the most phlegmatic of the youths, "the girl is ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the sands of society by the storm of the war. When it broke out he was a second lieutenant in the Winchester Regiment, a keen polo player and first class batsman who rarely opened a book. He was sent out with the First Division and carried himself with his usual phlegmatic good humour through almost four years of fighting from Mons ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... or fat meat, with large draughts of beverage immediately afterwards, which turn rancid on the stomach; and of course, these ought to be avoided. Hot tea, turbid beer, and feculent liquors will have the same effect. A phlegmatic constitution, or costiveness, will render the complaint more frequent and painful. Gentle laxatives and a careful diet are the best remedy; but hot aromatics and spirituous liquors ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... unquestionably," responded her more phlegmatic friend, "but the registers of her voice are not so ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the psychologists and philosophers have been too broad and too classical to be of practical value. Sanguine and choleric temperament, the bilious, the nervous and the phlegmatic, the quick and the slow, all these are broad divisions, and no man really exemplifies them. What I propose to do is less ambitious, but perhaps more practical. I shall take a few of the qualities with which the previous pages have concerned ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... of the earthquake which was to overthrow the old stability of Europe. It is known how Germany has ever since been a scene of continual wars, dynastic changes, and territorial confusion. What evils have not the wars of the present century brought upon her! Yet, owing to the phlegmatic disposition, one might call it the stolidity of the majority of Germans, the disturbances have been so far external, and the lower masses of society have scarcely been agitated, except by the first ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... water which flowed from the side of Christ hanging on the cross, was not the phlegmatic humor, as some have supposed. For a liquid of this kind cannot be used for Baptism, as neither can the blood of an animal, or wine, or any liquid extracted from plants. It was pure water gushing forth miraculously like the blood from a dead body, to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... conversation with Michael, and during the next few weeks she was conscious of feeling vaguely dissatisfied with herself. Now and then she wondered if she were different from other girls, and if her absence of moods, and her constant serenity and gaiety, were not signs of a phlegmatic temperament. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Jastrow's The Psychology of Conviction.] The analysis in its fundamentals is perhaps still as doubtful as it was in the fifth century B. C. when Hippocrates formulated the doctrine of the humors, distinguished the sanguine, the melancholic, the choleric, and the phlegmatic dispositions, and ascribed them to the blood, the black bile, the yellow bile, and the phlegm. The latest theories, such as one finds them in Cannon, [Footnote: Bodily Changes in Pleasure, Pain and Anger.] Adler, [Footnote: The Neurotic Constitution.] Kempf, [Footnote: The Autonomic ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... his poetic temperament, his exquisite and almost morbid sensibility, so grievously tried by circumstances, it would be equally absurd and untrue to pretend that he was as impassible as a stoic, or phlegmatic as some good citizen who vegetates rather than lives. Did such qualities, or rather faults,—for they betoken a cold nature,—ever belong to Milton, Dante, Alfieri, and those master-spirits whose strength of passion, combined with force ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... manner revealed a calm and phlegmatic temperament. There was nothing indolent about him, but his appearance spoke of tranquillity. He was one of those who never seemed to expect anything from anybody, who liked to work when he thought proper, and whose philosophy nothing ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Wickson's horses that we had ridden over Sonoma Mountain. For nearly twenty years now John Carlson has been custodian of the refuge. No thought of disloyalty, I am sure, has ever entered his mind during all that time. To betray his trust would have been in his mind a thing undreamed. He was phlegmatic, stolid to such a degree that one could not but wonder how the Revolution had any meaning to him at all. And yet love of freedom glowed sombrely and steadily in his dim soul. In ways it was indeed good that he was not flighty and imaginative. He never ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... [31] At the parliament of Vezelay he spoke before the king; and Louis the Seventh, with his nobles, received their crosses from his hand. The abbot of Clairvaux then marched to the less easy conquest of the emperor Conrad: [311] a phlegmatic people, ignorant of his language, was transported by the pathetic vehemence of his tone and gestures; and his progress, from Constance to Cologne, was the triumph of eloquence and zeal. Bernard applauds his own success in the depopulation of Europe; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... old phlegmatic Dutchman took A pretty Jewish wife, And what still more surprising is, He lov'd her 'bove his life— Oh! Holland and Jerusalem, What, tell me, do you think ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... which we have thus bravely sacrificed ourselves, even a phlegmatic Englishman being the judge? It is the idea of the nation—the idea that the nation is the gift of God, to be cherished and defended as a sacred trust; and that we can no more rid ourselves of its obligations ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... offended by this display of an hysterical grief, which seemed to his phlegmatic temperament altogether unwarranted by the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... "I understand you!-the art of Orville has prevailed;-cold, inanimate, phlegmatic as he is, you have rendered him the most envied of men!-One thing more, and I ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... found, as well, to discredit the notion that there would supervene, on the consigning to the limbo of inutile political systems of the disabling regime that now governs, an epoch, which would witness the shaking off, by the heavy, phlegmatic red man of the present, of his dull lethargy, with the casting behind him of former inaction and unproductiveness; and his being moved to assert a healthy, genuine, wholesome activity, to be directed to lofty or soulful purpose, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... the engines of his father's railroads and handle the machinery in the factories. The boy had a natural bent for mechanics and mathematics, and possessed a cool courage that made him appear almost phlegmatic. Besides his inherited aptitude for mechanics, his father, who was an engineer of the Central School of Arts and Manufactures of Paris, gave him much useful instruction. Like Marconi, Santos-Dumont had many advantages, and also, like the inventor of wireless telegraphy, ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... Admiral Oakes," returned the phlegmatic surgeon; "but it is like the gleaming of sunshine that streams through clouds, as the great luminary ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... exemplifies its own theory, that 'Paris is France,' by shewing how all its important railways spring from the metropolis in six directions. Belgium exhibits its compact net-work of railways, by which nearly all its principal towns are accommodated. The phlegmatic Dutchman has as yet placed the locomotive only in that portion of Holland which lies between the Rhine and the Zuiderzee. Rhineland, from Bale to Wiesbaden, is under railway dominion. North Germany, within a circle of which Magdeburg may be taken as a centre, is railed pretty ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... receive the enemy blow. Equally alive to German racial traits, the German Staff had organized in their mass offensive the elan which means fast marching and hard blows. So, we found the supposedly excitable French digging in to receive the onslaught of the supposedly phlegmatic German. When the time came for the charge—ah, you can always depend on a ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the phlegmatic pilot; "a darned pity it is," he added; "but if you must, you must. Darn the luck! We'd a-beat them into shucks in another quarter, I ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... ffacase was as enthusiastic as his phlegmatic nature permitted. He called me into his office and half raised the snuffbox off the desk as though to offer me an unwelcome pinch. "Youre a made man now, Weener," he said, thinking better of his generosity and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... they were washed, undressed, and a nice warm wrapper put over their nightgown, and then fed. Afterward laid in their crib. They didn't go to sleep at once but kicked and laughed and chatted in a regular frolic. Phlegmatic babies can be easily trained. Then Marilla came down and waited on the table as Bridget sent various things up on the lift. She was a really ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... very calm man, that major, given, I should say, to the greatest repression. I think nothing would have moved him from that phlegmatic calm of his! He watched us coming, climbing and making hard going of it. If he was amused he gave no sign, as he puffed at his pipe. I, for one, was puffing, too—I was panting like a grampus. I had thought myself in good condition, but ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... of a little man with the phlegmatic Dutch face. He read the letter stolidly and began to ask questions as to the disposition of our squad. I lied generously, magnificently, my face every whit as wooden as his; and while I was still at it the door behind me opened and a man came in leisurely. He waited for the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the train, upon its arrival at Philadelphia, there was an aspect of absolute exhaustion, varied in its expression according to the individual. Phlegmatic men lay upon their backs, across the seats, with their legs dangling in the aisles. One might send them spinning round or toss their feet out of the passage, and their worn faces showed no more sign than if they were lifeless. Women lay swathed in veils ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... was a premeditated sham, and not a word of truth in it, invented to raise their spirits, and cheat them out of their cowardly phlegmatic apprehensions, and my lord had his end in it; for they were all on fire to fall on. And I am persuaded, had they been led immediately into a battle begun to their hands, they would have laid about them like furies; for there is nothing like victory to flush a young soldier. ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... the phlegmatic Abe to express a wish to talk with any body, that Frank almost felt awed by the summons. Something within him said that a communication of no trivial import was coming. So he sat down. And the tongue of ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... competitions at school, considered from the standpoint of fitting the competitors for the problems of afterlife, is that the object saved on such occasions is a leather dummy, and of all things in this world a leather dummy is perhaps the most placid and phlegmatic. It differs in many respects from an emotional Swedish gentleman, six foot high and constructed throughout of steel and india-rubber, who is being lugged away from cash which he has been regarding in the light of a legacy. Indeed, it would be hard to ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and imperial with an air-pump thrust into one eye. Portraits of French sheriffs and Dutch burgomasters, phlegmatic now as when in life, looked down pallid and unconcerned on the chaos of past ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... much even for Ebenezer's phlegmatic spirit. He seized his broad-brimmed hat and clapped ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... advantage," says Dr. Leake, "of taking snuff, is that of sneezing, which, in sluggish phlegmatic habits, will give universal concussion to the body, and promote a more free circulation of the blood; but of this benefit snuff-takers are deprived, from being familiar with its use." When the stimulus of snuff ceases to be sufficient, recourse is immediately had to certain admixtures, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... race. The tenacity and determination with which they pursue their national aims may eventually enable them to vanquish their more brilliant competitors in the struggle for hegemony in the Peninsula. Unlike most southern races, the Bulgarians are reserved, taciturn, phlegmatic, unresponsive, and extremely suspicious of foreigners. The peasants are industrious, peaceable and orderly; the vendetta, as it exists in Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia, and the use of the knife in quarrels, so common in southern Europe, are alike unknown. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a young lady. The last I had seen, and the impression she had made was not deep, was Miss Deborah Doulass, the fair daughter of a retired linen-draper at Falmouth. The Poynders are in no way a phlegmatic race. The young lady was not backward in appreciating my sentiments, and we might very probably have stood gazing at the ocean till the moon had gone to bed also, when Miss Carlyon was summoned somewhat hastily by her aunt. She put out her hand, and as I pressed it I felt as if an electric shock ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the management of these men, the writer was informed that they were steady workers, but slow and phlegmatic, and that nothing would induce ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... topic of banter between Sidney and me. Sometimes Sidney seemed to be more prosperous than I; then he would say, 'The old tortoise is ahead.' Then I would take a vigorous run and cry out to him,' The hare is ahead.' For I am naturally quick and impulsive, and he sluggish and phlegmatic. So I am now going to give him the Hare riding the Tortoise as a piece of fun. Sidney will say: 'Ah! you see the Hare is obliged to ride on the Tortoise in order to get to the goal!' But I shall say: 'Yes, but the Tortoise could not get there unless the Hare spurred ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... whom he had last seen at Oxford, Sime the phlegmatic. He apologised for not meeting the train, but explained that his duties had rendered it impossible. Sime was attached temporarily to an archaeological expedition as medical man, and his athletic and somewhat bovine appearance ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... insult and ignominy, with some, proceeds from a callous and indifferent temperament,—a cold, phlegmatic, stoical insensibility, alike to kindness or unkindness. It was not so with Jesus. The tender sensibilities of His holy nature rendered Him keenly sensible to ingratitude and injury, whether this was manifested in the malice of undisguised enmity, or the treachery of ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... author, the wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman, does not take place of the man. Humanity shines in Homer, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shakspeare, in Milton. They are content with truth. They use the positive degree. They seem frigid and phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with the frantic passion and violent coloring of inferior but popular writers. For they are poets by the free course which they allow to the informing soul, which through their eyes beholds again and blesses the things which it hath ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I scarcely approve of these mechanical ways of gaining control of the tongue except in cases where the singer is phlegmatic of temperament and cannot be made to feel the various sensations of stiff tongue or tongue drawn far back in other ways. Ordinarily I think they make the singer conscious, nervous and more likely to stiffen the tongue in a wild desire to relax it ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... sentiments," but wanting action and pathos. He censures the tameness of Addison's "Letter from Italy."[17] "With what flatness and unfeelingness has he spoken of statuary and painting! Raphael never received a more phlegmatic eulogy." He refers on the other hand to Gray's account of his journey to the Grande Chartreuse,[18] as worthy of comparison with one of the finest passages in the "Epistle ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... indifference towards these unfortunate men, and their almost unparalleled sufferings, Captain Edwards must be set down as a man, whose only feeling was to stick to the letter of his instructions, and rigidly to adhere to what he considered the strict line of his duty; that he was a man of a cold phlegmatic disposition, whom no distress could move, and whose feelings were not easily disturbed by the sufferings of his fellow-creatures. He appears to have been one of those mortals, who might say, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... of the thing had evidently struck even the usually taciturn and phlegmatic driver into his ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... character, and the punishment that was laid upon him was the outcome of a display of intemperate wrath. Just as we associate meekness with the worm that never turns, so the typically patient animal is the ass who is too phlegmatic to resent the most unjust chastisement, and ready to accommodate itself to the most overtaxing burdens. But Job is the very opposite of this; he endures, because there is no way out; but he never for a moment acquiesces in the justice of his affliction, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mingled expression shot from the eyes of Orloff, but he restrained himself with a visible effort, and he became again the somewhat phlegmatic ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... the white visible, I have often observed both in the timid and phlegmatic, and in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... to be reformed. The Church of England had never had a real affinity with Rome. The gorgeous and sensual ceremonies which, in the indolent airs of the Mediterranean, were imposing and attractive, palled upon the taste of the more phlegmatic Englishmen. Institutions organized at Rome did not flourish in that higher latitude, and abuses were currently discussed even before any plan was considered ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Sometimes, we meet with phlegmatic husbands, those men whose love is long enduring, because they store up their emotions, whose genius gets the upper hand of these headaches and nervous attacks; but these sublime creatures are rare. Faithful disciples of the blessed St. Thomas, who wished to put his finger into the wound, they ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... completely bewildered at first. Hope was a great nut with the foils and she and the Frenchman had veritable battles, during which the little man, on his mettle and very excited, would squeal exactly like a rabbit. The big Belgian was more phlegmatic ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... phlegmatic, upon climbing on deck asked for a pipe and began to smoke vigorously. Other shipwrecked people, lightly clad, simply rolled themselves up in shawls, beginning the account of the catastrophe as minutely and serenely ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... breakfast, at the hour when she had hitherto gone house-hunting with Mr Mariner, the child Tibby, of whom up till now she had seen little except at meals, presented himself to her, coated and shod for the open and regarding her with a dull and phlegmatic gaze. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... sits securely in stone, pencilling a thought as enduring—that he encountered fresh difficulty. There, at his own street door, under the trees lining the canal-bank, his landlord, Van der Spijck, the painter—usually a phlegmatic figure haloed in pipe-clouds—congratulated him excitedly on his safe return, but refused him entry to the house. "Here thou canst lodge ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... nomenclatures do not add much to our knowledge. You know what to expect—if the comparison will be pardoned —of a horse with certain points; but you wouldn't dare go on a journey with a man merely upon the strength of knowing that his temperament was the proper mixture of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. Science is not able to teach us concerning men as it teaches us of horses, though I am very far from saying that there are not traits of nobleness and of meanness that run through families and can be calculated to appear in individuals with absolute certainty; one ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Western Church of the principle and laws of ascetic self-renunciation, which, though they had run to great extremes in the Nitrian desert and in the valley of the Nile, assumed noble form when the idea took possession of the more phlegmatic temperament and practical energies of the West. Without discussing the vexed question of the authorship of the 'Life of S. Anthony,' which is referred by many traditional testimonies to Athanasius, we think it obvious, from the 'Confessions' of Augustine, that the religious ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... to draw a comparison between the English and the Americans, I should say that there is almost as much difference between the two nations at this present time, as there has long been between the English and the Dutch. The latter are considered by us as phlegmatic and slow; and we may be considered the same, compared with our energetic descendants. Time to an American is everything, [Note 2] and space he attempts to reduce to a mere nothing. By the steamboats, rail-roads, and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... sat down solemnly to talk of the weather with the two men, who found him a little dismal. One—he of the Zambesi lion episode—was grizzled, phlegmatic, and patient, and in no way critical of his company. So soon he was embarked on extracts from his own experience to which Mr. Andrews, who had shares in some company in the neighbourhood, listened with flattering attention. Mrs. Alderson ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... reputation of being dangerous and difficult of access. But the evidence of those who knew him best point to his having been phlegmatic rather than morose. He was "umbrageous," ready to be discomposed by the action of others, but, if not vexed or startled, he was elaborately courteous. He had a great dislike of any abrupt movement, and if he was startled, he had the instinct of a wild animal, to bite. It was a pain to ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... and the Empire. Please to observe that these two Courts, which had made incredible solicitations to him while he wavered, began, as soon as his purpose was fixed, to draw back,—a fatality due to the phlegmatic temper of the Spaniard, dignified by the name of prudence, joined to the astute politics of the house of Austria. You may observe at the same time that the Count, who had continued firm and unshaken three months together, changed his ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... lady, a complete stranger, and perhaps rousing her from her bed to ask her an amazing question, than by going to Fyodor Pavlovitch. But that is just how it is, sometimes, especially in cases like the present one, with the decisions of the most precise and phlegmatic people. Pyotr Ilyitch was by no means phlegmatic at that moment. He remembered all his life how a haunting uneasiness gradually gained possession of him, growing more and more painful and driving him on, against his will. Yet ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... looked down at his wife in scornful pity. He wondered sometimes, in his phlegmatic reasoning, why women ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... bought a cheap vessel, hired twenty-three phlegmatic and cold-blooded Japanese laborers, and organized a raid on Laysan. With the utmost secrecy he sailed from Honolulu, landed his bird-killers upon the sea-bird wonderland, and turned them loose ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Ledyard once remarked to Helen Travers, "give me the nervous, high-strung women. They come through shock and danger better, they hold to a climax more steadily. Your phlegmatic woman goes to pieces because she hasn't imagination and vision enough to carry ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Commons that the Prince of Wales be empowered to exercise the Royal Authority; whereupon the Prince at the palace, having heard the Address, read a reply, sufficiently startling to the country, though well foreknown to those present: he laid stress upon the new conditions of the world—that phlegmatic eye, which had seen so much, lifting a moment in punctuation to dwell coldly upon his hearers, then coldly reading again; the difficulties, he said, which he was called upon to face on behalf of His Majesty were not lightly to be undertaken, and his fuller answer would be contained ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... woman, wedded to a man she respected, but could not love. He ruled her—she was his property. She found it easier to accept his rule than to rebel. Had his treatment of her descended to brutality, she would have flown to her lover or else died. One critic says: "Laura must have been of a phlegmatic type, not of a fine or sensitive nature, and all of her wants were satisfied, her life protected and complete. The adoration of Petrarch was not a necessity to her—it came in as a pleasing diversion, a beautiful compliment, but something she could easily do without. Had she been a maid and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but his tobacco. You must know, Sir, every woman carries in her hand a stove with coals in it, which, when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats; and at this chimney dozing Strephon lights his pipe. I take it that this ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... understand this better, for their quarter is a penal colony. Sleepy-eyed, phlegmatic Martians, self-condemned for minute violations of their incredible and complex mores—without guards save themselves—will return to the subterranean cities, complex philosophies, and cool, dry air of Mars when they have ...
— Foundling on Venus • John de Courcy
... the extraordinary display of deep feeling and quaint rugged eloquence which had just been wrung from their hitherto phlegmatic and taciturn skipper, stretched to their oars in dead silence, mechanically keeping the boat stern on to the sea, and so regulating her speed as to avoid the mischance of being pooped or overrun by the ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... his apron round his waist, than Gyp ran forward and looked up in his master's face with patient expectation. If Gyp had had a tail he would doubtless have wagged it, but being destitute of that vehicle for his emotions, he was like many other worthy personages, destined to appear more phlegmatic than ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... said in his most phlegmatic tones. "Aye, just so! And where d'ye intend to cut in, now, like? Is it a sort of Gordian knot affair that you're thinking of? Going to solve ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... especially when he improvised, he would suddenly, as if to take away the impression and remembrance of his sorrow from others and from himself, turn stealthily to a glass, arrange his hair and his cravat, and show himself suddenly transformed into a phlegmatic Englishman, into an impertinent old man, into a sentimental and ridiculous Englishwoman, into a sordid Jew. The types were always sad, however comical they might be, but perfectly conceived and so delicately rendered that one could not grow ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... to Lausanne, and the next day to Geneva. John Yeardley has preserved, in his diary of this part of the journey, a little anecdote of French character which naturally struck him the more forcibly from his having hitherto been conversant only with the phlegmatic temperament of the Germans. The coachman, it should be said, ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... Lady Dorinda, having shut her curtain for the night, declined to take any part in this household festivity, though she contributed some unheard sighs and groans of annoyance during its progress. A phlegmatic woman, fond of her ease, could hardly keep her tranquillity, besieged by cannon in the daytime, and by chattering and laughter, the cracking of nuts and the thump of soldiers' feet half ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood |
