Top 100 Tempered Quotes
#1. If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95)
Karen Armstrong
#2. ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.
Ambrose Bierce
#3. Every day of my life I walk with the idea that I am black, no matter how successful I am. And our success is tempered by that; you're successful in this way given the fact you are black, and most blacks don't get to that point.
Danny Glover
#4. Rabbit and Owl are aging bachelors whose respective megalomania and fussiness are tempered only by their mutual friendship, of which the less said, the better.
Frederick C. Crews
#5. There was a curious affinity between man and dog. Both were untamed, both were creatures born and bred to fight, honed and tempered fine by hot winds and long desert stretches, untrusting, dangerous, yet good companions in a hard land.
Louis L'Amour
#6. The worst-tempered people I've ever met were the people who knew they were wrong.
Addison Mizner
#7. The amount of women you hear say, "If Donald - or Arthur - or whatever his name was - had only lived." And I sometimes think but if he had, he'd have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.
Agatha Christie
#8. The souls of heroes are forged by the gods and tempered with the pain of life.
Brian Rathbone
#9. A truly wise person uses few words; a person with understanding is even-tempered. 28 Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent; with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent.
Anonymous
#10. A hot-tempered person starts fights; a cool-tempered person stops them. - Proverbs 15:18
Gary Chapman
#11. Do not be awed by giant predecessors. Be ill-tempered with their renown. Point out flaws. Frighten interviewers from Time. Appear in Playboy. Sell to the movies.
Vladimir Nabokov
#12. Always Emma, the better, brighter half of him, who tempered his ruthlessness, who forced him to acknowledge the light when he saw only darkness. - Julian Blackthorn
Cassandra Clare
#13. You come to us well tempered, my child, and it is not in my nature to be sorry for it. It is a well tempered blade that is the strongest.
R.L. LaFevers
#14. There was a Republican majority of the Senate, and it tempered the nature of the nominations being made.
Spencer Abraham
#15. Behind her warm facade radiating empathy and understanding, there was an aggressive, bad- tempered bitch, putting up endless walls of goodness to conceal her rage and resentment toward the entire world. She was like an alligator in a velvet jumpsuit.
Zygmunt Miloszewski
#16. Regret for the things we have done will be tempered by time. It is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
Sydney J. Harris
#17. I think everybody identified at a pretty young age that I was fairly entranced with myself. And that I had to be tempered.
Rufus Wainwright
#18. Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? Perhaps I'm a HIDEOUS child, and no one will ever know, just beecause I never have any trials. (Sara Crewe, A Little Princess)
Frances Hodgson Burnett
#19. It's bad enough to love someone who don't love you, but to have them told of it is perfectly awful. It makes me wild just to think of it. Ah, Fan, I'm getting so ill tempered and envious and wicked, I don't know what will happen to me. - Polly
Louisa May Alcott
#20. She pressed the controls to lower the ramp. "All right, Syn. One cubbyhole coming up. Just remember you have to bear my choice with the same grace and even-tempered temerity I've shown with yours." He snorted. "Good. I get to whine and bitch. Can't wait."
-Shahara & Syn
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#21. The ghost-walking, the short-tempered distraction, the hurried fog. (All of this I'm just assuming, because I have no idea how I come across, my consciousness is that underground, like a toad in winter.)
Maria Semple
#22. It's never the wrong time to call on Toad. Early or late he's always the same fellow. Always good-tempered, always glad to see you, always sorry when you go!
Kenneth Grahame
#23. Because your heart will be hammered against him, and your strength will be tempered in his fire.
Robin Hobb
#24. You should not get tempered by others success ,rather u find your mistakes and work on that.
Pratik Nandgaonkar
#25. I was pretty hot-tempered all through school. I remember my high school basketball coach telling me: 'Boy, if you don't learn to control that temper, you're gonna kill somebody.'
Tony Dorsett
#26. Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy - not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.
Douglas Adams
#28. She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil and obliging Young Woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her
she was only an Object of Contempt
Jane Austen
#29. Our deepest (and fastest) yearnings can be tempered by reason and experience; our more prudent judgments softened by desire and need.
Kayt Sukel
#30. An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
Voltaire
#31. The rationalism of the creative minds was tempered by abundant fantasies, and the supreme beauty of the monuments was probably spoiled by the circumambient vanities and ugliness; in a few cases the Greeks came as close to perfection as it was possible to do, yet they were human and imperfect.
George Sarton
#32. Intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.
Daniel Keyes
#33. His sense of "justice" had been hard tempered by his sense of law enforcement; a perfect way to reverse the presumption of innocence.
Kenneth Eade
#34. I sometimes get short-tempered in a public situation because I think, Oh God, I can't go back over that again. I can't put that into a two-word answer. I can't. Wherever I go, people say, "Can I ask you a quick question?" It's always, "a quick question." Well, my answers are slow.
James Hillman
#35. The anger of slow, mild, loving people has a lasting quality that mere bad-tempered folk cannot understand.
Margaret Deland
#36. So you made some bad choices. Some of God's best players were His imperfect, broken prodigals. In fact, iffy players are God's best picks. He specializes in short-tempered, reckless, flawed people to accomplish his plans.
Susan May Warren
#37. A human life gains lustre and strength only when it is polished and tempered.
Mas Oyama
#38. I can be unkind to someone in the street or in the subway - I'm a bad-tempered person - but I'm unable to be unkind to a character. They exist because of me, and I have responsibility for them.
Claire Denis
#39. Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.
William Ewart Gladstone
#40. In most marriages, lust and love become tempered by normalcy.
Kristan Higgins
#41. If he came back in and ventured just a step too close to me, I would do it. I had been tempered in a furnace of Stickings' making, and I had come out stronger.
Rosie Pugh
#42. Any allegation of runaway capitalism has to be tempered by the observation that today we have the largest public sectors and the highest taxes the world has ever known.
Johan Norberg
#43. Most thoughts of wrongdoing are tempered by fear of retribution, which doesn't exonerate us or make us better. We are what we are.
JT Barrett
James T. Barrett
#44. People are so ready to think themselves changed when it is only their mood that is changed. Those who are good-tempered because it is a fine day will be ill-tempered when it rains: their selves are just the same both days; only in one case the fine weather has got into them, in the other the rainy.
George MacDonald
#45. You hold your life cheaply, mistress," the voice said dryly. "He's a bad-tempered devil, and his affections are often false." "Nonsense," I said. "He's a lovely brute.
Susanna Kearsley
#46. You like sequences," Fuka-Eri asked, without a question mark. "To me, they're like Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. I never get tired of them.
Haruki Murakami
#47. Courage is impulsive; it is narcissism tempered with nihilism.
Ayelet Waldman
#48. I'm pretty short-tempered, you butthead. But I guess I gotta wait a little while before I can blow up at yah.
Kaori Yuki
#49. When you read this you may already have met Hermes. In case you haven't, I'll add that he is a dog. But don't worry. he is very good-tempered - and moreover, a good deal more intelligent than a lot of people. In any event he never tries to give the impression of being cleverer than he is.
Jostein Gaarder
#50. Tempered, gradual animation, the methodical restrain of sensations and energies, the equilibrium of sickness and health in each creature
this is nature's essence, its immutable law, this is what it's based on and what it adheres to.
Ivan Turgenev
#51. He was a likable man: sweet-tempered, ready-witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness or other conversational flavors which make half of us an affliction to our friends.
George Eliot
#52. I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflexion, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer in culture.
Matthew Arnold
#53. I am the most even-tempered man i know,' clark protested.
'right, no one's ever lived long enough for you to get really mad. they're dead by the time you're mildly annoyed.
Tom Clancy
#54. People who are born even-tempered, placid and untroubled - secure from violent passions or temptations to evil - those who have never needed to struggle all night with the Angel to emerge lame but victorious at dawn, never become great saints.
Eva Le Gallienne
#55. In our human lives, we are often impatient, ill-tempered, inappropriate. We find it difficult to treat our intimates with the love we really hold for them. Despite this, they bear with us because of the larger, higher level of family that they honor even in our outbursts. This is their commitment.
Julia Cameron
#56. Oh, trebly blest the placid lot of those whose hearth foundations are in pure love laid, where husband's breast with tempered ardor glows, and wife, oft mother, is in heart a maid!
Euripides
#57. Though mathematics may teach a man how to build a bridge, it is what the Scotch Universities call the humanities, that teach him to be civil and sweet-tempered.
Amelia Barr
#58. My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.
James McBride
#59. Tyranny is usually tempered with assassination, and Democracy must be tempered with culture. In the absence of this, it turns into a representation of collective folly.
John Stuart Mackenzie
#60. This moment, this one position in time, was the happiest I will ever be as long as I am living. I have since felt it was too happy, that men are not meant to have access to this kind of satisfaction; certainly it has tempered every moment of happiness I have experienced since.
Patrick DeWitt
#61. She regretted nothing she had shared with her lover, nor was she ashamed of the fires that had changed her life; just the opposite, she felt that they had tempered her, made her strong, given her pride in making decisions and paying the consequences for them.
Isabel Allende
#62. Your passion must be tempered with patience. Maybe long-suffering patience would be a better word.
Jack White
#63. I see songwriting as having to do with experience, and the more you've experienced, the better it is. But it has to be tempered, and you just must let your imagination run.
Mick Jagger
#64. Not to be able to bear with all bad-tempered people with whom the world is crowded, shows that a man has not a good temper himself.
Jean De La Bruyere
#65. Will stared at him with utter disbelief. "Am I really supposed to answer that? What do you think I want? I want you." He added bitterly, "Who wouldn't want you? Seeing you're so sweet-tempered and understanding.
Josh Lanyon
#66. God knows greed won't vanish. Neither will hatred or chauvanism. Human nature is a stubborn thing. But it isn't beyond control. Even if our core impulses can;t be banished, they can be tempered and redirected.
Robert Wright
#67. Distant singing is heard. Ghostly voices become audible: fragments of lectures remembered, the finely distilled wisdom and passion of seers and poets with which the modern young mind is tempered for the world that blows it to pieces.
Tennessee Williams
#68. Mr. Hempseed shook his head with an infinity of wisdom, tempered by deeply-rooted mistrust of the British climate and the British Government.
Emmuska Orczy
#69. If you think I'm one of those people who try to be funny at breakfast you're wrong. I'm invariably ill-tempered in the early morning.
Daphne Du Maurier
#70. Sassafras wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an infusion of milk and sugar hath to some a delicacy beyond the China luxury.
Charles Lamb
#71. How happy I might be, if only she was less greedy, better tempered, not addicted to raking up old grudges, more affectionate, with slightly yellower hair, slimmer, and about twenty years younger! But what is the good of expecting such a woman to reform?
John Collier
#72. My mother ... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.
Jodi Picoult
#73. Regret for the things you have done can be tempered with time, It's regret for the things you have not doen that is inconsolable.
Reader's Digest Association
#74. Defend myself? I cannot defend the verbal repressions of a boy. A curmudgeonly, cantankerous, ill-tempered, counterfeit boy.
Coco J. Ginger
#75. The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
Voltaire
#76. I keep fit, I work out, I eat pretty damn well, I don't drink like a fish, and all of those things are tempered with a holistic mind-set that you need to damn well respect the vehicle that you're walking around in.
Mick Fleetwood
#77. I am a reasonable and sane functionalist tempered by irrational frivolity.
Alexander Girard
#78. Meghann knew however strong the evil inside Simon Baldevar was, it was tempered by the love he had for her and their children.
Trisha Baker
#79. Lizzy Elmsworth was not a good-tempered girl, but she was too intelligent to let her temper interfere with her opportunities.
Edith Wharton
#80. I am annoyed to find myself continually described by people whom I have never set eyes on as bad-tempered.
Evelyn Waugh
#81. In course of time, religion came with its rites invoking the aid of good spirits which were even more powerful than the bad spirits, and thus for the time being tempered the agony of fears.
Paul Harris
#82. Experiment and reason, tempered by intuition, were to him preferable to solid plodding in the well-trodden paths of experience.
Richard Davenport-Hines
#83. A knife is sharpened on stone, steel is tempered by fire, but men must be sharpened by men.
Louis L'Amour
#84. [W]e are not merely tempered and schooled by failure but compelled, in however subtle a fashion, to become something other than we were.
Anthony Lane
#85. You're not suited for this Merripen. You can't hold your liquor worth a damn. And unlike people such as me, who become quite amicable when they drink, you turn into a vile-tempered troll." Leo paused considering how best to provoke him. "Liquor brings out one's true inner nature, they say.
Lisa Kleypas
#86. Since then her life had been peaceful and happy. She had allowed herself to be worshipped by that strangely captivating lover of hers, whose passionately willful temperament, tempered by that persistent, sunny gaiety, she had up to now only half understood.
Emmuska Orczy
#87. The worst tempered people I have ever met were those who knew that they were wrong.
David Letterman
#88. Once, I thought happiness was the sizzle in the pan. But it's not. Happiness is the spice - that fragile speck, beholden to the heat, always and forever tempered by our environment.
Sasha Martin
#89. Dialect tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for anything properly said.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
#90. I feel very lucky to be making good work still. The confidence of youth, or that sort of competitiveness you get when you're 22 or 23, the impatience - that's probably been tempered. Hopefully I'm slightly better company.
Cillian Murphy
#91. Kochu Maria, the vinegar-hearted, short-tempered, midget cook, were
Arundhati Roy
#92. I beg your pardon. Sometimes, it's true I can be stubborn.'
'Sometimes?' she added derisively.
'Quite often,' he tempered.
S.N. Lemoing
#93. Light, Amie, can be blinding when it first comes on. Lasers can be deadly, even when streaming from benevolence. We need perspective. We need it to seem wiser than us, tested and tempered by time.
Laurie Perez
#94. I tell you, mister, if there's anything good about being a hot-tempered bitch, it's knowing right well what buttons to push in others seeing as they're the same ones what get your own back up.
J.D. Jordan
#95. I know we're fucked up, all right? I'm impulsive and hot-tempered, and you get under my skin like no one else. You act like you hate me one minute, and then you need me the next. I never get anything right, and I don't deserve you ... but I fucking love you.
Jamie McGuire
#96. So ... you faze out, hear voices, and blame your tempered outbursts on a fictional creature living in ... " he looked down at my stomach, "your belly."
"Precisely. The boy catches on quick.
A.M. Hudson
#97. The mildest tempered people, when on land, become violent and blood-thirsty when in a boat.
Jerome K. Jerome
#98. His blade of human knowledge, natural astuteness particularized by long association with cases in the police courts, had been tempered by brief immersions in the waters of general philosophy.
James Joyce
#99. I could not fall back in love with Chase Jennings. Doing so was like falling in love with a thunderstorm. Exciting and powerful, yes. Even beautiful. But violently tempered, unpredictable, and ultimately short-lived.
Kristen Simmons
#100. My feet took an involuntary step backward as I suddenly envisioned a world where I wasn't a hot tempered smartass. It was a pretty world.
Jennifer R. McDonald
