Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.

-Austen,Jane
  Of Mrs Bennet. Pride and Prejudice, ch.1.

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There an't much credit in that. If I was very ragged and very jolly, then I should begin to feel I had gained a point, Mr. Pinch.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^4  Mark Tapley. Martin Chuzzlewit, ch.5.

His temper, naturally morose, has become licentiously peevish.Crossed in his Cabinet, he insults the House of Lords and plagues the most eminent of his colleagues with the crabbed malice of a maundering witch.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Of Lord  Aberdeen, whose disagreements with his Whig^Peelite coalition over the Crimean War eventually forced his resignation.

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

-Irving,Washington
^20  The Sketch Book,'Rip Van Winkle'.

I have always considered that boxing really combines all the finest and highest inclinations of a manöactivity, endurance, science, temper, and, last, but not least, presence of mind.

-Lonsdale, Hugh Cecil Lowther, 5th Earl of
  Foreword in Eugene Corri ThirtyYears a Boxing Referee.

Our torments also may in length of time Become our elements, these piercing fires As soft as now severe, our temper changed Into their temper.

-Milton,John
  Mammon. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.274^7.

   If the spirit of the Reform Bill implies merelya careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, combining with the firm maintenance of established rights the correction of private abuses and the redress of real grievances,I can for myself and my colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions.

-Peel, Sir Robert
  TheTamworth Manifesto.

As we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do anything,öonly keep your temper.

-Sterne, Laurence
^67  Tristram to reader.Tristram Shandy, bk.1, ch.6.

There lies the port; the vessel, puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with meö That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheadsöyou and I are old: Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices.Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows: for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides: and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and hearth: that which we are, we are: One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.44^70.