Quotes About Disposition

“Music does not have a race or a disposition! Every instrument has a voice that contributes. Music is a universal language. A universal religion of sorts. Certainly it's my religion. Music surpasses all distinctions between people -Father”

— Pam Muñoz Ryan

“The poet is never inspired, because he is the master of that which appears to others as inspiration. He does not wait for inspiration to fall out of the heavens like roasted ortolans. He knows how to hunt ... He is never inspired because he is unceasingly inspired, because the powers of poetry are always at his disposition, subjected to his will, submissive to his own activity ...”

— Raymond Queneau

“The outlaw, the revolutionary, the cabbalist or member of a secret society, indeed heretics of all kinds are of a highly associative if not sociable disposition, and a certain element of play is prominent in all their doings.”

— Johan Huizinga

“That's how Ptolemy imagined the disposition of his memories, his thoughts: they were still his, still in the range of his thinking, but they were, many and most of them, locked on the other side a closed door that he's lost the key for. So his memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he once knew well.”

— Walter Mosley

“I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our disposition and not on our circumstances.”

— Martha Washington

“A leadership disposition guides you to take the path of most resistance and turn it into the path of least resistance.”

— Dov Seidman

“Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested.”

— Oswald Chambers

“Heh. I think you made your point, Atticus.
Gods Below, Oberon, that was horrendous! You just violated the Schwarzenegger Pun Reduction Treaty of 2010.
What? No, that didn't qualify!
Yes, it did. Any pun related to a weapon's destructive capabilities or final disposition of a victim's body is a Schwarzenegger pun, by definition. That's negative twenty sausages according to the sanctions outlined in Section Four, Paragraph Two.
My hound whined. No! Not twenty sausages! Twenty succulent sausages I'll never snarf? You can't do that - it's cruelty to animals!
You can't argue with this. Your pawprint is on the treaty, and you agreed that Schwarzenegger puns are heinous abominations of language that deserve food-related punishments for purposes of correction and deterrence.
Auggh! I still say it's your fault for renting Commando in the first place! You started it!”

— Kevin Hearne

“The disposition to disagree, to reject and to dissent-however irritating it may be when taken to extremes-is the very lifeblood of an open society. We need people who make a virtue of opposing mainstream opinion.”

— Tony Judt

“If the pupil proves to be of so perverse a disposition that he would rather listen to some idle tale than to the account of a glorious voyage or to a wise conversation, when he hears one; if he turns away from the drum-beat that awakens young ardour in his comrades, to listen to another tattoo that summons him to a display of juggling; if he does not fervently feel it to be pleasanter and sweeter to return from a wrestling-match, dusty but victorious, with the prize in his hand, than from a game of tennis or a ball, I can see no other remedy that for his tutor to strangle him before it is too late, if there are no witnesses.”

— Michel De Montaigne

“I think copyright is moral, proper. I think a creator has the right to control the disposition of his or her works - I actually believe that the financial issue is less important than the integrity of the work, the attribution, that kind of stuff.”

— Esther Dyson

“Mrs Grayshott was no tattle-monger; and since she had a great deal of reserve Abby knew that only a stringent sense of duty could have forced her to overcome her distaste of talebearing. What she knew, either from her own observation, or from the innocent disclosures of her daughter, she plainly thought to be too serious to be withheld from Fanny's aunt. At the same time, thought Abigail, dispassionately considering her, the well-bred calm of her manners concealed an over-anxious disposition, which led her to magnify possible dangers.”

— Georgette Heyer

“Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.”

— Cesare Pavese

“My poor father who is dead" (it is the sacristan who is speaking,) "was in his lifetime a grave-digger. He was of an agreeable disposition, the result, no doubt, of the calling he followed, for it has often been pointed out that people who work in cemeteries are of a jovial turn. Death has no terrors for them; they never give it a thought. I, for instance, monsieur, enter a cemetery at night as little perturbed as though it were the arbor of the White Horse. And if by chance I meet with a ghost, I don't disturb myself in the least about it, for I reflect that he may just as likely have business of his own to attend to as I.”

— Arthur Machen

“I had to have company
I was made for it, I think
so I made friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose.”

— Mark Twain

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome."
"And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."
"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.”

— Jane Austen

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;-it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”

— Jane Austen

“... -We have not all, you know, the same tenderness of disposition ...”

— Jane Austen

“But it is doubtless true, and evident from [the] Scriptures, that the essence of all true religion lies in holy love; and that in this divine affection, and an habitual disposition to it, and that light which is the foundation of it, and those things which are the fruits of it, consists the whole of religion.”

— Jonathan Edwards

“Feel that it had not been the most direful mistake in his plan of education. Something must have been wanting within, or time would have worn away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting, that they had never been properly taught to govern their inclinations and tempers, by that sense of duty which can alone suffice. They had been instructed theoretically in their religion, but never required to bring it into daily practice. To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments-the authorised object of their youth-could have had no useful influence that way, no moral effect on the mind. He had meant them to be good, but his cares had been directed to the understanding and manners, not the disposition; and of the necessity of self-denial and humility, he feared they had never heard from any lips that could profit them.”

— Jane Austen

“Hence the young man is not a fit student of Moral Philosophy, for he has no experience in the actions of life, while all that is said presupposes and is concerned with these: and in the next place, since he is apt to follow the impulses of his passions, he will hear as though he heard not, and to no profit, the end in view being practice and not mere knowledge. And I draw no distinction between young in years, and youthful in temper and disposition: the defect to which I allude being no direct result of the time, but of living at the beck and call of passion, and following each object as it rises. For to them that are such the knowledge comes to be unprofitable, as to those of imperfect self-control:”

— Aristotle

“The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”

— Samuel Johnson

“The boy is of an outspoken disposition, and had made an opprobrious remark respecting my personal appearance."
"What did he say about your appearance?"
"I have forgotten, sir," said Jeeves, with a touch of austerity. "But it was opprobrious.”

— P.G. Wodehouse

“Advance in consecration is conformity to the likeness of Jesus, which affects our dispositions and our habits. The reason I mention disposition and habit is that it is possible to speak of walking in the Spirit while there is still evidence of self. True humility will manifest itself in daily life. The one who has it will take the form of a servant. It is possible to speak of fellowship with a despised and rejected Jesus and of bearing His cross, while the meek and lowly Lamb of God is not seen and rarely sought. The Lamb of God means two things: meekness and death. Let us seek to receive Him in both forms. What a hopeless task if we had to do the work ourselves! Nature never can overcome nature, not even with the help of grace. Self can never cast out self, even in the regenerate man. Praise God! The work has been done, finished, and perfected forever. The death of Jesus, once and for all, is our death to self.”

— Andrew Murray

“My father was so good-natured and had such a happy disposition. I've always confused him with Jimmy Stewart. So, think Jimmy Stewart. That's my dad.”

— Jane Pauley

“But besides that I was of an unforgiving disposition from my birth, slow to take offense, slower to forget it, and now incensed both against my companion and myself.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man ... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture.”

— Sigmund Freud

“Most of my characters aren't hillbillies anyway. Let's just call them proletariat with a disposition towards criminal activity.”

— Daniel Woodrell

“Men who read a lot have a more sensitive disposition, added Fowler. [ ... ]
I did not know what to say to this.
Maybe reading is a sort of curse is all I mean, concluded Fowler. Maybe it's better for a man to stay inside his own mind.
Amen, I felt like saying, although I do not know why.”

— Dan Simmons

“The choice of opening, whether to aim for quiet or risky play, depends not only on the style of a player, but also on the disposition with which he sits down at the board.”

— Efim Geller

“A horse, if he happens to have a contemptuous disposition, can sneer very effectively.”

— Esther Meynell

“For him who is perfect in love and has reached the summit of dispassion there is no difference between his own or another's, or between Christians and unbelievers, or between slave and free, or between male and female. But because he has risen above the tyranny of the passions and has fixed his attention on the single nature of man, he looks on all in the same way and shows the same disposition to all. For in him there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, bond not free, but Christ who 'is all, and in all' (Col. 3:11; cf. Gal. 3:28).”

— Maximus The Confessor

“The Constitution of America only guarantees pursuit of happiness-you have to catch up with it yourself. Fortunately, happiness is something that depends not on position but on disposition, and life is what you make it.”

— Gill Robb Wilson

“If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.”

— Booker T. Washington

“I know that even the meanest person has still at his disposition high-sounding words wherewith to mask his real character.”

— Henryk Sienkiewicz

“The Englishman's strong point is his vigorous insularity; that of the American his power of adaptation. Each of these attitudes has its perils. The Englishman stands firmly on his feet, but he who merely does this never advances. The American's disposition is to step forward even at the risk of a fall.”

— Thomas Wentworth Higginson

“True humanity consists not in a squeamish ear; it consists not in starting or shrinking at tales of misery, but in a disposition of heart to relieve it. True humanity appertains rather to the mind than to the nerves, and prompts men to use real and active endeavors to execute the actions which it suggests.”

— Charles James

“For me, it's owning the fact that I have a sensitive disposition along with a rampant imagination that makes up stories and convinces me they're true. I feel things intensely, and that sometimes brings me on wave of profound sorrow.”

— Zosia Mamet

“Every period of life has its peculiar temptations and dangers. But youth is the time when we are most likely to be ensnared. This, pre-eminently, is the forming, fixing period, the spring season of disposition and habit; and it is during this season, more than any other, that the character assumes its permanent shape and color, and the young are wont to take their course for time and for eternity.”

— Josiah Johnson Hawes

“No one is so rich that he does not need another's help; no one so poor as not to be useful in some way to his fellow man; and the disposition to ask assistance from others with confidence and to grant it with kindness is part of our very nature.”

— Pope Leo XIII

“Becoming people of integrity and honesty does not occur quickly or all at once, nor is it merely a matter of greater personal discipline. It is a change of disposition, a change of heart. And this gradual change of heart is one that the Lord accomplishes within us, through the power of His Spirit, in a line-upon-line fashion.”

— David A. Bednar

“If I were required to guess off-hand, and without collusion with higher minds, what is the bottom cause of the amazing material and intellectual advancement of the last fifty years, I should guess that it was the modern-born and previously non-existent disposition on the part of men to believe that a new idea can have value.”

— Mark Twain

“Yet, when we must put aside our wrath, quench our envy, soften our anger, offer our prayers, and show a disposition which is reasonable, mild, kindly, and loving, how could poverty stand in our way? For we accomplish these things not by spending money but by making the correct choice.”

— Saint John Chrysostom

“Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a distinction produces rivalry.”

— Samuel Johnson

“When one is a child, the disposition of objects, tables and chairs and doors, seems part of the natural order: a house-move lets in chaos - as it does for a dog.”

— Elizabeth Bowen

“Modesty is hardly to be described as a virtue. It is a feeling rather than a disposition. It is a kind of fear of falling into disrepute.”

— Aristotle

“Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.”

— Baron De Montesquieu

“Leadership has less to do with position than it does with disposition.”

— John C. Maxwell

“Vanity, shame, and above all disposition, often make men brave and women chaste.”

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

“It is the disposition of the thought that altered the nature of the thing.”

— John Lyly