Sanguine
People-oriented
- Speed: The sanguine is extremely quick to react. In the face of a challenge, they are often the first to offer a solution, although the solution may not be well-thought-out. Their speedy reactions make them optimistic and positive, yet they may overlook significant obstacles or lack attention to detail.
- Intensity: This temperament has an intense emotional life. Their intensity gives life and enthusiasm in the face of a challenge, but it may also rush their judgment. Sanguines are the ‘life of the party’ and cheerful despite their challenges, but they can tend to be overly self-conscious.
- Duration: The sanguine’s reaction is short-lived. While sanguines may start a project with great hope, they can lose interest in a project before it is actually finished. A sanguine may ‘bite-off more than he can chew.’ Yet, sanguines quickly correct themselves and forgive others easily.
Examples from Western Literature
Sanguine
Charles Le Brun's sketch for an allegorical statue depicts the sanguine temperament. The flexible sanguine, light on his feet and ready to dance, plays a flute as a goat (a symbol of pastoral life and creativity) accompanies him.
Mercutio on Sanguine Temperamentss
MERCUTIO [to BENVOLIO]: Romeo! humors! madman! passion! lover! / Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh....
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet 2.1
Prince Hal and Falstaff
HAL [to FALSTAFF]: I’ll be no longer guilty of this sin; this sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill of flesh.
Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV 2.4.241-3
Sanguine Mrs. Weston
Jane Austen’s Emma, chapter 18, when the narrator describes Mrs. Weston’s temperament:
"[A] sanguine temper, though forever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. It soon flies over the present failure and begins to hope again."
Sir Thomas Bertram's Sanguine Daughters
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, chapter 48, when the narrator describes how Sir Thomas Bertram recognizes his failure to educate his daughters to govern their sanguine temperaments:
"Here had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was, he gradually grew to 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."
The Sanguine Temperament of Admiral Croft
Jane Austen’s Persuasion, chapter 5, when the narrator describes Admiral Croft:
"[W]ith regard to the gentlemen, there was such a hearty good humor, such an open, trusting liberality on the Admiral’s side, as could not but influence Sir Walter, who had besides been flattered into his very best and most polished behavior by Mr. Shepherd’s assurances of his being known, by report, to the Admiral, as a model of good breeding."