Other related topics at: Virtue and Vice 817. Peevishness "While we are courting the favour of a peevish man, and exerting ourselves in the most diligent civility, an unlucky syllable displeases, an unheeded circumstance ruffles and exasperates; and in the moment when we congratulate ourselves upon having gained a friend, our endeavours are frustrated at once, and all our assiduity forgotten in the casual tumult of some trifling irritation." Johnson: Rambler #74 (December 1, 1750) Link 820. Peevishness "Let no man rashly determine, that his unwillingness to be pleased is a proof of understanding, unless his superiority appears from less doubtful evidence; for though peevishness may sometimes justly boast its descent from learning or from wit, it is much oftener of base extraction, the child of vanity and nursling of ignorance." Johnson: Rambler #74 (December 1, 1750) Link 1,116. Peevishness; Perfectionism "He that pleases himself too much with minute exactness, and submits to endure nothing in accommodations, attendance, or address below the point of perfection, will, whenever he enters the crowd of life, be harassed with innumerable distresses, from which those who have not in the same manner increased their sensations find no disturbance. His exotic softness will shrink at the coarseness of vulgar felicity, like a plant transplanted to northern nurseries from the dews and sunshine of the tropical regions." Johnson: Rambler #112 (April 13, 1751) Link 1,118. Peevishness "Peevishness is generally the vice of narrow minds, and, except when it is the effect of anguish and disease, by which the resolution is broken, and the mind made too feeble to bear the lightest addition to its miseries, proceeds from an unreasonable persuasion of the importance of trifles. The proper remedy against it is to consider the dignity of human nature and the folly of suffering perturbation and uneasiness from causes unworthy of our notice." Johnson: Rambler #112 (April 13, 1751) Link 1,119. Equanimity; Peevishness "He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted by fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitute the chief praise of a wise man." Johnson: Rambler #112 (April 13, 1751) Link