Taurus Qualities and Characteristics

You are a builder, restorer, and caretaker of those things you find important-primarily the earth, animals, and people. You are self-reliant, painstakingly patient, and stubborn-bullish, in other words. You take a great deal of pride and pleasure in fixing up and maintaining a home, or discovering a starving animal and nursing it back to health, or planting trees where there were none before.

Because of this open-armed kindness, people find you wonderfully comfortable to be with. You make a great friend-you're stable, loyal, and loving. Touch is essential to you-you love to hug and be hugged.

You appreciate beauty in all its forms, due to your close affinity with nature. You prefer to surround yourself with people who have highly attractive qualities-be they external or internal. You cannot tolerate ugliness, especially of the earth-this makes you a firm opponent of pollution in all its forms.

Since truth and beauty are so closely related, you also have a preoccupation with honesty, and a low tolerance for corruption. You are forthright in your conversation, and so look people straight in the eyes when you speak to them. In fact, you tend to distrust those who cannot meet your gaze. Although some Taureans have been successful political leaders (primarily as peacemakers, such as Harry Truman), most are quite content to be led (this fits with the chronology of the zodiac: Aries, the first sign, is a natural leader; Taurus tends to follow him). That is not to say you are subservient; your self-reliance allows you to be successful and to be entrusted with great responsibility. But it is usually within a larger context: in other words, you make a great executive within the framework of a corporation, but you are not a maverick. You don't need to be president. In fact, you tend to shun the spotlight. Large crowds can be intimidating to you, so you are much more effective in small groups. Many Taureans are teachers, an occupation that displays great patience, nurturing, and self-reliance within the larger framework of the educational system.