Severity Quotes

The severity of the itch is proportional to the reach.

— Steven Wright

Better make penitents by gentleness than hypocrites by severity.

— Saint Francis de Sales

Severity is allowable where gentleness has no effect.

— Pierre Corneille

Kindness effects more than severity.

— Aesop

In compassionate men, severity is a virtue.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Excessive severity misses its own aim.

— Anonymous

Many people think that virtue consists of severity towards others.

— Alphonse Karr

Ridicule is often employed with more power and success than severity.

— Horace

Compassionate doctors sometimes lie to patients about the severity of their condition, and it is not always wrong to do so.

— Richard Dawkins

I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect light I yearned for warmth and colour…

— Alfred Lord Tennyson

Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect.

— William Hazlitt

Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity.

— Charles Lamb

Much is said about English severity, but not a word about Irish provocation.

— Robert Peel

The severity of the law of God is the necessary sequence of his infinite love.

— G. Campbell Morgan

To prevent evil is the great end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed.

— Samuel Johnson

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.

— Henry David Thoreau

I had dreamed my life for nearly fifty years (I am about to be fifty-nine). But, you see, there are two tones…

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Men have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts than in that which is innocuous, and are more tolerant of the…

— John Ruskin

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The severity of penalties is only a vain resource, invented by little minds in order to substitute terror for that respect which…

— Henri Rousseau

Public emergencies may require the hand of severity to fall heavily on those who are not personally guilty, but compassion prompts, and…

— Mercy Otis Warren

Is it possible that the environmental severity of the 1930s induced-particularly in the most aware, alert, and compassionate of [British] men-a morality…

— Robert Ardrey

Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirth-fulness. If you would know…

— Henry David Thoreau

I become quite inhibited particularly when I do comedy, I won't - there's a whole thing of allowing an audience in and…

— Ian McLeod

When a uniform exercise of kindness to prisoners on our part has been returned by as uniform severity on the part of…

— Thomas Jefferson

As Christ's ministry drew to its close, its severity and its gentleness both increased; its severity to the class from whom it…

— Alexander MacLaren

I am giving them a Warning and a Guidance from God to help them to do that which will save America. And…

— Louis Farrakhan

Many and many a person in Georgia asked me why we did not go to South Carolina; and, when I answered that…

— William Tecumseh Sherman

Never lose your self-respect, nor be too familiar with yourself when you are alone. Let your integrity itself be your own standard…

— Baltasar Gracian

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be…

— John Paul Stevens

Actually, the decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of this summary justice showed the world that we would continue…

— Leon Trotsky

But this inestimable privilege was soon violated: with the knowledge of truth the emperor imbibed the maxims of persecution; and the sects…

— Edward Gibbon

Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this [step by step, from humans to…

— Thomas Huxley

Jealousy seldom punishes with the severity it suffers.

— Norm MacDonald

Ridicule often cuts the knot, where severity fails.

— Horace

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

— Oscar Wilde

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

— Anonymous

“Within the realms of what goes around, resides the magnitude and severity of what comes around.”

— Sandeep N. Tripathi

It is better to err by excess of mercy than by excess of severity. . .Wilt thou become a Saint? Be severe…

— Saint John Chrysostom