Severity Quotes

“When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.”

“Furnishing was not a priority in the Citadel. Shelves, stools, tables... There was a rumor among the novices that priests towards the top of the hierarchy had golden furniture, but there was no sign of it here. The room was as severe as anything in the novices' quarters although it had, perhaps, a more opulent severity; it wasn't the forced bareness of poverty, but the starkness of intent.”

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.”

“Kindness affects more than severity.”

“It is better that a judge should lean on the side of compassion than severity.”

“Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!”

“When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.”

“There is a correlation between the severity of a person’s moods and a lack of self-knowledge.”

“It is very wrong to kill any one[.]""Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!”