Quotes About Severity

Kindness affects more than severity.

If you wage war, do it energetically and with severity. This is the only way to make it shorter and consequently less inhuman.

The longer we had to wait for it, the more severe it would be.

The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present.

dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which

All are by nature prone to err both in public and in private life, and no law will prevent them. Men have gone through the whole catalogue of penalties in the hope that, by increasing their severity, they may suffer less at the hands of evil-doers. In early ages the punishments, even of the worst offences, would naturally be milder; but as time went on and mankind continued to transgress, they seldom stopped short of death.

The maximum sentence was twenty years for each free phone call. Twenty years for each call! I was facing a worst-case scenario of 460 years.

Especially given the severity of some of her curses. God help him if any of them ever came true. Why, he'd be a two-headed, three-toed, monkey-nosed, blind son of a cesspit-licking lackey if she had her way. (Braden)

We can all understand why victims would want to retaliate. But retaliation often makes the original perpetrators minimize the severity and harm of their side's actions and claim the mantle of victim themselves, thereby setting in motion a cycle of oppression and revenge. "Every successful revolution," observed the historian Barbara Tuchman, "puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed." Why not? The victors, former victims, feel justified.

Harsh justice is still justice.

Unbalanced power is the ebbing away of life. Unbalanced mercy is but weakness and the fading out of the will. Unbalanced severity is cruelty and the barrenness of mind."7

the degree of someone's just punishment is not a function of how long it took to commit the deed; rather, it's a function of how severe the deed itself was.

Now, bipolar disorder, it goes on a spectrum. There's very severe conditions of it and there are milder ones. I'm lucky enough that it's reasonably mild in my case.

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

For he who quells disorder by a very few signal examples will in the end be more merciful than he who from too great leniency permits things to take their course and so to result in rapine and bloodshed; for these hurt the whole State, whereas the severities of the Prince injure individuals only.

There was a cold wind out on the street. It picked up the dust, whirled it about and suddenly scattered it, flinging it down like black chaff. There was an implacable severity in the frost, in the branches that tapped together like bones, in the icy blue of the tram-lines.

Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine

The galleys make the convict what he is; reflect upon that, if you please. Before going to the galleys, I was a poor peasant, with very little intelligence, a sort of idiot; the galleys wrought a change in me. I was stupid; I became vicious: I was a block of wood; I became a firebrand. Later on, indulgence and kindness saved me, as severity had ruined me

Sir Julian Hove was, to use the most comprehensive term, a martinet. He was likewise a man utterly without humor.

Michael Hammer, el experto en procesos, indica que un proccso debe mcdirsc. Si no hay medicion, la gcntc dentro de la organizacion no interiorizara la severidad y la urgencia de este.` F,n otras palabras, si no mides el proceso, la gente pensara que este no importa. Sera solo otra declaracion en la pared o en el boletin.

I don't know why they're doing it. I have to assume that their motives are positive, not negative. But they don't understand the severity of the problem in this state.

Fun? There is no fun.

Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment

The major characteristics discoverable by the stranger in Mr F.'s Aunt, were extreme severity and grim taciturnity; sometimes interrupted by a propensity to offer remarks in a deep warning voice, which, being totally uncalled for by anything said by anybody, and traceable to no association of ideas, confounded and terrified the Mind.