Top 164 Severity Quotes & Sayings

Ambiguity lurks in generality, and may thus become an instrument of severity.

Children should be led into the right paths, not by severity, but by persuasion.

In compassionate men, severity is a virtue.

The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the ability to reach it.” – Chloe Traeger

No severity of punishment deters when detection is uncertain, as it always must be.

Punishments of unreasonable severity, especially where indiscriminately afflicted, have less effect in preventing crimes, and amending the manners of a people, than such as are more merciful in general, yet properly intermixed with due distinctions of severity.

All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.

Severity is allowable where gentleness has no effect.

No matter the severity of suffering we experience in this life, it will always be less that what we have deserved for our sins

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.

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

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

A great reserve and severity of manners are necessary for the command of those who are older than ourselves.

Every time I get injured I measure it's severity by asking myself 'Would this stop me from going to Disneyland?'

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.

...there seems to be a correlation between the intensity of the official attacks on gold and the severity of monetary crises.

The truth is you cannot decrease the severity and certainty of sentences without increasing crime. It's simply impossible.

The judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of a mass destruction - WMD - were presented with a certainty that was not justified.

Kindness effects more than severity.

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

The severity of penalties is only a vain resource, invented by little minds in order to substitute terror for that respect which they have no means of obtaining.

The severity of the itch is proportional to the reach.

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.

As Christ's ministry drew to its close, its severity and its gentleness both increased; its severity to the class from whom it never turned away. Side by side through all His manifestations of Himself, there were the two aspects: "He showed Himself froward " (if I may quote the word) to the self-righteous and the Pharisee; and He bent with more than a woman's tenderness of 'yearning love over the darkness and sinfulness, which in its great darkness dimly knew itself blind, and in its sinfulness stretched out a lame hand of faith, and groped after a Divine deliverer.

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

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

Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

Excessive severity misses its own aim.

The science linking the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather to the climate crisis has matured tremendously in the last couple of years.

Ridicule often cuts the knot, where severity fails.

Who begins with severity, in judging of another, ends commonly with falsehood.

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

The severity of the master is more useful than the indulgence of the father.

The smiles that encourage severity of judgment hide malice and insincerity.

A victorious general must know how to employ severity, justness, and mildness by turns, if he would allay sedition or prevent it.

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

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

... it is highly unlikely that a structural derangement could produce pain equal in severity to acute muscle spasm.

Fables take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it.

Our passions may be compared to certain slaves--the more severity we show them, the better they obey us.

Scientists have been warning about global warming for decades. It's too late to stop it now, but we can lessen its severity and impacts.

For generations America and its institutions have refused to acknowledge the true severity of the harm that domestic violence imposes on our society.

This avoidance of the difficult things of Scripture — of sinfulness and hell and God’s notable severity — is idolatrous and cowardly. If a man or a woman who teaches the Scriptures is afraid to explain to you the severity of God, they have betrayed you, and they love their ego more than they love you.

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. ... I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD.

Nothing comes of severity if there be no leanings towards a change of heart. And if there be natural leanings towards a change of heart, what need for severity?

Better make penitents by gentleness than hypocrites by severity.

Moral severity in women is only a dress or paint which they use to set off their beauty.

It is pride which fills the world with so much harshness and severity. We are rigorous to offenses as if we had never offended.

Jealousy seldom punishes with the severity it suffers.

A great deal may be done by severity, more by love, but most by clear discernment and impartial justice.

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.

Many people think that virtue consists of severity towards others.

There are odious virtues; such as inflexible severity, and an integrity that accepts of no favor.

The grand stye arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.

I wanted to do a lot of things in wine, but I didn't know how to do it. So before I invested in anything, before I really put my dollars into it, I put my whole heart, soul, mind into it so that I really understand the severity of each outcome, the severity of success and the severity of failure.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

That kind of discipline whose pungent severity is in the manifestations of paternal love, compassion, and tenderness is the most sure of its object.

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

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