Harshness Quotes

• Harshness to me is giving somebody false hopes and not following through. That's harsh. Telling some guy or some girl who've got zero talent that they have zero talent actually is a kindness.

  Simon Cowell

  Girl, Zero, Kindness

  15 Copy quote

• Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds.

  Plato

  Education, Children, Teaching

  123 Copy quote

• The harshness and choice of words can cut deeply. Republicans need to show compassion and to be reasonable when talking to any ethnic group.

  Henry Bonilla

  Cutting, Compassion, Talking

  6 Copy quote

• Every one must understand that, whatever be the evil of slavery, it is not increased by its diffusion. Every one familiar with it knows that it is in proportion to its sparseness that it becomes less objectionable. Wherever there is an immediate connexion between the master and slave, whatever there is of harshness in the system is diminished.

  Jefferson Davis

  Evil, Slavery, Masters

  15 Copy quote

• Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.

  Mahmoud Darwish

  Sarcastic, Pain, Sarcasm

  10 Copy quote

• Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Experience, Conviction

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.97, Macmillan

  34 Copy quote

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• Sadistic excess attempts to reach roughly and by harshness what art reaches by fineness.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Art, Sadism, Excess

  Wyndham Lewis (1926). “The Art of Being Ruled”

  19 Copy quote

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• What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?

  George Eliot

  Tragedy, Needs, Gone

  George Eliot (1873). “Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse: Selected from the Works of George Eliot”, p.101

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• Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

  Timothy Keller

  Love, Marriage, Giving

  Timothy Keller (2011). “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God”, p.31, Penguin

  58 Copy quote

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• His very chains helped to deceive him about the harshness of his service.

  Bruno Bauer

  Hype, Deceiving, Chains

  8 Copy quote

• Arrogance is in everything I do. It is in my gestures, the harshness of my voice, in the glow of my gaze, in my sinewy, tormented face.

  Coco Chanel

  Voice, Arrogance, Gestures

  7 Copy quote

• It is impossible to treat a child too well. Children are spoiled by being ignored too much or by harshness, not by kindness.

  Sloan Wilson

  Children, Kindness, Being Ignored

  Sloan Wilson (1976). “What shall we wear to this party?: The man in the gray flannel suit twenty years before & after”, Arbor House Publishing

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• A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

  Solomon

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Kings

  103 Copy quote

• Don't think being 'religious' means becoming harsh or hard. When Allah enters a heart, He softens it--He doesn't harden it.

  Yasmin Mogahed

  Inspirational, God, Religious

  37 Copy quote

• We are in danger of being stern where God is tender, and of being tender where God is stern.

  Oswald Chambers

  Danger

  Oswald Chambers (2011). “The Love of God: An Intimate Look at the Father-Heart of God”, p.46, Discovery House

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• You had to form for yourself a lucid language for the world, to overcome the battering of experience, to replace everyday life's pain and harshness and wretched dreariness with - no not with certainty but with an ignorance you could live with. Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.

  Gregory Benford

  Pain, Ignorance, Everyday

  "Timescape". Book by Gregory Benford, 1980.

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• Along the way, I've had different advice from different music producers. I've been told to tone it down, that the quiet parts of my voice are appealing and there's harshness to the loud part of my voice.

  Patty Griffin

  Voice, Advice, Different

  6 Copy quote

• Harshness vanished. A sudden softness has replaced the meadows' wintry grey. Little rivulets of water changed their singing accents. Tendernesses, hesitantly, reach toward the earth from space, and country lanes are showing these unexpected subtle risings that find expression in the empty trees.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Country, Spring, Expression

  9 Copy quote

• A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Whales, People, Greed

  Kurt Vonnegut's address to the graduating class at Bennington College, 1970.

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• Arrogance is a mixture of impertinence, disobedience, indiscipline, rudeness, harshness, and a self-assertive nature.

  Sivananda

  Self, Arrogance, Mixtures

  20 Copy quote

• I love a gay and sociable wisdom, and shun harshness and austerity in behaviour, holding every surly countenance suspect.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Wisdom, Gay, Behaviour

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.641, Stanford University Press

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• It is much to my advantage that several of my pictures should be seen together, as it displays to advantage their varieties of conception and also of execution, and what they gain by the mellowing hand of time which should never be forced or anticipated. Thus my pictures when first coming forth have a comparative harshness which at the time acts to my disadvantage.

  John Constable

  Hands, Together, Gains

  John Constable (1966). “Correspondence”

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• The painful thing is that when we buy into disapproval,we are practicing disapproval. When we buy into harshness,we are practicing harshness.

  Pema Chodron

  Painful, Painful Things, Disapproval

  Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.34, Shambhala Publications

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• I think Oprah's [winfrey] learned from me that it's OK to be harsh on people because in one's harshness you can see transformation happen right before your very eyes.

  Suze Orman

  Eye, Thinking, People

  Source: www.npr.org

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• There's good in this world. I mean I'm not at all blind to that. God is a good God himself. There are good things. He gives good gifts to His children. But within this world there's a harshness and some of it is unanswered. I don't think I'm trying to provide an answer as much as I am begging people to walk with me in awareness so that we can push back the darkness.

  Tedashii

  Children, Mean, Thinking

  5 Copy quote