Severe Quotes

• Gentle to others, to himself severe.

  Samuel Rogers

  Kindness, Gentle

  Samuel Rogers (1827). “Poems ... A new edition”, p.258

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• Within the human frequency of perception, what you see is what you get. I would classify the bottom of the band as severe unhappiness, depression and alimentation.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Perception, Band

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• Information overload will lead to 'future shock syndrome' as an individual will suffer severe physical and mental disturbances.

  Alvin Toffler

  Suffering, Information, Individual

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• Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Forgiveness, Government, Law

  Poor Richard's Almanack, May 1756

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• There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance.

  Arthur Helps

  Beauty, Humility, Grace

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• Severe poverty is getting better by some measures, but it's also becoming ever more scandalous because it is now so easily avoidable.

  Thomas Pogge

  Get Better, Poverty, Becoming

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I was diagnosed with a severe temporal spatial deficit, a learning disability that means I have zero spatial relations skills. It was official: I was a genius trapped in an idiot's body.

  Sloane Crosley

  Zero, Mean, Skills

  Sloane Crosley (2010). “How Did You Get This Number”, p.24, Penguin

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• The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.

  Thomas Browne

  Philosophy, Real, School

  Sir Thomas Browne (1831). “Miscellaneous Works of Sir Thomas Browne: With Some Account of the Author and His Writings”, p.25

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• If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle.

  Alberto Manguel

  Morning, Night, Order

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.19, Vintage Canada

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• It was always hard work to push through a crowed of reporters with the scent of blood in their nostrils. You might not think so, since on camera they appear to be brain-damaged wimps with severe eating disorders. But put them at a police barricade and a miraculous thing happens...The strength comes from some mysterious place-and somehow, when there is gore on the ground, these anorexic creatures can push their way through anything. Without mussing their hair, too.

  Jeff Lindsay

  Hard Work, Thinking, Hair

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• The dome of the U.S. Capitol has fallen into severe disrepair... As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which oversees matters of the Capitol's physical plant, I have serious concerns about the consequences of omitting this funding from the stopgap spending measure.

  Charles Schumer

  Matter, Administration, Domes

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• It is tempting when looking at the life of anyone who has committed suicide to read into the decision to die a vastly complex web of reasons; and, of course, such complexity is warranted. No one illness or event causes suicide; and certainly no one knows all, or perhaps even most, of the motivations behind the killing of the self. But psychopathology is almost always there, and its deadliness is fierce. Love, success, and friendship are not always enough to counter the pain and destructiveness of severe mental illness

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Pain, Motivation

  FaceBook post by Kay Redfield Jamison from Feb 18, 2013

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• I cannot say that the attitude of the United Nations always is for the Israeli attitude. Israel, I think, has been under severe attacks by members of the United Nations many times.

  Ariel Sharon

  Attitude, Thinking, Israel

  "Transcript: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon". "Your World with Neil Cavuto", www.foxnews.com. September 19, 2005.

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• The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, droughts and floods is in line with what climate scientists have been predicting for decades - and evidence is mounting that what's happening is more severe than predicted, and will get far worse still if we fail to act.

  David Suzuki

  Weather, Climate, Events

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• American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100 degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad stations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American percolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes, served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like pure spring water, and afterwards causes severe palpitations, because one cup contains more caffeine than four espressos.

  Umberto Eco

  Spring, Coffee, Humble

  Umberto Eco (1995). “How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What has happened to Africa is very severe. We are talking about the collapse of this and the collapse of that, of good government, of the economy particularly. And this has hit education badly. The news you get from the universities in Nigeria is often appalling. I don't think a lot of it gets out. There is the obsession with cults and all kinds of dreadful things going on and all this is taking its toll and it is not surprising that quality of students and graduates who come out is not good. It will not be surprising if this shows in the quality of work they do.

  Chinua Achebe

  Thinking, Government, Talking

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• Yes, I laugh at all mankind, and the imposition that they dare to practice when they talk of hearts. I laugh at human passions and human cares, vice and virtue, religion and impiety; they are all the result of petty localities, and artificial situation. One physical want, one severe and abrupt lesson from the colorless and shriveled lip of necessity, is worth all the logic of the empty wretches who have presumed to prate it, from Zeno down to Burgersdicius. It silences in a second all the feeble sophistry of conventional life, and ascetical passion.

  Charles Robert Maturin

  Passion, Heart, Practice

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• People who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are angry, and they will see anger in what you do, even if you're just quietly going about a life of your own choosing. They will make you doubt yourself, which, depending on cases, can be a severe distraction and a waste of time. This is a thing I wish I had understood much earlier than I did.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Regret, People, Doubt

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• Incline us oh God! to think humbly of ourselves, to be severe only in the examination of our own conduct, to consider our fellow-creatures with kindness, and to judge of all they say and do with that charity which we would desire from them ourselves.

  Jane Austen

  Kindness, Thinking, Judging

  Jane Austen “Pride and Prejudice”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• How many of them were there?' Her voice wasn't joking around. Eighteen. Hundred.' Four,' Blaylock interjected. 'An honor guard of four.' What did they work you over with? Those bruises on your thighs are severe?' Crowbars. Big, massive-' Blay cut in. 'Clubs. Had to be those ceremonial black clubs.

  J.R. Ward

  Cutting, Voice, Black

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• It was strictly forbidden to preach to other prisoners. It was understood that whoever was caught doing this received a severe beating. A number of us decided to pay the price for the privilege of preaching, so we accepted their [the communists' ] terms. It was a deal; we preached and they beat us. We were happy preaching. They were happy beating us, so everyone was happy.

  Richard Wurmbrand

  Pay The Price, Numbers, Privilege

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• God never witholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God's refusals are always merciful -- "severe mercies" at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Children, Heart, Giving

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• I lift heavy weights and sprint, but I am so bad at it that I develop severe injuries.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Weight, Injury, Heavy

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• Faith's most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Tests, Vain, Stunning

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