"Severity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand held out in response to his good morning, and no answering smile displaced the severity of the woman's expression as she stood confronting the boy, slowly paralyzing him with her glance. Not a word did she utter. She could convey her deepest meaning without words when ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... were laid over the tops of the pews, on these some straw was spread, and on this the wounded lay, with little or no covering other than such scanty clothes as they had on. There were wounds of all degrees of severity, but I heard no groans or murmurs. Most of the sufferers were hurt in the limbs, some had undergone amputation, and all had, I presume, received such attention as was required. Still, it was but a rough and dreary kind of comfort ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... questioning of the domestics had proved beyond a doubt that any story of the burning of the letter in that room was a fabrication. She knew well her uncle's intense abhorrence of anything like treachery or deceit. It was indeed this trait in his disposition that had led to his severity towards Isidore, and it was on this that she now relied for the success of her efforts to enlist the sympathy of the old marquis in favour of her cousin and ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... the passport from the king's hand his countenance cleared, and he made the two gentlemen a graceful bow, and begged them to excuse the severity that his duty ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... was defeated under the walls of Aberdeen; and the pillage of the ill-fated town was doomed to expiate the principles, which Montrose himself had formerly imposed upon them. Argyleshire next experienced his arms; the domains of his rival were treated with more than military severity; and Argyle himself, advancing to Inverlochy for the defence of his country, was totally and disgracefully routed by Montrose. Pressed betwixt two armies, well appointed, and commanded by the most experienced generals of the Covenant, Mozitrose displayed more military skill in the astonishingly ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... in the writings of the period, there are references to this worldliness in some monasteries; but whatever may have been the state of things at a later date, there does not seem to be evidence of graver misdeeds in these early years of monasticism in England. Bede uses perhaps unnecessary severity in speaking of renegade monks and nuns so-called, since he is admittedly speaking from hearsay and not about disorders which came under his own observation. Whatever the sins of Coldingham may have been, ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney
... neglected. I must point out the extraordinary merit of the officers who effected this operation. Transits were observed and chronometers were interchanged when the temperature was lower than 19 deg. below zero: and when the native assistants, though paid highly, deserted on account of the severity of the weather, the British officers still continued the observations upon whose ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... folk sat clustered or apart. One of these, a girl perhaps fourteen years of age, buxom and comely, caught the eye of Brother Michel. Why was she not at school?—she was done with school now. What was she doing here?—she lived here now. Why so?—no answer but a deepening blush. There was no severity in Brother Michel's manner; the girl's own confusion told her story. 'Elle a honte,' was the missionary's comment, as we rode away. Near by in the stream, a grown girl was bathing naked in a goyle between two stepping-stones; and it amused me to see with what alacrity and ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at the same time filled with a strange fear by the cold coquetry with which this magnificent woman draped her charms in her furs of dark sable; by the severity and hardness which lay in this cold marble-like face. Again I took my pen in hand, ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... and murmur: substantial retribution, even in this poor dislocated world of wrong, not seldom overtakes the sinner, not seldom encourages the saint. Encourages? yea, and punishes: blessing him with kind severity; teaching him to know himself a mere bad root, if he be not grafted on his God; proving that the laws which govern life are just, and wise, and kind; showing him that a man's own heart's desire, if fulfilled, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... floral rod with an assumption of severity. "I trust he will be sorely disquieted," she said. "He deserves no otherwise for his behavior last winter. Are you so soft of heart, Tata, that you are never going to reckon ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... alike. After mass, as he returned, he learned from a librarian called Seney, at the porter's lodge, as he was taking a glass of wine, that judgment had been given, and that Madame de Brinvilliers was to have her hand cut off. This severity—as a fact, there was a mitigation of the sentence—made him feel yet more interest in his penitent, and he hastened back to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... fate of women in the Spanish islands to suffer even more than their husbands and brothers from severity and injustice, instances are not lacking in which they have shown an equal spirit with the men. In the insurrections a few of them openly took the field, and the Maid of Las Tunas is remembered,—a Cuban Joan of Arc, who rode at the head of the rebel troops, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Father, in the editio princeps of his works. His figure and physiognomical expression bespoke a rapid approach to the grand climacteric of human life. The deeply-sunk, but large and black, beaming eye—the wan and shrivelled cheek—the nose, somewhat aquiline, with nostrils having all the severity of sculpture—sharp, thin lips—an indented chin—and a highly raised forehead, surmounted by a little black silk cap—(which was taken off on the first salutation) all, added to the gloom of the place, and the novelty of the costume, impressed ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Queen recommended "to his special care to preserve the true exercise of religion among her loving subjects." As O'Neill was still in the field with a large army, she prudently pointed out, however, that the time "did not permit that he should intermeddle by any severity or violence in matters of religion until her power was better established there to countenance his action." That the character of their adversary was faithfully appreciated by contemporary Irish opinion stands plain in a letter written by James Fitzthomas, nephew of the ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... parents always endeavoured to show their gratitude by other acts of kindness. Oh, that the Europeans only knew how easily these simple children of nature might be won by attention and kindness! But, unfortunately, they will continue to govern them by force, and treat them with neglect and severity. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... know, Caroline," said Grandmamma, with severity, "where you picked up such levelling ideas? Why, they are Whiggery, and worse. I cannot bear these dreadful mob notions that creep about now o' days. We shall soon be told that a king may as well sell his crown and sceptre, because he would ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... understand why it was that she had passed, so harsh a sentence upon him. She was not, however, capable of analyzing her own mind and feelings upon the occasion, or she might have known that her severity towards the man I was the consequence, on her part, of that innate scorn and indignation which pure and lofty minds naturally entertain against everything dishonorable and base, and that it is a very difficult thing to disassociate the crime from the ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... laid out with the regular severity of the surveyor's art. Behind the fresh, new railroad depot the tented streets swept away pretentiously. In the old settlements—as much as two months before that day some of them had been built—several ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... annuals required for spring flowering which were omitted to be sown during the previous months should now be done so with all speed; the most suitable position will be in a box of light soil, and the young seedlings may be protected from the severity of winter by the box containing them being placed in a cold frame, which should be covered by straw or other litter during very hard frosts. Although the majority of annuals are of a very ephemeral character, few things are more showy or ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in their own time."—Josephus's Jewish War, Pref., p. 4. "The Almighty cut off the family of Eli the high priest, for its transgressions."—See Key. "The convention then resolved themselves into a committee of the whole."—Inst., p. 146. "The severity with which this denomination was treated, appeared rather to invite than to deter them from flocking to the colony."—H. Adams's View, p. 71. "Many Christians abuse the Scriptures and the traditions of the apostles, to uphold things quite contrary to it."—Barclay's Works, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... ruthless man, if that accursed night has so rankled with thee, and thou deemest my fault so grave that neither my youth and beauty, nor my bitter tears, nor yet my humble supplications may move thee to pity, let this at least move thee, and abate somewhat of thy remorseless severity, that 'twas my act alone, in that of late I trusted thee, and discovered to thee all my secret, that did open the way to compass thy end, and make me cognizant of my guilt, seeing that, had I not confided in thee, on no wise mightst thou have been avenged on me; which thou wouldst ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the task growing heavier as they progressed, for the gradient became steeper, and they halted from time to time for a rest, the plan of using the bayonets being kept for a last resource. But there were compensations to make up for the severity of the toil, one of which was expressed by the travellers at one ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... "I ..." He was inclined for a moment to bluster. He looked curiously at Jenny's profile, judicial in its severity. Then some kind of tact got the better of his first impulse. "Well, I thought one of you girls ..." he said. "Will you come, Em? Have ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... intended to allow the secret to pass her lips. Whether she ever could tell her mother, she doubted; but she certainly would not do so an hour too soon. "Why is it too late?" demanded the Countess, repeating her question with stern severity ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... places himself under several manifest disadvantages. If you are to be an agnostic, it is better (for novel- writing purposes) not to be a complacent or resigned one. Otherwise your characters will find it difficult to show what is in them. A man reveals and classifies himself in proportion to the severity of the condition or action required of him, hence the American novelist's people are in considerable straits to make themselves adequately known to us. They cannot lay bare their inmost soul over a cup of tea or a picture by Corot; so, in order ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... generosity confers honor; normal ambition makes Henry V. great, whereas it ruins Percy, in whom it has risen too high; excessive virtue leads Angelo to destruction, and if, in those who surround him, excessive severity becomes harmful and can not prevent crime, on the other hand the divine element in man, even charity, if it be ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... a tremendous wrench. If he hurt her thumbs he could not help it. He held her from him at arm's length and shook her, shook her as though she was a naughty child in a paroxysm of passion which had to be subdued by extreme severity. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... incessantly from one end of Spain to the other, establishing new foundations, visiting her convents, and dealing with all classes of men, from the soldier to the priest, from the prince to the peasant. The severity of her discipline was tempered by a tolerant and half-amused insight into the pardonable foibles of humanity. She held back her nuns with one hand from "the frenzy of self-mortification," which is the mainstay of spiritual vanity, and with the other hand ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... houses he has ever lived in,—he even told me where he purchased his writing-paper, pens, and ink! And to think that a POET should be too grand to be interrogated! Oh, the idea is really very funny! ... quite too funny for anything! "She gave a short laugh,—then relapsing into severity, she added ... "You will, I hope, tell Mr. Alwyn ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... servant had dropped asleep in the inn or had forgotten the appointed hour. In his heart he could not blame the man, for the weather was arctic in its severity. However, he determined to wend his way to the inn and reprove him for his negligence. Stepping out of the gate he began to walk against the driving snow with bent head, when he ran into the arms of a man who was running hard. In the light of the lamp over the gate he recognized ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... N. energy, physical energy, force, power &c. 157; keenness &c. adj.; intensity, vigor, strength, elasticity; go; high pressure; fire; rush. acrimony, acritude[obs3]; causiticity[obs3], virulence; poignancy; harshness &c. adj.; severity, edge, point; pungency &c. 392. cantharides; seasoning &c. (condiment) 393. activity, agitation, effervescence; ferment, fermentation; ebullition, splutter, perturbation, stir, bustle; voluntary energy &c. 682; quicksilver. resolution &c. (mental energy) 604; exertion ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... totality and jeopardise the colour-harmony, rare without suspicion of exaggeration or affectation. In the background a beautiful chocolate balances and enforces the various shades of the shot-silk, and with severity that is fortunate. By aid of two red poppies, worn in the bodice, a final note in the chord is reached—a resonant and closing consonance; a beautiful work, certainly: I should call it a perfect work ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... to this country of "quoting the opinions of foreign nations by way of helping to make up its own estimate of the degree of merit which belongs to its public men," is treated in this letter with caustic and just severity, and shown to be "destructive of those sentiments of self-respect and of that manliness and independence of thought, that are necessary to render a people great or a nation respectable." The controlling influence of foreign ideas over our literature, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Dad! You look beautiful! There's nothing so becoming to a man as knickerbockers—especially if he's a little stout.—You're late,' she added with a touch of severity. 'Breakfast has been waiting half an ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... preposterous and charming as she set to work with an air of severity; and so she was—the last thing on earth made to do serious work. They leaned together over one treasure after another, in that electric nearness that moves youth so easily, and sends a tingling sensation ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... down this brave severity, until the desire to punish Joseph for his disobedience was all gone. She stood at the head of the stairs and listened for his voice and his little pattering feet. If she had heard them, her anxious expression would have given way to a cross look and she would have scolded both ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... very well when the sedentary dame, who never has been seen to rise from her stool, and who, as a joker pretended, was afflicted with two wooden legs, called you by a little sign to the desk, and said to you, not without a shade of severity in her tone: "Monsieur Eugene, we must be thinking of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... they make diligent inquisition and search, as well for the doctrine and behaviour of the ministers as the orderly dealing of the parishioners in resorting to their parish churches and conformity unto religion. They punish also with great severity all such trespassers, either in person or by the purse (where permutation of penance is thought more grievous to the offender), as are presented unto them; or, if the cause be of the more weight, as in cases of heresy, pertinacy, contempt, and such like, they refer them either to the ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... enemies' hopes. I make it that here across Ocean-Sea, far, far from Spain, he chose not to wait. He clucked to him all the disaffected and flew with a strong beak at the eyes of my friends." He moved his arms and his chains clanked. "I make it that this severity is Don Francisco de Bobadilla's, not King Ferdinand's, not—oh, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... them to be accustomed to carry away men and women by force, to keep them in chains, to see their tears, to hear their mournful lamentations, to behold the dead and the dying, to be obliged to keep up a system of severity amidst all this affliction,—in short, it was impossible for them to be witnesses, and this for successive voyages, to the complicated mass of misery passing in a slave-ship, without losing their finer feelings, or without contracting those habits ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... those whom he politically disliked. We would, however, wish to deprecate unmitigated condemnation, and also to ask, whether the conduct of those whom he denounced, was not, in its turn, so harsh and arbitrary, as almost to justify the utmost severity of censure. Were they not men who would "scarcely believe in the substance of their liberty, if they did not see it cast a shadow of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... up, and the two eyed each other with that air of severity which men affect when they are afraid of displaying the fact that their love for each other ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... say much, but I could see that his conscience wasn't easy. However, there has been no improvement yet," she added, with grave severity. ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... retreat. They had spent the greater part of the morning strolling through the park, making short journeys from one clump of trees to another, and traversing just so much of the open sunny space which lay exposed to all the "bright severity of noon," as gave fresh value to the shade, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... morning. At noon Mr. Moore and I to the Wardrobe to dinner, where my Lady and all merry and well. Back again to the Privy Seal; but my Lord comes not all the afternoon, which made me mad and gives all the world reason to talk of his delaying of business, as well as of his severity and ill using of the Clerks of the Privy Seal. In the evening I took Mons. Eschar and Mr. Moore and Dr. Pierce's brother (the souldier) to the tavern next the Savoy, and there staid and drank with them. Here I met with Mr. Mage, and discoursing ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... returned to France, my friends requested me to write memoirs: I found excuses for not doing so in my reluctance to judge with severity the first jacobin chiefs who have shared since in my proscription,—the Girondins, who have died for those very principles they had opposed and persecuted in me,—the king and queen, whose lamentable fate only allows ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... settle down to talk or to read or to write. Cary sought vainly to persuade me to read and pass judgment upon his Navy Book. In spite of my interest in the subject my soul revolted at the forbidding pile of manuscript. I promised to read the proofs and criticise them with severity, but as for the M.S.—no, thanks. Poor Cary needed all his sweet patience to put up with me. By eleven o'clock we had become unendurable to one another, and I gladly welcomed his suggestion to adjourn to his club, have lunch there, and try to inveigle the Commander of the Malplaquet ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Justice, if sudden, was usually careful to see that it was justice and not brutality that rendered the verdict. And yet, many of these early trials had the outward semblance of lynching-bees in the swift severity of their punishments. A murderer would be arrested, tried, convicted, and decently hanged, all before sundown of the same day. The mob spirit was there, but usually held in check by the sturdy manhood of the American miners, who ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... toward others, and the one thing that especially roused his wrath and indignation was love. The young men and girls looked at each other slyly across the church, and the old peasants who liked to joke about such things disapproved his severity. All the parish was in a ferment. Soon the young men all stopped going ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... convicted at the time of the second Punic war, of looking down from the balcony of a house with a chaplet of roses on his head, was thrown into prison by order of the Senate, and here kept for sixteen years, until the close of the war. A further case of extreme severity was that of P. Munatius, who was condemned by the Triumviri to be put in chains for having crowned himself with flowers from the statue ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... deeply not to prove injurious in its effects; and it did this all the more, that the voice of love, true to its own law, had the words of hope and consolation in it, but never those of complaint. It appeared the acme of the severity of fate itself to have lived to be the mean of placing a heart and mind so rich in disinterested affection on so wild and waste a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... also My servant be"; which he interprets to mean that only those who have embraced to the full the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, can hope to be united to Him in glory. "No cross, no crown," is the law of life which Suso accepts in all the severity of its literal meaning. The story of the terrible penances which he inflicted on himself for part of his life is painful and almost repulsive to read; but they have nothing in common with the ostentatious self-torture of the fakir. Suso's ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... be thoroughly permeated with this sentiment. The tender and graceful lines of the Lotus became sublime and monumental under the religious loyalty of Egyptian chisels; and these lines, whether grouped or single, in the severity of their fateful repose, in their stateliness and immobility, wherever found, are awful with the presence of a grand serious humanity long passed away from any other contact with living creatures. The rendering of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... [And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made] I rather think the meaning is, You would then change the severity of your present character. In familiar speech, You would be quite another man. (see ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... and quickened his breath. Her glance might have been invitation—Tampico was not a drawing room—but still he hesitated. There was a certain hauteur in the set of the demoiselle's head, which outbalanced the mischief in her eyes. He felt an indefinable severity in her tempting beauty, and this was new to his philosophy of woman. But as he drank in further details, his resolve stiffened. That Grecian bend to her crisp skirt was evidently an extreme from the Rue de la Paix, foretelling the end of stupendous flounces. Then ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the would-be reformers of that day alone that such sentiments were held, and it was only by the severity of the punishment attending non-conformity with these regulations that they were ever enforced. In 1796, "the sumptuary law relative to dress had fallen into neglect," and in the next year "it was found so obnoxious and difficult to enforce," says Quincy, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... a side-door, leaving me in admiration of her beauty, and astonished with the overfrankness of her manners, which seemed the more extraordinary, at a time when the dictates of politeness, flowing from the court of the Grand Monarque Louis {104} XIV., prescribed to the fair sex an unusual severity of decorum. I was left awkwardly enough stationed in the centre of the court of the old hall, mounted on one horse, and holding another ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... lottery with the prize which he has drawn, but, in future ages, his honour will be only in proportion to his labours. If, on the contrary, he rushes again into the lists, he is sure to be judged with severity proportioned to the former favour of the public. If he be daunted by a bad reception on this second occasion, he may again become a stranger to the arena. If, on the contrary, he can keep his ground, and stand ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... our side were not many, and our dead even fewer; among the latter was Captain Pimienta. We were forced to return to our posts without having gained more than the damage wrought by the mines. The loss of those people was considerable, while not few of them perished because of the severity of our fire. But with the opportunity of the fifth mine which remained (which could not have its effect, because the fire-channel of the others choked it), the third attack was made inside of two days, by first setting fire to that mine, and by arranging the men better than on the day of the previous ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... detained them as hostages. The aga in the service of Bonaparte was astonished that sentence of death was not pronounced upon them; and he said, shrugging his shoulders, and with a gesture apparently intended to provoke severity, "You see ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... death of eight or nine thousand men and women ruthlessly expelled from the lands of which in Irish eyes they were wrongful occupiers, is a question to be settled by Mr. Froude, Mr. Lecky, and Mr. Gardiner; but the barbarities of insurgent Catholics, and the retaliatory severity of Protestant victors, which mark the fury of an internecine conflict removed from us by the lapse of more than two centuries have little to do with the practical question whether it be expedient at the present day that the local affairs of Ulster ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... the original pure classes, but springs from an unauthorized union of individuals of different castes. These are the Pariahs, who are employed in the lowest services and treated with the utmost severity. They are compelled to do what no one else can do without pollution. They are not only considered unclean themselves, but they render unclean every thing they touch. They are deprived of all civil rights, and stigmatized ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... Aunt M'riar would say when she heard this narrative going over well-known ground for the thousandth time. "And them children not lettin' you turn round in bed, I call it!" This was in reference to Dave and Dolly's severity about the text. The smallest departure from the earlier version led to both them children pouncing at once. Dave would exclaim reproachfully:—"You did say a Sweep with one blind eye, Uncle Mo!" and Dolly would confirm his words with ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... resolved, if possible, to undermine the power of Genoa, and spent the whole of his manhood and old age in one long struggle with their great captain, Stephen Doria. Of his stern patriotism and Roman severity of virtue the following story is a terrible illustration. Sampiero, though a man of mean birth, had married an heiress of the noble Corsican house of the Ornani. His wife, Vannina, was a woman of timid and flexible nature, who, though devoted to her husband, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... lose that love upon which he had believed all the happiness of his life depended, was a blow to which, for a time, no philosophy could reconcile him—the more particularly as the manner in which that loss had been forced upon him seemed, to his sensitive nature, to be marked by peculiar severity. To have had her torn from him in any ordinary way—to part with her in some quarrel in which either side might be partially right, and thenceforth never to see her again—or to be obliged to yield her up to the superior claims of an open, generous rivalry—any of these things would, in itself, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... its foot on the neck of the enemy. The "self-determination of peoples" was a hollow phrase signifying nothing. Open covenants openly arrived at were mocked by the closed doors of the Conference. When at last the terms were published their merciless severity, their disregard of racial boundaries, their creation of hatreds and vendettas which would lead, as sure as the sun should rise, to new warfare, staggered humanity, not only in Germany and Austria, but in every country ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... it must be noticed that there are many physical evils which the American woman shares with the other sex, but which bear with far greater severity on her finer organization. There is improper food, for instance. The fried or salted meat, the heavy bread, the perennial pork, the disastrous mince-pies of our farmers' houses are sometimes pardoned by Nature to the men of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... government personnel traveling to the specified country for a period of less than three years. The degree of risk is assessed by considering the foreign nature of these infectious diseases, their severity, and the probability of being affected by the diseases present. The diseases listed do not necessarily represent the total disease burden experienced ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... side of purely literary criticism was a review by C. C. Felton in the "North American Review," in which the critic spoke in tones of great disgust at the entire conception and execution of the character of Sam Slick. Quite possibly some of Professor Felton's severity drew its strength from a personal regard for Mr. Everett, who figures rather poorly in Judge Haliburton's pages. There was so little, however, of discriminating criticism at that time by American writers, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... had no doubt but that he would become odious, so he set up a court of judgment in the country, under a most excellent president, wherein all cities had their advocates. And because he knew that the past severity had caused some hatred against himself, so, to clear himself in the minds of the people, and gain them entirely to himself, he desired to show that, if any cruelty had been practised, it had not originated with him, but in the natural sternness of the minister. Under this pretence ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the judges had given their opinion. An incident that seemed favourable weighed down the vigorous [qu. rigorous] scale. The Common Council had presented a petition for mercy to the king. Lord Mansfield, who hated the popular party as much as he loved severity, was not likely to be moved by such intercessors. At Court it grew the language that the king must discountenance such interposition.' Walpole adds that 'as an attempt to rescue Dodd might be apprehended, two thousand men were ordered to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Moslems, except those of the Mliki school, hold that the maker of an image representing anything of life will be commanded on the Judgment Day to animate it, and failing will be duly sent to the Fire. This severity arose apparently from the necessity of putting down idol-worship and, perhaps, for the same reason the Greek Church admits pictures but not statues. Of course the command has been honoured with extensive breaching: for instance all the Sultans of Stambul ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that for four years had shown a constancy worthy of the "Ten Thousand"; and a painful sight it was. Many guns and small arms had been lost, and the ranks were depleted by thousands of prisoners and missing. Blankets, shoes, clothing, and accouterments were wanting. I have written of the unusual severity of the weather in the latter part of November, and it was now near January. Some men perished by frost; many had the extremities severely bitten. Fleming, the active superintendent mentioned, strained the resources ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... days the law had two qualities in an out-of-the-way place that have pretty well died out now. These qualities were laxity and severity—the disposition to go to extremes; and in this case some idea of the way in which the work of petty sessions was carried on will be grasped when it is told that after the examination the chairman ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... the belles of the present day, let them be told that DIANE DE POITIERS was never ill, nor affected indisposition. In the severity of the winter, she daily washed her face with spring-water, and never had recourse to cosmetics.——"What pity," says Brantome, "that earth should cover so beautiful ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... traveling from east or north, a slight rise in the barometer, clear and dry weather, and light winds. These signs are followed by the usual ugly and threatening appearance of the weather which forbodes most storms, and the increasing number and severity of the gusts with the rising of the wind. In some cases one of the earliest signs is a long heavy swell and confused sea, which comes from the direction in which the storm is approaching and travels more rapidly than the storm's ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... in the man, his uncompromising severity, his command of the situation regardless of cost, sorrow or suffering to other men, is seen in his realistic physiognomy. We study these facts more and more, as ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Prince.[171] On the Tuesday the King must have started for the north; for we find two ordinances dated at Stafford, a distance of thirty miles from Shrewsbury, on Wednesday the 25th. Whilst one of these royal mandates savours of severity, the other not only is the message of mercy and forgiveness, but recommends itself to us from the consideration of the person to whom the exercise of the royal clemency was intrusted with unlimited discretion. ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... to "my share of flagellation among my betters," and an explicit statement that he had remonstrated with Jeffrey against the "offensive criticism" of 'Hours of Idleness', because he thought it treated with undue severity, see ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... where the deer had browsed were burnt off bare as your hand in the wake of the pot hunter. Thus in due course, though Greenhow laid it to the increasing severity of game laws framed in the interests of city sportsmen, who preferred working hard for their venison to buying it comfortably in the open market, pot hunting grew so little profitable that he determined to leave it off altogether an become a Settler. Not however until he had earned the reprisal of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... legislative act which inflicts punishment without a judicial trial"; and an ex post facto law "one which imposes a punishment for an act which was not punishable at the time it was committed; or imposes additional punishment to that then prescribed." The court said: "The oath thus required is, for its severity, without any precedent that we can discover. In the first place, it is retrospective; it embraces all the past from this day; and if taken years hence, it will also cover all the intervening period. . . . It allows no distinction between acts springing from malignant ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... compelled to retire to the camp. Colonel Lewis' division having now been reinforced from the camp, pressed upon the Indians until they had fallen back in a line with Fleming's division. During this time, it being now twelve o'clock, the action continued with unabated severity. The close underwood, the ravines and fallen trees, favored the Indians; and while the bravest of their warriors fought from behind these coverts, others were throwing their dead into the Ohio, and carrying off their wounded. In their slow retreat, the Indians, about ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... thinned by the ravages of pestilence, for till 1369, which saw its last visitation, the Black Death returned again and again. The social strife too gathered bitterness with every effort at repression. It was in vain that Parliament after Parliament increased the severity of its laws. The demands of the Parliament of 1376 show how inoperative the previous Statutes of Labourers had proved. They prayed that constables be directed to arrest all who infringed the Statute, that no labourer should be allowed to take refuge in a town and become ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... stimulate my soldiers, not treating them with rigor and myself with indulgence, nor making their toils my glory. Such a mode of commanding is at once useful to the state, and becoming to a citizen. For to coerce your troops with severity, while you yourself live at ease, is to be ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... in the strong houses which they had erected in the villages. The commanders were obliged to palliate all kinds of slights and indignities, both from their soldiers and from the Indians, fearful of driving them to sedition by any severity. The clothing and munitions of all kinds, either for maintenance or defence, were rapidly wasting away, and the want of all supplies or tidings from Spain was sinking the spirits of the well-affected into despondency. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... of the situation at once pulled Frank away from his books. Again he took complete charge of the little group. He was a natural disciplinarian, as they had learned at the time of the wreck. Now his sense of responsibility developed a severity that was almost austerity. He kept them constantly at work. In private the others chafed at his tone of authority. But in his presence they never failed of respect. Besides, his remarkable unselfishness compelled their esteem, a shy vein of innocent, humorless sweetness their affection. "Old Frank" ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... glance with a certain severity. "What do you know about my correspondence? No doubt I ask too much," he went on; "I'm so attached to them. Dear old Peter, dear ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... her tender hand and stroked her hair. He could say nothing, for vexation at the old man's severity toward Undine closed his lips: and thus the two couples sat opposite to each other, with angry feelings and ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Him in the temple—think of her gentle reproaches! The words of the Son always sounded harsh in my ears. 'Those are the powerful expressions of the East!' said my old preacher. The Saviour was severe, severe as He must be! Already there seemed to me severity in His words! She was completely the mother; she was it then, even as when she wept at Golgotha. Honor and reverence ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... a little ashamed of her severity, and, changing her tone, makes herself so charming to him that he quite recovers his spirits before they come up with all the others on ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... boldness to speak freely before the Cardinal) said, 'There was no reason to wonder at the matter, since this way of punishing thieves was neither just in itself nor good for the public; for, as the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual; simple theft not being so great a crime that it ought to cost a man his life; no punishment, how severe soever, being able to restrain those from ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... stretch behind the ice, and thus to bring the matter to a decision. The weather, at this time, affected the senses with a feeling of cold much greater than that which was pointed out by the thermometer, so that the whole crew complained. In order the better to enable them to sustain the severity of the cold, the Captain directed the sleeves of their jackets to be lengthened with baize; and had a cap made for each man of the same stuff, strengthened with canvass. These precautions greatly contributed to their comfort and advantage. It is worthy of observation, that although ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... capable of many disguises—and should be carried alive. Why alive, if not that he might learn all about me, or that a more dreadful fate than mere death should be mine? I had seen the appalling end of poor Hall, the merciless severity with which his death had been compassed: why should I expect more gentle usage or other recompense? If ever man had been trapped, I had been; and, beneath all my placid self-restraint, I felt that my life was not worth an hour's—nay, perhaps ten minutes'—purchase. It was as ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... the pacha; and as she refused to walk, she was brought on the shoulders of four of the guards, and laid on the floor of the council-chamber. "How dare you rebel against the sublime commands?" inquired Mustapha with severity. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... of the main river is impeded by an uninterrupted series of falls and rapids. A little below the 45th parallel of North latitude, Pike and his companions had to leave their canoes and continue their journey in sledges. To the severity of a bitter winter were soon added the tortures of hunger. Nothing, however, checked the intrepid explorers, who continued to follow the Mississippi, now dwindled down to a stream only 300 roods wide, and arrived in February at Leech Lake, where they were ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... "granting that all the consequences which Godfrey has predicted were to follow from my doctrine, yet I am inclined to believe that society would, upon the whole, be the gainer by such severity, or, as I am willing to allow it to be, such apparent injustice. The adherence to this principle would be the misery, perhaps the ruin, of a few; but would, I think, tend to the safety and happiness of so many, that the evil would be nothing in comparison to the good. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... refusing to speak compels me to fear that it was not an accident, but a premeditated, wicked act. I now warn you, whoever did it, that if I can discover the author or authors, he or they shall be punished with the utmost severity, short of expulsion, that is allowed by the rules of the school. Seniors, I call for your aid in this. Look ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... her forehead. But her eye sunk immediately at the answering glance of his. He then, in a very few words, set the matter before her, with such a happy mixture of pointedness and kindness, that while the reproof coming from him went to the quick, Ellen yet joined with it no thought of harshness or severity. She was completely subdued, however; the rest of the riding lesson had to be given up, and for an hour Ellen's tears could not be stayed. But it was, and John had meant it should be, a strong check given to her besetting sin. It had a long ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... le pere Brossard round his little finger, and Merovee too. Whenever an extra holiday was to be begged for, or a favor obtained for any one, or the severity of a pensum mitigated, Barty was ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... you know I don't like such remarks," interposed Mrs. Goldsborough, but with little show of severity; "we have no reason to decide that Mrs. Smith does not really mean a kindness. She always seemed very fond ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... vary in severity from a mere puncture of the synovial layer by a chip of shell to complete shattering of the articular surfaces. Between these extremes are cases in which the capsular and synovial layer are extensively lacerated without involvement of the bones, and others in which the bones are implicated ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the risks run by Cave and Johnson and their fellow-workers. That no prosecution followed was due perhaps to that dread of ridicule which has often tempered the severity of the law. 'The Hurgolen Branard, who in the former session was Pretor of Mildendo,' might well have been unwilling to prove that he was Sir John Barnard, late Lord Mayor ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the squares were green, and the twittering of the birds among the boughs was almost gay enough to charm him out of the severity of countenance which a Scotchman wears on ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... it gives place to a bright noon. His eyebrows, which had been in the highest degree portentous, smoothed their rugged bristling aspect, and became serene; his eyes, which had been nearly closed in the severity of his mental exercise, opened freely; a smile which had been at first but three specks—one at the right-hand corner of his mouth, and one at the corner of each eye—gradually overspread his whole face, and, rippling up into his forehead, lifted the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... regular tartar. He was a tall, powerful man, and would have been handsome but for his somewhat bloated features. Even to his officers he was arrogant, overbearing, and discourteous to an almost unbearable degree; to the men he was simply an unmitigated tyrant. There was certainly some excuse for severity of discipline and occasional loss of temper, had it gone no further than that, for our crew was, as a whole, the worst I have ever had the misfortune to be associated with, several of them being foreigners, and of the remainder ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood |
