"Severity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... children, was a totally different person from Mr. Wilton, owner of Wilton Chase, and the master, not only of his extensive property, but of poor timid Miss Nelson and of wondering Ermengarde. Mr. Wilton could be the jolliest of companions if he pleased, but he also could be stern, with a severity which Basil inherited. At such times his face was scarcely prepossessing. He came of a proud race, and pride, mixed with an almost overbearing haughtiness of manner, made him a person to be dreaded ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... in his train. It was related that Sanguinetti had once already extricated Santobono from a nasty difficulty: the priest having one day caught a marauding urchin in the act of climbing his wall, had beaten the little fellow with such severity that he had ultimately died of it. However, to Santobono's credit it must be added that his fanatical devotion to the Cardinal was largely based upon the hope that he would prove the Pope whom men awaited, the Pope who would make Italy the sovereign ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... on the contrary, a singular advantage, not only in the greater extent of the field of investigation opened to me by my daily pursuits, but in the severity of some lessons I accidentally received in the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... stepped forward, unable to keep from smiling at her face of horror. He felt a little "out of it," perhaps, and twenty-four seemed a long way from seventeen; but he should not have watched the girls, he told himself with some severity, without letting them know he was there. Now this pretty child regarded him as a double eavesdropper and spy. But his apology was drowned in ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... cheered them as best he could. He was at first puzzled at the severity of their hardships in the face of past prophecies. But light at last came to him. He stopped one day to comfort a wan, weak man who had halted ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, first American edition, New York, 1837. As to the comparative severity of the struggle regarding astronomy, geology, etc., in the Catholic and Protestant countries, see Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the truth and live; and also because it is grace and mercy in God, so much as once to offer means of reconciliation to a sinner, he being the offender; but the Lord, the God offended; they being but dust and ashes, he the heavenly Majesty. If God, when man had broke the law, had yet with all severity kept the world to the utmost condition of it, had he then been unjust? Had he injured man at all? Was not every tittle of the law reasonable, both in the first and second table? How much more then is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... tribunal, is applauded at another, though perplexed for a time, gives way at length to the spontaneous impulse of his genius, and the dictates of his taste, and writes in the way most natural to himself. It is thus that criticism, which by its severity may have held the little world of writers in check, may, by its very excess, disarm itself of its terrors, and the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... jealousy of genius—eluded the most anxious investigation. Yet so lasting and so powerful was the interest excited by this literary quarrel, that, within a few years, the elegant mind of Sir WILLIAM BLACKSTONE withdrew from the severity of profounder studies to inquire into the causes of a quarrel which was still exciting the most opposite opinions. Blackstone has judged and summed up; but though he evidently inclines to favour Addison, by throwing into the balance some explanation ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... two or more separate streams, which function separately and independently, and generally with no memory connection between the two, so that each is ignorant of what the other stream, or self, is doing. This is already an abnormal condition, a pathological state, and its severity depends upon the degree of cleavage between the streams of thought. If this be deep and lasting, we have a well-marked case of hysteria, or other disorders to be noted immediately; if, on the other hand, the cleavage be slight, we have merely absent-mindedness, wandering of the mind, and ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... wind than waves, and suffered the severity of a tempest, without enjoying its magnificence. The sea being broken by the multitude of islands, does not roar with so much noise, nor beat the shore with such foamy violence, as I have remarked ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... Saint Bartholomew, Rape of Europa, Rape of the Sabines, Piping and Amours of goat-footed Pan, Romulus suckled by the Wolf: all this, and much else of fabulous, distant, unimportant, not to say impossible, ugly and unworthy, shall pass without undue severity of criticism, in a Household of such opulence as ours, where much goes to waste, and where things are not on an earnest footing for this long while past! As Created Objects, or as Phantasms of such, pictorially done, all this shall have ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... thousand two hundred and seventy, exclusive of mariners, to the number of seven hundred; but two hundred of the troops were sent sick on shore before the armament sailed from Dunkirk; and in their voyage between Gottenburgh and Bergen they lost company of the Begon, during a violent storm. The severity of the weather detained them nineteen days at Bergen, at the expiration of which they set sail for the western islands of Scotland, and discovered the northern part of Ireland in the latter end of January. The intention of Thurot was to make a descent about Derry; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... worth quoting. His correspondent was a Dr. * * * * * (asterisks for which it is now impossible to substitute letters); and the burden of what seem to have been several communications in speech and writing on the subject was the maxim, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." With such seriousness and severity had his correspondent dwelt upon this adage, that "at length," writes Sterne, "you have made me as serious and as severe as yourself; but, that the humours you have stirred up might not work too potently within me, I have waited four days to cool myself before I could set pen to paper to ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... for a moment to me; "the severity of the weather makes a great difference between us. And you ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... very boisterous weather, and repeated losses of the necessary materials left on the rock, the seventh course was not laid until the 7th of September. But Smeaton had the satisfaction to find that all the work actually completed, stood the utmost severity of the weather unmoved. At this time the sea became so calm that the work proceeded rapidly, and for three days in succession the top of the work was not wetted. The eighth course was completed on the 13th, but the weather again becoming ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... to some of us, probably to all, by far the severest part of the march; much severer than it would have been had the rest at Frederick been shorter. The day's performance was certainly a great feat, only exceeded in severity by our Fourth of July's march from Carlisle to Laurel Forge through a sea of mud. The distance from Beaver Creek to Frederick is something like twenty-two miles. We moved with equipments complete, even cartridge pouches filled. What kept us up was the near prospect of home which loomed glittering ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... to August Naab's assertion, he had lost flesh and suffered, and though the process was heartbreaking in its severity, he hung on till he hardened into a leather lunged, wire-muscled man, capable of keeping ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... These are a kind of comets, and their changes cannot be calculated like the changes of vulgar words, which answer to stars (i. 298). Mr. Max Muller 'formerly agreed with Curtius that phonetic rules should be used against proper names with the same severity as against ordinary nouns and verbs.' Benfey and Welcker protested, so does Professor Victor Henry. 'It is not fair to demand from mythography the rigorous observation of phonetics' (i. 387). 'This may be called backsliding,' our author confesses, and it ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... Darwin to tell us that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain. The most that in this connexion Darwin can fairly be said to have done is to have estimated in a more careful and precise manner than any of his predecessors, the range and the severity of this travail. And if it be true that the result of what may be called his scientific analysis of nature in respect of suffering is to have shown the law of suffering even more severe, more ubiquitous, and more necessary than it had ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... riches wealth, so does cold produce cold. Fill, then, in a certain degree, a space as large as the North Atlantic Ocean with ice in all its varieties, fixed, mountain and field, berg and floe, and one may get a tolerably accurate notion of the severity of its winters, when the sun is scarce seen above the horizon at all, and then only to shed its rays so obliquely as to be little better than a chill-looking orb of light, placed in the heavens simply to divide ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... were not to be numbered among their President's friends, whether or not they were altogether just to him. Bloody severity in putting down sedition was the long-established custom in Mexico, and one man might not be more to blame for it than another. It had been handed down from the old days of Spanish rule, and the record which had been made is not ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... with slight severity: "I cannot conceive that such a thing can pass the human face by, leaving ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hair, which was brushed in rippling waves from her forehead and coiled in a severely simple knot on her neck, she might have been a wandering goddess, who had descended, with immortal calm, to direct the affairs of the household. Her white shirtwaist, with its starched severity, suited her austere beauty and her look of almost ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... is hope of many making amends, the severity of vengeance should be brought to bear on a few of the principals, whose punishment fills the rest with fear; thus the Lord (Num. 25) commanded the princes of the people to be hanged for the sin ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... schooling began early. He learned his letters at a dame school. Mr. William Wells, an Englishman, opened a classical school in one of the spacious Tory Row houses near Elmwood, and, bringing with him English public school thoroughness and severity, gave the boy a drilling in Latin, which he must have made almost a native speech to judge by the ease with which he handled it afterward in mock heroics. Of course he went to Harvard College. He lived at his father's house, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... breasts we have just described in part. The severity of the symptoms will depend upon the extent and depth of the inflammation. The affection is always ushered in by shivering, followed by fever and a shooting pain in the breasts. A small, hard, painful swelling will be noticed in the breast even before the skin ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the commander of the "Mormon" Battalion, declared, "History may be searched in vain for an equal march of infantry." Many were disabled through the severity of the march, and numerous cases of sickness and death were chronicled. General Kearney and his successor, Governor R. B. Mason, as military commandants of California, spoke in high praise of this organization, and in their official reports declared that they had made efforts to ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... Jackson been one man in a million he would not have hesitated to obey. A well man might justly have despaired. But to a physical wreck, his shoulder still painful, his left arm useless, suffering from insufficient food, from acute dyspepsia, from chronic diarrhoea, from cramps of terrible severity—to a man in this condition, who should have been in bed under a physician's care, to remain seemed utter madness, and yet he remained. His indomitable spirit triumphed over his enfeebled body. He had set out to subdue the hostile ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... He was a dark-haired, good-looking man, of polished manners, agreeable in society, not given to monkish austerities—except in the matter of Fridays—nor yet to the Low-Church severity of demeanour. He was thoroughly a gentleman, good-humoured, inoffensive, and sociable. But he had one fault: he was not a ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... your oath, woman!" again interposed Justice Hare, and a trembling, as of agitation, might be detected in his voice, in spite of its ringing severity. "Were you with the prisoner Levison, or were ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... were shut up alone in the agony of their misery and despair, for whatever might be the fate of the common people of the Pretender's army, the action of the King toward all who opposed him was known to be of merciless severity. The leaders of the rebellion could expect but one fate—death ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... with severity, but he failed in the attempt; he could no longer harbor his cruel fear, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... competition; or, in other words, to intensify the struggle for existence. The process is as broad as it is long. If we could be sure that every child born should grow up to maturity, the result would be to double the severity of the competition for support, What we should have to show, therefore, in order to justify the inference of a deterioration due to this process, would be, not that it simply increased the number of the candidates for living, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... provoked hostility among the recently annexed tribes of the Brda who, though they had voluntarily joined Montenegro as opposed to the Turks, refused flatly to pay taxes. Danilo put down this rising with great severity and gained the hatred ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... married her, and soon grew sickly and suffering. One after another her children died as babies. At last came one who lived, and then the mother began to die. She was one of those lowly women who apply the severity born of their creed to themselves, and spend only the love born of the indwelling Spirit upon their neighbors. She was rather melancholy, but hoped as much as she could, and when she could not hope did ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... fully realize the bitter severity exercised in the Spanish prisons, both at Madrid and in Havana, one must have witnessed it. Cold, dark and dreary cells, fit only to act as supports to the upper and better lighted portions of the dismal structure, are filled by those persons ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... day of full skirts. Her hats were large and floppy. When she wriggled out of her moleskin coat at luncheon, she looked like a slim black weasel. Her satin dress was a mere sheath, so conspicuous by its severity and scantness that every one in the dining-room stared. She ate nothing but alligator-pear salad and hothouse grapes, drank a little champagne, and took cognac in her coffee. She ridiculed, in the raciest slang, the singers they had heard at the opera the night before, and ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... international union. His father had been a 'gentleman's gentleman,' and Paulo followed his father's business and became a gentleman's gentleman too. George Paulo was almost entirely English in his nature, thanks to a strong-minded mother, who ruled the late Manuel Paulo with a kindly severity. The only thing Spanish about him was his face—smooth-shaven with small, black side whiskers—a face which might have seemed more appropriately placed in the bull rings of Madrid or Seville. George Paulo, in his turn, married an Englishwoman, a lady's-maid, with some economies and ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... you, man! Your reputation is not so fair, that you need be so tender of it," replied Jaspar, with some severity. ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... thoughts in devising some plan which might lessen the number of punishments at sea, and thus, perhaps, save others from the remorse I have felt, while it might tend to relieve the service from the discredit of an improper degree of severity in its penal administration. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... full of the then fashionable conceits, which appear again a little in the Ode, after which they are for ever put aside by Milton's imaginative severity and high conception of poetry as a finer sort of truth than prose, not a more ingenious kind of lying. Once, and perhaps once only, one hears in it the voice of ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... receiving sentence, and I saw how this of mine would be less than nothing. I confessed my fault, as if I had been very much to blame; and so I seemed to every one who did not know all the reasons. After the Provincial had rebuked me sharply—though not with the severity which my fault deserved, nor according to the representations made to him—I would not defend myself, for I was determined to bear it all; on the contrary, I prayed him to forgive and punish, and be no ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... reign, developed into a species of glebae adscriptio. From the sixteenth century, when the royal power almost disappeared, these public privileges were abandoned to the nobility to such an extent that, in 1650, there were scarcely 5,000 free peasants. Dahlmann, III, p. 73 seq. However the severity of traeldom made way in the fourteenth century for the vornedskap (modified bondage), a milder species of vassalage. See Kolderup Rosenvinge, Grundriss der ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... did not like its loud sounds, its combative merriment, its coarse flavours; the real life, that of observation, imagination, dreams, fancies, had been hunted into a corner; and the sense that one might incur ridicule, enmity, severity, dislike, harshness, had filled the air with uneasy terrors. I came away selfish, able—I had won a scholarship at Eton with entire ease—innocent, childish, bewildered, wholly unambitious. The world seemed to me a big, noisy, stupid place, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was probably, above all, to prevent a revolt in Russian Poland the moment hostile troops invaded it. On the Austrian Poles the manifesto seems to have failed to produce its effect. As these Poles enjoy full autonomy in Galicia, and for a century have witnessed the severity and cruelty with which their kinsmen in Russian Poland have been oppressed, they received the proclamation with loud vows of faithfulness to the house of Hapsburg; nay, all the sokol societies which in time of peace (keeping a decision in view) had trained their members ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... who found some material for his work on Military Stratagems in the campaigns of Sertorius, and from other passages, we may collect that, however mild the temper of Sertorius was, circumstances must often have compelled him to acts of severity and even cruelty. The difficulties of his position can only be estimated when we reflect on the nature of a campaign in many parts of Spain and the kind of soldiers he had under him. Promptitude and decision were among his characteristics; and in such a warfare ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... other of your virtues you can be more sure of,' said she, rising, 'for if I was asked your worst failing, I'd say it was your irritability.' And with a stern frown, as though to confirm the judicial severity of her words, she nodded her head ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... with greater severity against disorders less premeditated, which broke out in London. A frivolous emulation in a match of wrestling, between the Londoners on the one hand, and the inhabitants of Westminster and those of the neighboring ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... doubtful. So early as February Gustavus suspected her, and ordered one of his officers to keep spies upon her track. As a result one of her servants was detected in treacherous proceedings and arrested. It appears, however, that she did not merit all the king's severity; for Brask in April wrote a friend, that the monarch was treating her with undue harshness. She was widely popular, and Gustavus would have been more wise had his hostility to her been less open. ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... Their might and their adventures, their domestic quarrels and certain doom, were sung in venerable lays, now collected in what we call the Elder, or Poetic Edda; simple majestic songs, whose mellow accents go straight to the heart through the ear, and whose simple severity never suffers us to mistake their meaning. But, besides these gods, there were heroes of the race whose fame and glory were in every man's memory, and whose mighty deeds were in every minstrel's mouth. Helgi, Sigmund, Sinfjoetli, Sigurd, Signy, Brynhildr, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... liberties. Nor was this the only motive; to political must be added religious enthusiasm. The opponents of episcopacy, under the self-given denomination of the godly, sought to distinguish themselves by the real or affected severity of their morals; they looked down with contempt on all others, as men of dissolute or irreligious habits; and many among them, in the belief that the reformed religion was in danger, deemed it a conscientious duty to risk their lives and fortunes in ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... post soon learned the elements of manoeuvre. Discipline was a lesson more difficult than drill. The military code, in all its rigour, could not be at once applied to a body of high-spirited and inexperienced civilians. Undue severity might have produced the very worst results. The observance, therefore, of those regulations which were not in themselves essential to efficiency or health was not insisted on. Lapses in military etiquette were suffered to ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... gravity of the condensed particles, ceases; for when the water at the surface no longer condenses, it will no longer descend, and leave a fresh surface exposed to the atmosphere: this surface alone, therefore, will be further exposed to its severity, and will soon be brought down to the freezing point, when it becomes ice, which being a bad conductor of heat, preserves the water beneath a long time from being affected ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... condition of the contents after death. The bladder, too, is paralyzed and fails to expel its contents. A free action of either bladder or bowels, or of both, is always a favorable symptom. The urine contains sugar, in quantity proportionate to the severity of the attack. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... musical hack-work I had had to do all the winter, wrought their beneficial effects on me, and I was inspired to write a small story entitled Ein glucklicher Abend. This was translated and published in French in the Gazette Musicale. Soon, however, our lack of funds began to make itself felt with a severity that was very discouraging. We felt this all the more keenly when my sister Cecilia and her husband, following our example, moved to a place quite close to us. Though not wealthy, they were fairly well-to-do. They came ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... there are two lamentable shadows, which are largely due to the severity with which most legislations track ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... of some of the religious newspapers. It gave me sincere pleasure to notice that the discussion, save in a few cases where natural coarseness had the upper hand, was conducted with a minimum of vituperation. The severity shown was hardly more than sufficient to demonstrate earnestness, while gentlemanly feeling was too predominant to permit that earnestness to contract itself to bigotry or to clothe itself in abuse. It was probably the memory of this discussion which caused another ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... standard was exacting both in quantity and quality. He never wanted to go to bed, and if any one would stay with him, would sit talking and drinking tea till four in the morning. Yet his instantaneous severity in reproving inaccuracies or refuting fallacies was so alarming that he sometimes reduced a whole company to the silence of fear. The last thing he wished, no doubt, but it is one of the tragedies of life that power will not be ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... exceeding that number of years. He further proposed to give, not only the power of inflicting either of these punishments, but also that of accumulating both whenever the circumstances of the case should be so atrocious as to deserve the greatest severity. He proposed, likewise, to vest a power in the crown, authorising it to treat all persons convicted of forgery in such a manner as would mark forgery as an offence of a blacker dye than any other which was not directed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... whole, we repeat our conviction that Arabella has been fortunate in her husband. To be sure, she is fretful, discontented, peevish, irritable, cross; but that is her normal condition. At times Hiram has treated her with severity, but never cruelty. He has borne quietly and with patience what would have set most husbands frantic; and has contented himself with remaining silent, when many would have been tempted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... bold glance. He always began by shoving me into a chair before I had time to open my mouth, gave me cordially a large cigar, and in excellent English would start to talk everlastingly about the phenomenal severity of the weather. It was impossible to threaten a man who, though he possessed the language perfectly, seemed incapable of understanding any phrase pronounced in a tone of remonstrance or discontent. As to quarrelling ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Angel's at that remarkable pace which the woodcuts in the hotel bar-room represented to credulous humanity as the usual rate of speed of that conveyance. At such times the habitual expression of disdainful reticence and lazy official severity which he wore on the box became intensified as the loungers gathered about the vehicle, and only the boldest ventured to address him. It was the Hon. Judge Beeswinger, Member of Assembly, who to-day presumed, perhaps rashly, on the strength of his ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his conversion. Three years are supposed to have passed between the close of the Piccolo Mondo Moderno and the opening of Il Santo, when Maironi is revealed under the name of Benedetto, purified of his sins by a life of prayer and emaciated by the severity of his mortifications, while Jeanne Dessalle, listless and miserable, is wandering around Europe with Noemi d'Arxel, sister to Maria Selva, hoping against hope for the ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... discover if they had any marriage ceremony, but they are very jealous of their wives, and visit with great severity any ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... him, nor, it is to be hoped, will ever reach again. He was the Napoleon of knavery, and established an uncontrolled empire over all the practitioners of crime. This was no light conquest; nor was it a government easily maintained. Resolution, severity, subtlety, were required for it; and these were qualities which Jonathan possessed in an extraordinary degree. The danger or difficulty of an exploit never appalled him. What his head conceived his hand executed. Professing to stand between the robber and the robbed, he himself plundered both. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of natural falls and risings of waters, with shady coverts, and flowery arbours, was approved by seven of the founders. There were as many of our sex who took the liberty to visit those mansions of intended severity; among others, a famous rake[5] of that time, who had the grave way to an excellence. He came in first; but upon seeing a servant coming towards him, with a design to tell him, this was no place for him or his companions, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... interrupted his plow. Much of his quarter-section remained unbroken. There were ditches to be dug in the marsh and young oaks to be uprooted from the forest, and he was obliged to toil with unremitting severity. There were times, of course, when field duties did not press, but never a day came when the necessity for twelve ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... English, mademoiselle?" he said, she thought with a touch of severity. He was silent for a while. Then: "Ah, none but the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... the work of education, of creation, of pity, comes the work of severity, of punishment, of destruction. The voice has been compared to a sword. Like it, it flames and punishes. A voice is Nathan rising up before the criminal king and calling down upon his head the avenging lightning of this word: "Thou art the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... their country, he should be: and that for his family expenses and others, he would labour however to retrench in many things convenient, and would have all others to do so too. He desired that nothing of old faults should be remembered, or severity for the same used to any in the country, it being his desire to have all forgot as well as forgiven. But, however, to use all care in suppressing any tumults, &c.; assuring them that the restless spirits of his and their adversaries ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... wars, the conquest of the Philippines has had many discouraging and some disgraceful features. The killing of ignorant men and women, the burning of houses, the unnecessary severity, will all be forgotten when the school teachers of America shall have done ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre respected less than the others forced his way in to see him and, turning the conversation upon Pierre's matrimonial affairs, by way of fraternal advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his wife was wrong and that he was neglecting one of the first rules of Freemasonry ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... welcoming 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 ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... of blessed memory, turned his words into Latin, in the First Edition of the Natural History, having some suspicion of the fidelity of an unknown author. I will, in the Second Edition, repeat them, and with just severity animadvert upon them: that they, into whose hands that work comes, may know it to be rather patched up of many distinct pieces; how much soever the author bears himself upon the specious title of Verulam. Unless, perhaps, I should particularly suggest in your ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... his heart was entirely untouched, a young girl of noble birth but utterly devoid of beauty, though possessed of a magnificent dowry. Their union was an extremely unhappy one, and many persons did not hesitate to accuse the Duke of treating with harshness and severity a young girl, who, having brought her husband five hundred thousand francs, could not understand why she should be refused a new dress when she urgently needed it. After twelve months of inconceivable unhappiness, she gave birth to a son who was baptized ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... earthquake of this year (Mallet ranks it third among European earthquakes in extent and severity), that nearly a week elapsed before any news of it reached the outer world. Without further loss of time, he applied for and obtained a grant of money from the Council of the Royal Society, and proceeded early in the following ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... of my first term in the first class we learned that we were to have a new teacher, and one who would rule with a rod of iron. Terrible stories of his Draconian severity were in circulation, and his first address gave us reason to fear the worst, for the tall man of forty in the professor's chair was very imposing in his appearance. His smoothly shaven upper lip and brown whiskers, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... The severity of the May of 1885 had at last abated, and the arrows on the vanes proved that they had not got fixed by rust, as many suspected, in a north-easterly direction, by turning to the south and west, so that those inhabitants of Great Britain who had not succumbed ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... to attacking meeting-houses and damaging the property of Dissenters.(1957) The arguments on both sides having at last been concluded, the Lords, by a narrow majority, pronounced Sacheverell guilty. They did not venture, however, to proceed against him with any greater severity than to order his sermons to be burnt at the Exchange by the common hangman, in the presence of the lord mayor and sheriffs, and to prohibit him from preaching for the next three years.(1958) Such a sentence was virtually a victory for the Tories and a defeat of the Whigs. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... was told with a modest blush which evinced the tenderness of his heart. On interrogation, he said "he had frequently heard that minister. On a certain morning he was disposed for a walk; thought in the severity of the winter season a trifle might be of service, as fuel was high; felt a kind of necessity to enclose the money in a letter; went to the house, found the family, delivered the paper and retired, but knew not the extreme necessity of the minister and his family, either at that ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... equitable. I will only remark here, that, as far as my observation extended, no one complained of Jackson, when it transpired that he had been resolutely in favor of refusing all quarter to Northern soldiers: a severity, not to say barbarism, which, be it right or wrong in itself, would undoubtedly have appeared to many atrocious enough, had it been the doctrine of any Northern general, and beside which the sternest measures of Butler look lax and conciliatory. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... too, that no one saw in him an ordinary murderer, that many pitied him under their breath, and that some excused him aloud. The very commission appointed by the grand-duke prolonged the affair as much as possible; for the severity of Sand's wounds had at first given rise to the belief that there would be no need of calling in the executioner, and the commission was well pleased that God should have undertaken the execution of the judgment. But these expectations were deceived: the skill of the doctor defeated, not indeed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... attractive contrast to the smooth youthfulness of her lovely skin. Her eyes were brown, a warm, dark brown, under long dark lashes and slightly arched dark eyebrows; and the tiny gleam of unmistakable fun that lurked in their quiet depths was again a contrast to the almost classical severity of finely cut features, straight nose, and delicately chiseled mouth, and cleanly rounded chin. And she was as graceful in her slender tallness as the girl she had admired—this woman of forty or more. It was ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... and Major-Gen. Richard Strachey), Thomas Love Peacock (author of "Headlong Hall"), Mr. Harcourt, and Mr. James Mill; the selection of the last-named being all the more creditable to them, because, in his "History of British India," he had animadverted with much severity on some parts of the Company's administration. Two years afterwards, in 1823, the historian's son, the illustrious subject of these brief memoirs, then a lad of seventeen, obtained a clerkship under his father. According to the ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... (Forbes, ii. 195, 197) represents the executions as more general, and as an act of severity, "chiefly in revenge of the great cruelty exercised by the Duke of Guise and his party at Rouen against the soldiers there, but specially ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... is so beneficial is, chiefly, that it acts as a most excellent mulch. It contains no more ammonia than rain-water does; and, were it not for the fact that it protects the soil against loss of heat, and produces other benefits of mulching, it would have no more advantageous effect. The severity of winters at the North is partially compensated by ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... Anderson!" "The Andersons" happened to be two maiden sisters, who kept a young ladies' school. It was some time before Mrs Grey herself could so far command her countenance as to frown with becoming severity at Fanny, who continued to giggle for some time, with intervals of convulsive stillness, at the idea that "the Andersons" could mean Mr and Mrs Anderson. In the midst of the struggle, Mr Grey entered. He laid a hand ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... opinions, he spoke of Cooper personally with great respect. But such was not the treatment he generally received. The language with which he was assailed was of the most insulting and grossly abusive kind. In those days it was called appalling severity. It reads now like very dreary and very vulgar billingsgate. One example will suffice. The "New York Mirror" was then supposed to be the leading literary paper in New York. It was nominally edited by Morris, Willis, and Fay, though ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... an unholy pleasure in finding a brother in the wrong—blazing abroad his failings; administering rebuke, not in gentle forbearance and kindly expostulation, but with harsh and impatient severity! How beautifully did Jesus unite intense sensibility to sin, along with tenderest compassion for the sinner, showing in this that "He knoweth our frame!" Many a scholar needs gentleness in chastisement. The reverse would crush a sensitive spirit, or drive it ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... government was relieved—but only temporarily—of a serious responsibility which they were anxious to avoid, at a time when they were between the two fires: of the people of Ontario, {395} anxious to punish the murderers with every severity, and of the French Canadians, the great majority of whom showed a lively sympathy for all those who had taken part in the rebellion of 1869. The influence of French Canada was also seen in the later action of the Mackenzie government in obtaining a full amnesty for all concerned in the rebellion ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... almost English austerity. The first growth of the Pointed style in England—the hard "early English" of Canterbury—is indeed the creation of William, a master reared in the architectural school of Sens; and the severity of his taste might seem to have acted as a restraining power on all the subsequent changes of manner in this place—changes in themselves for the most part towards luxuriance. In harmony with the atmosphere of its great church is the cleanly quiet of the ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... "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 ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... God brought upon Miriam was meant as a lesson of the severity with which God punishes slander. For Miriam spoke no evil of Moses in the presence of any one except her brother Aaron. She had moreover no evil motive, but a kindly intention, wishing only to induce Moses to resume his conjugal life. She did not even dare to rebuke Moses ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... being far in November, we decided to spend the winter there with about four hundred other employees of Russell, Majors, & Waddell, rather than attempt a return, which would have exposed us to many dangers and the severity of the rapidly approaching winter. During this period of hibernation, however, the larders of the commissary became so depleted that we were placed on one-quarter rations, and at length, as a final resort, the poor, dreadfully emaciated mules and oxen were killed ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... was sitting at her escritoire, making up her weekly accounts and entering in her poultry-book the untimely demise of the Leghorn cock. She was a lady of secret enthusiasms which sheltered themselves behind habits of the most business-like severity. Her books were models of order, and as she neatly inscribed the Leghorn cock's epitaph, "Killed by hounds," she could not repress the compensating thought that she had never seen Freddy's dark eyes and olive complexion look so well as when he had tried ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... cheese, for what purpose I was, and remain, unable to conjecture. Whenever their cries were still for a moment, the woman who carried the idol turned round, and lifted it in her arms with words which I was unable to understand, urging on the tormentors to ply their switches with more severity. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... at that poor Twemlow should decline to inflict a letter on his noble cousin (who has gout in the temper), inasmuch as his noble cousin, who allows him a small annuity on which he lives, takes it out of him, as the phrase goes, in extreme severity; putting him, when he visits at Snigsworthy Park, under a kind of martial law; ordaining that he shall hang his hat on a particular peg, sit on a particular chair, talk on particular subjects to particular people, and perform particular exercises: such as sounding ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... said Cecilia, "to speak with severity of one so nearly connected with you, yet, suffer me to ask, why should he be saved from it at all? and what is there he can at present do better? Has not he long been threatened with every evil that is now arrived? have we not both warned him, and have not the clamours of his creditors assailed ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... declamation of its clubs, the exaggerated sentiment, the universal suspicion, the suspension of every security for personal freedom, the arrests, the murders, the overthrow of the Church, the ruin of the Crown, were watched with an ever-growing severity by a nation whose chief instinct was one of order, whose bent was to practical politics, whose temper was sober and trustful, whose passionate love of personal liberty was only equalled by its passionate abhorrence of bloodshed in civil strife, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... 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 of Julia when ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... loose thing. Great waves had already swept overboard. The salt water was trickling and flowing over the deck. As if that were not enough, the heavens were driving down rain and snow. The rigging was howling, groaning, booming, and whistling in every pitch and key. That severity, that awfulness of the elements, that eternal rushing and roaring and seething of great masses of water, through which the steamer was staggering forward as if in mad, blind intoxication, that mournful, raging tumult kept up hour after hour. By noon ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... message comes with merciful rebuke. The prompt severity of David's judgment against the selfish sinner of the inimitable apologue may be a subtle indication of his troubled conscience, which fancies some atonement for his own sin in stern repression of that of others; for consciousness of evil may sometimes sting into harshness as well as soften to ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... soon knew that the General was making his peace with their Cousin Belle, who looked prettier than ever. It required several long walks before all was made right; but there was no disposition toward severity on either side. It was determined that the wedding was to take place very soon. The boys' father suggested, as an objection to an immediate wedding, that since the General was just half his usual size, it would be better to wait until he should ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... order to ascertain who inclines to the new doctrines? Has he not, to our astonishment, named to us this or that individual residing in our very neighbourhood, who, without its being known, was obnoxious to the charge of heresy? Does he not enjoin harshness and severity? and am I to be lenient? Am I to recommend for his adoption measures of indulgence and toleration? Should I not thus lose all credit with him, and ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... from commonplace, let alone the session of such a church as mine. Kirk sessions are the bloom of Scottish character in particular and the crown and glory of mankind in general. Piety, sobriety, severity, these are the three outstanding graces which they illustrate supremely; but interlocked with these are many other gifts and virtues in ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... fortune, who assume haggard looks, and affect the patriot that the foreigner may buy you up, or the government give you a place; you of the indulgent faction, who seek to save the guilty; you of the foreign faction, who direct severity against the defenders of the people. Measures are already taken to secure the guilty; they are hemmed in on all sides. Let us return thanks to the genius of the French people, that liberty has triumphed over one of the most dangerous ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... could have been less durable. Within fifty years it had fallen into decay. And now we have to turn back to Leonardo's own studies, above all to one drawing of the central head at the Brera, which, in a union of tenderness and severity in the face-lines, reminds one of the monumental work of Mino da Fiesole, to trace it ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... proceeded with cutting severity, "has taken the house I speak of. The other is watching over my personal safety at ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... of various sorts, and a force of missionaries whose personal virtues have won for them unstinted eulogy even from unfriendly sources—men the ardor of whose zeal was rigorously controlled by a more than martial severity of religious discipline. But it would be uncandid in us to refuse attention to those grave charges against the society brought by Catholic authorities and Catholic orders, and so enforced as, after long and acrimonious controversy, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... journals were enabled to place before their readers. The progress of the Peninsular campaign was very imperfectly chronicled; it will, therefore, be easily imagined what interest was attached to certain letters that appeared in the Morning Chronicle which criticised with much severity, and frequently with considerable injustice, the military movements of ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... not well, Unders, to act without letting us know," he said with grave severity. "We must now prepare to meet the men of Poloe, whether they come as friends or foes. Let the young men arm. I go to consult with ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... no question that the practice of vivisection HARDENS THE SENSIBILITY OF THE OPERATOR, and begets indifference to the infliction of pain, as well as great carelessness in judging of its severity. ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... to the ships on the home stations, but it never became serious at any point, and a display of timely severity soon brought matters back to their usual condition of discipline ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... downwards every officer was the same in thought and deed, so we were all as happy as sand-boys. It was then that I began to realise a fact of which before I had only a notion—namely, that discipline can be maintained without undue severity, to say nothing of cruelty, and that service in the navy could be made a pleasure as well as a duty to ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... parent will not so mistake my meaning. If you ever met the man or the woman, whose eyes have suddenly filled when a little child has crept trustingly to its mother's breast, you may have seen one in whose childhood's home 'dignity' and 'severity' stood where love and pity should have been. Too much indulgence has ruined thousands of children; too much ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... disagreement on almost every point. Even now, when everything depended on a strict cohesion, Morten could never be trusted to behave with severity. "Remember, they aren't of age yet," he would say continually. And it could not be gainsaid that there were many to whom the conflict was unintelligible—they understood nothing of it, although otherwise they were thoughtful and intelligent enough. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... practise their villainy on father, and, instead of beseeching them, weeping, or anything of the sort, father got angry and began to reprove them with the greatest severity. ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the Virgin's delicacy; Haughty Juno's unrelenting hate; and collective nouns, as Women's passions; the rabble's insolence; the multitude's folly: in all these cases it is apparent that his cannot be understood. We say likewise the foundation's strength; the diamond's lustre; the winter's severity: but in these cases his may be understood, he and his having formerly been applied to neuters in the place now supplied by it ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... This cruel severity was more than any people could long endure. It led to a revolution in Rome. In the year 495 B.C., fifteen years after the Tarquins had been expelled, a poor debtor, who had fought valiantly in the wars, broke from his prison, and—with his clothes in tatters and chains clanking ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... zest, We have not lost him all; he is not gone To the dumb herd of them that wholly die; The beauty of his better self lives on In minds he touched with fire, in many an eye He trained to Truth's exact severity; He was a Teacher: why be grieved for him Whose living word still stimulates the air? 530 In endless file shall loving scholars come The glow of his transmitted touch to share, And trace his features with an eye less ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... prostration, and promises which he fully intended to keep. Kyu[u]bei reverentially accepted the mirror, the goods, the money. Taking his leave of Yotsuya—a long one he feared—with sighs he set out for Kanda. Here he made his report. Said the old townsman with severity—"The will of the parent is not to be disobeyed. It is the duty of this Kyu[u]bei to see to its performance." He had O'Naka more in mind than the master of Tamiya. O'Mino might yet be the goose to lay golden eggs. A goose of such plumage! ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... in with unusual severity some weeks sooner than usual, so that from the beginning of November to the middle of April the snow never entirely left the ground. The lake was soon covered with ice, and by the month of December it was one compact, solid ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... cannon, in a flotilla of sixty bateaux and three hundred canoes. Trent had planted himself in Pittsburgh on February 17, 1754, a date important because it marks the first permanent white settlement there. But his work had been retarded alike by the small number of his men and the severity of the winter; and when Contrecoeur arrived in April, the young subaltern who commanded in Trent's absence surrendered the unfinished works, and was permitted to march away with his thirty-three men. The French completed the fort and named it Duquesne, in honor ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... turn 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
... naturally or artificially perfect, and her eyes, which were of the purest blue, had, owing to their near-sightedness, a certain pinched and scrutinizing look. This look, which was without the slightest touch of severity, indicating merely a lively degree of interest, was further emphasized by three small perpendicular wrinkles, which deepened and again relaxed according to the varying intensity of observation she bestowed upon the object which for the ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 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
... excellence stand in his way. He is too versatile for a professional man, not dull enough for a political drudge, too gay to be happy, too thoughtless to be rich. He wants the enthusiasm of the poet, the severity of the prose-writer, and the application of the man of business. Talent differs from genius as voluntary differs from involuntary power. Ingenuity is genius in trifles; greatness is genius in undertakings of much pith and moment. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... he had recently been placed, through his 'killing off'; and from which danger he was alone saved by his anonymous garb. He said he had found it necessary in reviewing a book, written by a native of the emerald isle, to treat it with rather unwonted severity, such as it richly deserved. A few days after the critique had appeared, he happened to call on a literary friend, in one of the inns of court. They were conversing on this work, and the incompetence of the writer, when the author, a gigantic Irishman ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... very sincere, for she greatly admired her grandmother, and in spite of her formality, and even severity, Marjorie had a good deal of affection ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... the number, variety and severity of the blows rained on you in your two fights were so great that you were almost beaten to death. You had no bones broken, but the injury to your muscles and ligaments was sufficient to kill a man only ordinarily strong, while the blows affecting your kidneys, liver ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... much effort has been made to show that one would have led to another. Much has been said also, to show that the plagues, at least most of them, were events that were common in Egypt and that they were remarkable only for their severity. Such attempts to explain away the miraculous element are based upon the wrong view of a miracle. The very occurrence in response to the word of Moses and at such time as to each time meet a particular condition, or to make a certain ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... in the New Connexion, on a matter of business. As soon as the person saw me, he began to abuse me in a very extravagant manner. I had always had a favorable opinion of the man, and I quietly answered, "I can excuse your severity; for you no doubt are acting conscientiously." "That is more than I believe you are doing," he ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the folly of the ministers. It was, the opposition urged, cruel and indiscriminate in its scope; it excited our seamen to "promiscuous rapine," and provided that American sailors who were taken prisoners might be compelled to serve in the British navy against their own people. Such severity, they said, would drive the Americans to a permanent separation and would eventually land us in a war with European powers. On the other hand it was reasonably maintained that, as the Americans were ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... thought John Brown—"The Hero of Harper's Ferry"—a hot-headed, blood-thirsty brigand; they animadverted against the precipitancy of his measures, and the severity of his invectives; said that he was lacking in courage and deficient in judgment; that he retarded rather than accelerated the cause he championed. But this was the verdict of other times, not the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... of many, and will not drink out of anything else; and some act in the same way with regard to oil-flasks and scrapers,[701] being content with only one out of all, and so, if such an article is broken or lost, they are very much put out about it, and punish with severity. He then that is prone to anger should not use rare and dainty things, such as choice cups and seals and precious stones: for if they are lost they put a man beside himself much more than the loss of ordinary and easily got things would do. And so when Nero had got an eight-cornered ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... without express permission; but books, paint boxes, &c., were freely allowed, and each member of the family had a special shelf on which to keep his or her particular possessions. Beatrice had many excellent rules, and though in the enforcement of these she was strict to the verge of severity, in the main she was just, and had her father's full sanction ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... half-vexed and half-relieved, and walked to the door. Her mother watched her wistfully. It was in her mind to call her back, fold her in her arms, and appeal for sympathy. But the severity of the child's pose was too suggestive of the Vicar's unbending attitude towards feminine weakness, and she restrained the impulse, knowing that she would appeal in vain. There was infinitely more comfort to be found in the ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... actually getting them, he was also capable of impressing upon those about him that Clearchus must be obeyed; and that he brought about by the very hardness of his nature. With a scowling expression and a harshly-grating voice, he chastised with severity, and at times with such fury, that he was sorry afterwards himself for what he had done. Yet it was not without purpose that he applied the whip; he had a theory that there was no good to be got out of an unchastened army. A saying of his is recorded to the effect that the soldier who is to mount ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... hand, all things considered, and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the question and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equally impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, rifle in hand, before a fire he never for a single moment allowed to die down. The severity of the haunted vigil marked his soul for life; but it was successfully accomplished; and with the very first signs of dawn he set forth upon the long return journey to the home camp to get help. As before, he left a written note to explain his absence, and ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... Montagu brought home the custom of inoculation from Turkey (a perilous practice many deem it, and only a useless rushing into the jaws of danger), I think the severity of the small-pox, that dreadful scourge of the world, has somewhat been abated in our part of it; and remember in my time hundreds of the young and beautiful who have been carried to the grave, or have only risen from their pillows ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... "acqua alle funi". He was immediately arrested by the Swiss guards, as we see him represented in the small fresco in the Vatican library, and was conducted before the Pontiff. Sixtus shewed that his severity was based on justice; for instead of punishing the transgressor of his orders, he offered him the choice of his own reward. They who have observed the great abundance of palms which grow in the neighbourhood of S. Remo, on the coast between Nice and Genoa, will not be surprised ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... saith he, "and of lesser severity than faulting thee. But supposing the world lay in thine hands to set right, and even that thou hadst the power thereto, how long time dost think ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... but don't git arrested." As she sat down by the side of Daphne she added: "I'm always in mortal fear of being arrested, 'cause I like to go fast. I don't care about the arrested part, but it'd git my name in the papers again and then your father'd make me one of his 'severity' visits, and I don't seem never to git used to them. When James tells me your father is waitin' for me it makes me feel jest like I used to when I done somethin' wrong and was called into the parlor, where I always got my scoldings, 'cause mother ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... in those days were extremely severe, and death was the penalty of those caught plundering. The extreme severity of the laws, however, operated in favour of its breakers, since the sympathy of the people who had little to lose was with them, and unless caught red-handed in the act they could generally escape, since none save those who had themselves been robbed would say aught that would ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... latter. Moreover, in a sparse backwoods settlement, where the presence of a strong, vigorous fighter was a source of safety to the whole community, it was impossible to expect that he would be punished with severity for offences which, in their hearts, his fellow townsmen could not help regarding as in some sort a revenge for the injuries they had themselves suffered. Every quiet, peaceable settler had either himself been grievously ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... touch of severity, permitted Brett to ring, and coldly agreed with Helen's declaration that she could not think of touching any species of refreshment at ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... suspicious characters. As the conversation of such women might interrupt, and disturb that peace and tranquillity of mind, in which I found my daughter, I told the Prieure my sentiments on that subject, not only with freedom, but with some degree of severity; and endeavoured to convince her, how very unwarrantably, if not irreligiously she acted. An abandoned, or vicious woman, may paint the pleasures of this world in such gaudy colours, to a poor innocent Nun, so as to induce her to forget, or become less attentive to the professions she has ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... on the severity of his requirements of woman, and saw his own image reflected in the polish of his ideal; and now a fear whose presence he would not acknowledge began to gnaw at his heart, a vague suggestion's horrid image, to which he would yield no space, to flit ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the Old Court, and of Lily, waiting for her swan's nest among the reeds, till her stately warrior came, and made her day dreams earnest in a way that falls to the lot of few. I don't think his severity ever dismayed her for a moment, there was always ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... There was a stern severity in the way he said this, which for a moment or two actually overpowered me. It was quite clear that he looked for some positive fact—some direct piece of information on which he might implicitly rely; and here was I now with nothing save the gossip ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... greater severity, say, that the gifts which have been bestowed upon me from above, ought not to be wasted upon these insignificant objects, nor lavished in a vain display of learning on the commendation of princes, who, from their ignorance and want of liberality, have neither taste to appreciate, ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... America had to undergo as complete a transition as ever fell to the lot of man, without the least chance to undergo an acclimatising process. They were brought from the hottest part of the earth to the region where the winter's cold is almost of arctic severity; from an exceedingly humid to a very dry air. They came to service under alien taskmasters, strange to them in speech and in purpose. They had to betake themselves to unaccustomed food, and to clothing ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... bow, and he now proceeded to depart, severity in his face and an implacable resolution in his eye. But some impulse made him stop; some secret call from deeply hidden, possibly unrecognised, affections gave him ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... The very curves demonstrate the theorem that a curve is made up of little straight lines, the arches are stiff and unbending, and wherever a public building demands an ornament, a fir-shaped cone of straight lines rises in stoic severity. In vain one seeks for a refuge from Euclid—for an odd turning or a crooked by-way. To match the straight-ness of their streets and the granite of their structures the Aberdonians are hard-headed, close-fisted, and logical (there is a proverb that no Jew can settle among ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... means well-pleased expression. In the paper he was reading, wet from the press, was an account of a steeplechase in which his brother's name had largely figured. He had not won the race, nor distinguished himself in any way, except by the number and severity of his falls, and the fact that he had killed his horse; but the Brockenham Star was, to a large extent, the property of the firm of big brewers, and had therefore made the most of the young ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... assaulted priestcraft with not undeserved severity; we must always remember what he saw around him. In his Henriade (1725), perhaps almost unintentionally, he had glorified Henry IV at the expense of the Great Monarch. After his stay in England we have his Brutus (1730), an attack on kingcraft, and his Zaire (1732), a Parisian Othello, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... to the man, George, and see if he can change it." He couldn't resist a slight masculine touch of severity at her incapacity. "I wish you'd tend to these things at the time, Clytie, or let me know about them." He took the money when George returned. "Here's your dollar now, Mary—don't lose it again!—and your five, George. You might as well take another ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting
... air of camaraderie, of blunt good-nature. Her conspicuous walk was a swaggering stride, while in dress she affected the masculine severity of some professional women. Her hair was the dull red that is nearly brown and she wore it coiled in trying simplicity at the back of her head. Her handsome eyes were the hazel that is alternately brown and green and gray, sometimes an odd mixture of all three. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... The classical severity of the No is relieved by the introduction between the pieces of light farces called Kiyogen. The whole entertainment having a religious intention, the Kiyogen stand to the No in the same relation as the small shrines to the main temple; they, too, are played ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... to examine too minutely into the whole of this extraordinary passage of the Abbe, lest I should appear to treat it with severity; otherwise I could shew, that not a single declaration is justly founded; for instance, the reviving an obsolete act of the reign of Henry the Eighth, and fitting it to the Americans, by authority of which they were to be seized and brought from America to England, and there imprisoned and tried ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... not censure your father; but permit me to say, that after such treatment, you are absolved from implicit obedience to his rigorous, cruel, and stern commands.—It will therefore be considered a duty you owe to your preservation, if you suffer me to remove you from the tyrannical severity with ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... unforgiving—eminently an unchristian—spirit: but vengeance, sure and swift, was the only thing which could impress the hostile savage. And, if example, in a matter of this sort, could be availing, for their severity to the Indians, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... day, magnificently dressed, and accompanied by many attendants. Cato, who was dressed in the plainest and most simple manner, and whose apartment was furnished in a style corresponding with the severity of his character, did not even rise when the king entered the room. He simply pointed with his hand, and bade ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... the French Republic was threatened by the profound agitation following this sentence, in which the entire civilized world joined; the impression prevailing that a punishment of almost unparalleled severity was being inflicted upon a man whose guilt had ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... on helping Anna with her school, and to liven up the daily routine of a rather dull existence she began to write thrilling plays, which she always read to Anna, who criticized and helped revise them with sisterly severity. The plays were acted by a group of the girls' friends, with Anna and Louisa usually taking the principal parts. From creating these wonderful melodramas, which always won loud applause from an enthusiastic audience, and because of ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... such beauty in the landscape, in the pure atmosphere, in the bright green of the grass, in the masses of trees and flowers—even in single figures which stand out from the four principal groups—that we no longer perceive either hardness or severity in ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies |
