Severe Quotes - Page 22

• Are soft-hearted people handicapped in business? You have heard a businessman say of someone else, He's all right, but he's too soft-hearted.... To be soft-hearted may be handicapping, in a sense. But on the whole, a soft heart is to be preferred to a hard heart. Hard-hearted, severe, dominating giants sometimes manage to get further and to amass more money. But they get less genuine joy out of life.... It is the hard-boiled employer, not the soft-hearted species, that incites most of our strikes and does most to endanger the harmonious progress of democracy.

  B. C. Forbes

  Heart, People, Joy

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• This is a very grave matter, punishable by...well, I do not exactly know what, but something rather severe, I should imagine.

  Susanna Clarke

  Matter, Imagine, Should

  Susanna Clarke (2009). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.444, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Eagleton has spent his life inside two mental boxes, Catholicism and Marxism, of both of which he is a severe internal critic—that is, he frequently kicks and scratches at the inside of the boxes, but does not leave them. Neither are ideologies that loosen their grip easily, and people who need the security of adherence to a big dominating ideology, however much they kick and scratch but without daring to leave go, hold on to it every bit as tightly as it holds onto them. The result is of course strangulation, but alas not mutual strangulation: the ideology always wins.

  A.C. Grayling

  Winning, Two, People

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• Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.

  Edmund Burke

  Adversity, Skills, Challenges

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• charity is a calm, severe duty; it must be intellectual, to be advantageous. It is a strange mistake that it should ever be considered a merit; its fulfillment is only what we owe to each other, and is a debt never paid to its full extent.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Mistake, Compassion, Intellectual

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1857). “The Complete Works of L. E. Landon ...”

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• A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity.... No inspiration is too noble for it; no amountof hard work is too severe for it.

  Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

  Art, Inspiration, Hard Work

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• Never disregard what your enemies say. They may be severe, they may be prejudiced, they may be determined to see only in one direction, but still in that direction see clearly. They do not speak all the truth, but they generally speak the truth from one point of view; so far as that goes, attend to them.

  Benjamin Haydon

  One Direction, Views, Enemy

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• At sixty I look back on a life of deep disappointments, of withered hopes, of unlooked for suffering, of severe discipline.

  Sarah Moore Grimke

  Hope, Disappointment, Discipline

  Letter to Harriot Hunt (1853), as quoted in "The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Woman's [sic] Rights and Abolition" by Gerda Lerner, Editorial Oxford University Press, (p. 241), 1998.

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• Anger is a choice, as well as a habit. It is a learned reaction to frustration, in which you behave in ways that you would rather not. In fact, severe anger is a form of insanity. You are insane whenever you are not in control of your behavior. Therefore, when you are angry and out of control, you are temporarily insane.

  Wayne Dyer

  Anger, Frustration, Choices

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• The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Common Sense, Quality, Levels

  Charles Sanders Peirce, Nathan Houser, Christian J.W. J. W. Kloesel (1992). “The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)”, p.113, Indiana University Press

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• Invention is an Heroic thing, and plac'd above the reach of a low, and vulgar Genius. It requires an active, a bold, a nimble, a restless mind: a thousand difficulties must be contemn'd with which a mean heart would be broken: many attempts must be made to no purpose: much Treasure must sometimes be scatter'd without any return: much violence, and vigour of thoughts must attend it: some irregularities, and excesses must be granted it, that would hardly be pardon'd by the severe Rules of Prudence.

  Thomas Sprat

  Mean, Heart, Science

  Thomas Sprat (1722). “The History of the Royal Society of London: For the Improving of Natural Knowledge”, p.392

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• What a severe yet master artist old Winter is... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel.

  John Burroughs

  Winter, Artist, Canvas

  John Burroughs, Farida Anna Wiley (1997). “John Burroughs' America: Selections from the Writings of the Naturalist”, p.124, Courier Corporation

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• The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.

  William Styron

  Pain, Anguish, Unimaginable

  William Styron (1990). “Darkness visible: a memoir of madness”, Random House Incorporated

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• We all pretend for a while or for a lifetime. But pretending is not living...I believe that God meant for life to take our breath away, sometimes because of the sheer joy of it all and sometimes because of the severe pain. To choose living over pretending means that we will know both.

  Angela Thomas

  Pain, Believe, Mean

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• In any nation, the hypocrites do not become apparent except during times of fitnah (severe tests and hardships).

  Yasmin Mogahed

  Fake People, Islamic, Hypocrite

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• Guard units in the U.S. are suffering severe equipment shortages which will affect their ability to respond to emergencies in their home States, such as Katrina

  Ike Skelton

  Home, Suffering, Emergencies

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• All who in this world render true service to God or man receive a preparatory training in the school of sorrow. The weightier the trust and the higher the service, the closer is the test and the more severe the discipline.

  Ellen G. White

  School, Men, Discipline

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• To you who answered the call of your country and served in its Armed Forces to bring about the total defeat of the enemy, I extend the heartfelt thanks of a grateful Nation. As one of the Nation's finest, you undertook the most severe task one can be called upon to perform. Because you demonstrated the fortitude, resourcefulness and calm judgment necessary to carry out that task, we now look to you for leadership and example to further exalting our country in peace.

  Harry S. Truman

  Country, Grateful, Heart

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• Industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems

  Cyril Connolly

  Stress, Environmental, Entering

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• Is it me? Is it like I have a beacon that only dogs and men with severe emotional problems can hear?

  Lisa Kudrow

  Funny, Dog, Men

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• Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

  George Eliot

  Philosophy, Women, Facts

  'Middlemarch' (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 11

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• In Italy, above all in view of the next general election, political parties, movements and new politicians continue to proliferate, naturally all inspired by the logic of the most severe, rigorous and atavistic stupidity.

  William C. Brown

  Party, Views, Stupidity

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• Protectionism is a very real danger. It is understandable that in times of a severe downturn protectionist pressures mount but the lessons of history are clear. If we give in to protectionist pressures, we will only send the world into a downward spiral.

  Manmohan Singh

  Real, Giving, World

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• In hard times of severe crisis if you want to create new jobs, I recommend you to start killing some people. It's the old "topos" of war in time of peace.

  William C. Brown

  Jobs, War, Hard Times

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• When the word 'nostalgia' was coined in the 18th century, it was used to describe a pathology - not so much a sense of lost time, but a severe homesickness.

  Nicole Krauss

  Nostalgia, Used, Lost

  "Have a heart". Interview With Gaby Wood, www.theguardian.com. May 14, 2005.

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