Severe

Famous quotes containing the word severe:

“The Harmless Torturers. In the Bad Old Days, each torturer inflicted severe pain on one victim. Things have now changed. Each of the thousand torturers presses a button, thereby turning the switch once on each of the thousand instruments. The victims suffer the same severe pain. But none of the torturers makes any victim’s pain perceptibly worse.”
—Derek Parfit (b. 1943)

“Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding-places in a voluminous writer.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)

“from deep in the dark head
his smile glowing
outward into the
room’s severe twilight,
he lies....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)