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S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Severity

Imperiousness and severity is but an ill way of treating men who have reason of their own to guide them.

Severity carried to the highest pitch breaks the mind; and then in the place of a disorderly young fellow you have a low-spirited moped creature.

Command and force may often create, but can never cure, an aversion; and whatever any one is brought to by compulsion, he will leave as soon as he can.

Recollect what disorder hasty or imperious words from parents or teachers have caused in his thoughts.

Great severities do often work an effect quite contrary to that which was intended; and many times those who were bred up in a very severe school hate learning ever after for the sake of the cruelty that was used to force it upon them. So likewise an endeavour to bring children to piety and goodness by unreasonable strictness and rigour does often beget in them a lasting disgust and prejudice against religion, and teacheth them to hate virtue at the same time that they teach them to know it.

John Tillotson: Sermons.