Lenient Quotes

With a few exceptions, the critics of children's books are remarkably lenient souls ... Most of us assume there is something goodin every child; the critics go from this to assume there is something good in every book written for a child. It is not a sound theory. ~ Katharine Sergeant Angell White

He knew very well that his memory detested him, that it did nothing but slander him; therefore he tried not to believe it and to be more lenient toward his own life. But that didn't help: he took no pleasure in looking back, and he did it as seldom as possible. ~ Milan Kundera

I came to the conclusion that if a woman of the cloth could be so sure she was going to heave despite being such a massive asshole, God must be more lenient than I'd been led to believe. ~ Jessica Knoll

When I'm not the Tiger Mom, I'm a professor at Yale Law School, and if one thing is clear to me from years of teaching, it's that there are many ways to produce fabulous kids. I have amazing students; some of them have strict parents, others have lenient parents, and many come from family situations that defy easy description. ~ Amy Chua

My own family basically did what the American justice system does: I was given more lenient treatment than the black kids. ~ Trevor Noah

If we define optimism broadly as the tendency to maintain a positive outlook, then realistic optimism is the tendency to maintain a positive outlook within the constraints of the available "measurable phenomena situated in the physical and social world" (DeGrandpre, 2000, p. 733). With respect to fuzzy meaning, realistic optimism involves enhancing and focusing on the favorable aspects of our experiences. Examples include being lenient in our evaluation of past events, actively appreciating the positive aspects of our current situation, and routinely emphasizing possible opportunities for the future. With respect to fuzzy knowledge, realistic optimism involves hoping, aspiring, and searching for positive experiences while acknowledging what we do not know and accepting what we cannot know. ~ Sandra L. Schneider

Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders. ~ Thomas Sowell

The lawgiver ought to be gentle, lenient and humane. The lawgiver ought to be a skilled architect who raises his building on the foundation of self-love, and the interest of all ought to be the product of the interests of each. ~ Cesare Beccaria

I'm a stranger in my own home! The tragedy of our whole country is the same: we are all alienated, strangers in our own land. It's tragic. The odd thing is that we have never got used to it. Yet, woe betide us we do. The irony is that, if you really want to be seen as a good Iranian, and especially if you aspire to high office in this country, you first have to be a foreigner, someone who wasn't born here at all. On the other hand, if you were born and bred here and try to remain true to yourself, your country and your people, then alienation is the most lenient punishment you expect. ~ Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

Whose lenient sorrows find relief, whose joys are chastened by their grief. ~ Walter Scott

It's not hard, then, to see how the simple message of a Jewish carpenter in Nazareth became so popular. Jesus didn't talk much about justice. He talked about mercy. He talked about forgiveness. As his followers see it, Jesus is the Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals, Universal Circuit. And he's a pretty lenient jurist. ~ Jonathan V. Last

I loved it, but social reality impeded. Now I wander in here at 9 in the morning or so, and come back for a while in the afternoon. I am a very lenient boss. ~ Donald E. Westlake

In Warsaw, you also remember that you are in a Communist-controlled country, though by all accounts the control is now humane and lenient, judged by what it was and what it is in other satellite countries. Still you do hear the incompetent echo in the tapped hotel telephone, you do notice that people look over their shoulders when talking in restaurants - the secret police are dormant but not forgotten; you feel in your bones, as you would a threatening change in the weather, every change in Russian mood or action. This is not and air we have ever breathed; I doubt if we would be strong enough to resist such a climate and stay as healthy in spirit as the Poles. ~ Martha Gellhorn

The verdict of this court is that the accused are guilty of witchcraft. The maximum penalty the law allows is to be burned to death.However, in view of your previous good background I am disposed to be lenient. I therefore sentence you to be burned alive. ~ Richard Curtis

Rarely has a diplomatic document so missed its objective as the Treaty of Versailles. Too punitive for conciliation, too lenient to keep Germany from recovering, the Treaty of Versailles condemned the exhausted democracies to constant vigilance against an irreconcilable and revanchist Germany as well as a revolutionary Soviet Union. ~ Henry Kissinger

Historians are lenient to those who succeed and stern to those who fail; in this, and this alone, they display strong political sense. ~ J. Christopher Herold

By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was; indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell. ~ Maya Angelou

But my mother would tell me that people are flawed and I should be lenient with them. ~ Veronica Roth

They say tedium is a sickness that afflicts the inert, or only attacks those who have nothing to do. However, this affliction of the soul is subtles than that: it attacks those with a predisposition towards it and is less lenient on those who work or pretend to work (which comes to the same thing anyway) than on the truely inert. ~ Pessoa, Fernando

I have from time to time been a double A or triple A personality. I'm not anymore. I'm more lenient on myself. ~ Giancarlo Esposito

The priest set the flask down on the step and folded his hands. "For the sin of lust you have confessed, mon fils," he said in an easy tone, "you are contrite, n'est-ce-pas?"
Vitor closed his eyes and saw hers before him, sparkling like stars. "Yes."
"For your penance I give you a novena to our Blessed Mother and the task of seeing your brother well matched to a woman who will bring him to heel."
"Only that?" Vitor lifted a brow. "Father, you are too lenient."
The priest drew a cross in the air above his brow. "Ego te absolve a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti."
"Amen."

-Denis & Vitor ~ Katharine Ashe

The law may be lenient, but He is always listening."
"Glad to hear God's a fan. ~ Dorian Zari

Mines are like us in a way: If the ruler keeps his boots very tight on our heads we will keep silent but if he becomes a little lenient we would repel. We would explode. ~ Abdullah Abu Snaineh

It is easy to be lenient at other people's expense, and call it generosity of mind. ~ Anthony Daniels

There are some sins which are more justly to be denominated surprises than infidelities. To such the world should be lenient, as, doubtless, Heaven is forgiving. ~ Jean Baptiste Massillon

To win the good-will of the people thou governest there are two things, among others, that thou must do; one is to be civil to all (this, however, I told thee before), and the other to take care that food be abundant, for there is nothing that vexes the heart of the poor more than hunger and high prices. Make not many proclamations; but those thou makest take care that they be good ones, and above all that they be observed and carried out; for proclamations that are not observed are the same as if they did not exist; nay, they encourage the idea that the prince who had the wisdom and authority to make them had not the power to enforce them; and laws that threaten and are not enforced come to be like the log, the king of the frogs, that frightened them at first, but that in time they despised and mounted upon. Be a father to virtue and a stepfather to vice. Be not always strict, nor yet always lenient, but observe a mean between these two extremes, for in that is the aim of wisdom. Visit the gaols, the slaughter-houses, and the market-places; for the presence of the governor is of great importance in such places; it comforts the prisoners who are in hopes of a speedy release, it is the bugbear of the butchers who have then to give just weight, and it is the terror of the market-women for the same reason. Let it not be seen that thou art (even if perchance thou art, which I do not believe) covetous, a follower of women, or a glutton; for when the people and those that have deal ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Most of the American skyjackers who fled abroad eventually elected to return to the United States, having tired of life on the lam. These homecomings typically involved prearranged surrenders to the FBI, in the hopes of earning lenient sentences. ~ Brendan I. Koerner

Past and Present have different customs; new and old adopt different measures. To try to use the ways of a generous and lenient government to rule the people of a critical age is like trying to drive a runaway horse without using reins or whip. ~ Han Fei

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them. ~ Narendra Modi

When I started at XCRF in 1960, Mexico was the most lenient country in the world when it came to radio. ~ Wolfman Jack

I was prepared to be lenient when it was my own safety at stake but if he hurts my dog, I will kill him. ~ Sharon Bolton

In the "Personal Story" segment tonight, the state of Oregon is extremely liberal in its state government and judicial system.That state has lenient drug laws, including wide access to medical marijuana. ~ Bill O'Reilly

In this way, the Hearsts became the symbol of the overly lenient parents of the era and a counterpoint to the Republican administration's voice of discipline and order. ~ Jeffrey Toobin

It is considered in England and the United States that the Government of South Africa is altogether too harsh with its native peoples. It is sadly humorous to notice that the native in South Africa, however, holds an exactly reverse opinion and the fault he finds with the South African Government is that it is far too lenient in its administration of laws throughout the native populace. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others. ~ Francois Fenelon

The camera can be lenient; it is can also expert at being cruel. But its cruelty only produces another kind of beauty, according to the surrealist preferences which rule photographic taste. ~ Susan Sontag

I'm pretty lenient with myself about time - if I feel like taking photographs of small things inside ice cubes or making animal collages, I just do it. When I want to write, I write. It's all part of the same thing for me. ~ Matthea Harvey

Kingsley Amis was a lenient father. His paternal style, in the early years, can best be described as amiably minimalist - in other words, my mother did it all. ~ Martin Amis

For example, parents who talk a lot to their children have kids with better language skills, parents who spank have children who grow up to be violent, parents who are neither too authoritarian or too lenient have children who are well-adjusted, and so on. ~ Steven Pinker

If you are lenient with criminals, crime will rise.
If you oppress the masses,
they will rise up against you.
If you are just and kind,
even your enemies will respect you.
To rule over your nation righteously is better
than to rule over a hundred nations with an iron fist. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

All too many Muslims fail to grasp Islam, which teaches one to be lenient towards others and to understand their value systems, knowing that these are tolerated by Islam as a religion. ~ Abdurrahman Wahid

Because a man is placed in charge of a club does not make it necessary for him to be a taskmaster or a tyrant. In my opinion, he ought to be as lenient with his club as circumstances allow, and the less he interferes with the personal liberties of the men, the better. ~ Joe Tinker

I balked. Another vampire? I guess it made sense; the states of the Pacific Northwest were known for their lenient monster laws. ~ The Harvard Lampoon

When you devalue ethics and morals by proclaiming that our attitude toward them should be casual or lenient, you can't be surprised by a rising generation who then behaves disrespectfully, treating life, people, and choices as if they possess little value or worth. For whether or not that was the intention, society has taught them to believe thusly. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

After all, a district judge who gives harsh sentences to Yankees fans and lenient sentences to Red Sox fans would not be acting reasonably even if her procedural rulings were impeccable. ~ John Paul Stevens

When I said that Mercy stood Within the borders of the wood, I meant the lenient beast with claws And bloody swift-dispatching jaws. - LAWRENCE SPINGARN ~ Thomas Harris

War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

It is a great shame for anyone to listen to the accusation that Islam is a lie and that Muhammad was a fabricator and a deceiver. We saw that he remained steadfast upon his principles, with firm determination; kind and generous, compassionate, pious, virtuous, with real manhood, hardworking and sincere. Besides all these qualities, he was lenient with others, tolerant, kind, cheerful and praiseworthy and perhaps he would joke and tease his companions. He was just, truthful, smart, pure, magnanimous and present-minded; his face was radiant as if he had lights within him to illuminate the darkest of nights; he was a great man by nature who was not educated in a school nor nurtured by a teacher as he was not in need of any of this. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. The lenient shepherd may find his flock unruly, definant. I cannot afford to be lenient. ~ Joanne Harris

My parents were lenient. My mother believed God was another word for nature. I took up Satanism not out of desperation, but out of logic. I rebelled, not but because of a religious or repressive childhood. I wanted to join the French Foreign Legion. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey