Excessive sternness

Usage examples of harshness.

His requests for specific equipment were met with a chorus of ready responses, the combined harshness of half a dozen Niyyuuan voices all attempting to answer at once leaving him wishing that his first ingredient was a hearty dose of acetylsalicylic acid.

Wagner has shown in his music-dramas, and Hey in his vocal method, that by means of a proper division of syllables and correct articulation, the harshness of consonants can be toned down as much as is desirable.

No other species I have encountered has such a gland, which seems to have evolved as a direct and strong response to the harshness of the Endpoint environment.

She felt the extremest anger at the unprovoked and unwarrantable harshness of Miss Margland, and a resentment nearly equal at the determined petulance, and unjustifiable aspersions of Indiana.

The moon possessed a thin atmosphere of xenon and other heavy gasses that tempered the harshness of the sun-glare and painted the blackness of space with a translucent film of sky.

The world had few resources and a bleak climate just on the survivable edge of harshness.

Remember that the Old Testament owes much of the harshness of its god to the influence of the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians.

Much allowance must be made for the treatment of prisoners by a belligerent who is himself short of food, but nothing can excuse the harshness which the Boers showed to the Colonials who fell into their power, or the callous neglect of the sick prisoners at Waterval.

I blame many officials and soldiers for the harshness with which they strive to wring all their possessions from my countrymen, I deem their conduct as worthy and honourable when compared with that of Britons who sell their country for your gold.

Maximilian, that is the very thing that makes you so bold, and which renders me at once so happy and unhappy, that I frequently ask myself whether it is better for me to endure the harshness of my mother-in-law, and her blind preference for her own child, or to be, as I now am, insensible to any pleasure save such as I find in these meetings, so fraught with danger to both.

Belisarius turned to Olivia and the harshness of his attitude faded at once.

He caressed her with a gentle care that belied the harshness of his face.

And imagine me, who had melted a silver spoon in my mouth--a sizable silver spoon steward--imagine me, my old sore bones, my old belly reminiscent of youth's delights, my old palate ticklish yet and not all withered of the deviltries of taste learned in younger days--as I say, steward, imagine me, who had ever been free-handed, lavish, saving that dollar and a half intact like a miser, never spending a penny of it on tobacco, never mitigating by purchase of any little delicacy the sad condition of my stomach that protested against the harshness and indigestibility of our poor fare.

Amongst so many gods Michael felt bewildered, while Steward's Abrahamic bosom became more than ever the one sure haven where harshness and danger never troubled.

There is no harshness in saying this, for, to do him justice, he avows it with his usual picturesque candour.