I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness. - Henry David Thoreau

What do ye want to hear, ye puling infants? A trumpet-sound that would train you up to mankind, or a nurse's lullaby? The preachers and the lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state.

True Friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. A want of discernment cannot be an ingredient in it. If I can see my Friend’s virtues more distinctly than another’s, his faults too are made more conspicuous by contrast.

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.