Speaking Truth

"It takes," says Thoreau, in the noblest and most useful passage I remember to have read in any modern author, "two to speak truth--one to speak and another to hear."  He must be very little experienced, or have no great zeal for truth, who does not recognize the fact.  A grain of anger or a  grain of suspicion produces strange acoustical effects, and makes the ear greedy to remark offense. Hence we find those who have once quarreled carry themselves distantly, and are ever ready to break the truce.  To speak truth there must be moral equality or else no respect; and hence between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained.   And there is another side to this, for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of the child's character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts which suit with his preconception; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth."

                          ~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~

Click here for a complete Robert Lewis Stevenson bibliography

Click here for a complete Thoreau bibliography