Life & Wisdom Quote by Augustus Hare

Hare’s line flatters you with a Victorian bouquet, then quietly warns you not to confuse color with character. The comparison is tidy on purpose: flowers are society’s preferred shorthand for feeling, and “moral qualities” are society’s preferred currency. By yoking them, he makes the reader do what polite culture always does - judge quickly, aesthetically, and with too much confidence.

The hinge is “bright.” In the garden it means vivid petals; in the moral world it means charisma, brilliance, the kind of conspicuous goodness people like to display. Hare’s sly point is that what pops can also harm. “Sometimes poisonous” isn’t just botanical trivia; it’s a social diagnosis. The most dazzling personalities - witty, righteous, loudly principled - can carry toxins: vanity, cruelty, fanaticism, the small moral sadism of being right in public.

Then he offers the softer-sounding claim: “never the sweet.” That “I believe” matters. It’s not a proof, it’s a preference, a moral bet on gentleness. Sweetness here isn’t saccharine; it’s the quieter virtues that don’t advertise themselves: patience, mercy, tact, the impulse to soothe rather than dominate. In a century obsessed with appearances and respectability, Hare nudges the reader toward a counter-aesthetic: trust what comforts, not what dazzles.

The subtext is a critique of performative virtue before we had the phrase. Brightness wins rooms and reputations; sweetness survives contact with other people.