The Kural in life
One cruel word can spoil all the rest.
Valluvar raises the stakes on speech. If even a single one of your words causes another person real pain, the good you had earned by all your other virtues turns sour. A lifetime of right action does not buy you the right to one cruelty; the harmful word taints the whole account.
Parimelazhagar: what counts as a harmful word.
Parimelazhagar specifies the offenders: the harmful words are lies that injure, slander, and harsh speech. If the meaning carried by even one such word brings suffering to another, he says, the good a person had gained from other virtues is turned to harm. The qualifier matters — it is words that wound, not merely blunt ones, that undo the rest.
The reputation undone in one sentence.
We have watched a person admired for years lose that standing in the time it takes to say one contemptuous thing — and felt how the single cruelty seems to outweigh all the prior kindness. Valluvar names the mechanism: a wounding word doesn't just add a debit; it sours the credit already earned. Which is why the disciplined treat their harshest possible sentence as the most expensive thing they own.
A single wounding word can sour all the good you've earned.
Valluvar raises the stakes: if even one of your words causes another real pain, the good from all your other virtues turns sour. Parimelazhagar specifies the offenders — injurious lies, slander, harsh speech; a wounding word doesn't just add a debit, it spoils the credit already earned. A lifetime of right action buys no licence for one cruelty.
Treat your harshest possible sentence as your most expensive act.
Remember that one wounding word — a lie that injures, a piece of slander, a contemptuous remark — can undo years of goodwill, because cruelty doesn't just add to the ledger, it sours what you'd already earned. So guard the cutting sentence most carefully of all; no amount of past good gives you a free pass to wound once.