There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found While journeying east and west - The only folks we really wound Are those we love the best. We flatter those we scarcely know, We please the fleeting guest, And deal full many a thoughtless blow To those who love us best.

Wilcox laments a common moral asymmetry: we often reserve our sharpest words and least patient behavior for intimates, while offering politeness and charm to strangers. The “journeying east and west” frame universalizes the observation as something learned through experience rather than theory. The stanza contrasts social performance (“flatter,” “please the fleeting guest”) with the unguarded familiarity of home, where thoughtlessness can slip into cruelty because love feels secure. Implicitly, the poem urges ethical consistency—extending to family and close companions the same tact and consideration we practice in public—since those relationships bear the deepest emotional consequences.