Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny.
The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice. - Benjamin Franklin
The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along. - Sydney J. Harris
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship. - Henry Ward Beecher