Susan Piver in the new edition of Emerson’s Self-Reliance:

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none. Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa coined the phrase “idiot compassion,” to explain that thing we do when we react to others from the Playbook of Nice rather than from an authentic arising of goodness, because our heart is simply open. An open heart is never certain, it is in open dialog with this world and thus can respond with sweetness when sweetness is due, or wrath or silence or dismissal or an endless embrace. Because it is genuine, it is sharp. You are on the razor’s edge, meaning right here, right now, playing for keeps, not for appearances.

I’ll take an honest person over a “nice” person every time.