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Who really said it

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness

Verified — and the author is alive to say so Iain S. Thomas b. 1980 · South African poet, writing as ‘pleasefindthis’
Verified In copyright

It is a prose poem titled The Fur, posted in August 2007 on the blog I Wrote This For You under the pen name pleasefindthis, and later collected in the book of the same name. The author, Iain S. Thomas, is alive, has written a first-person account of the misattribution, and still spends his time asking strangers to stop selling his poem with Kurt Vonnegut’s name on it.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness” —Iain S. Thomas, 'The Fur', I Wrote This For You (2007). Not Kurt Vonnegut. In copyright: quote with his name, do not sell it.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright. A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Iain S. Thomas — South African poet, author of I Wrote This For You. Theme: "Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Work
The Fur, from I Wrote This For You
First posted
August 2007, on the project blog
Author
Iain S. Thomas, writing as ‘pleasefindthis’
Confirmed by
The author, in print, repeatedly

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. The Fur, 2007

Quoted here for identification and commentary. The poem carries on for one more sentence after this — the part almost nobody reposts — about still believing the world to be a beautiful place.

Iain S. Thomas on having his poem taken

How we traced it

  • The poem exists at a fixed address with a date on it: The Fur, posted to the I Wrote This For You blog in August 2007, years before the line began circulating with a novelist’s name attached the original post ↗.
  • Thomas wrote his own account of what happened for HuffPost in April 2016 — he reproduces the poem, explains he published it anonymously, and describes someone deciding it ‘needed to have been said by someone more important… than some, still living, semi-anonymous blogger’ his account ↗.
  • We did not stop at the author’s word. The Vonnegut end was checked independently: the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library and a vice-president of the Kurt Vonnegut Society both confirmed to fact-checkers that the passage appears nowhere in his work the fact-check ↗.
In copyright

In copyright, and the point of the page. Iain S. Thomas is a working poet, alive, and this is his text — protected for his lifetime plus seventy years. He gives the poems away free online in the hope that someone buys a book, which is exactly the model the Vonnegut credit destroys: a dead novelist’s name makes the poem feel like heritage, free for a mug, a candle or a wall print. It is not. Quote it briefly with his name on it; do not sell it. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

Most quote mysteries end with a shrug. This one ends with a phone number: the author is alive, he has said in print that he wrote it, and the estate-adjacent bodies for the man he is confused with have independently agreed.

Not Kurt Vonnegut not in his work

The passage appears in no Vonnegut novel, essay, letter or speech. The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library and an officer of the Kurt Vonnegut Society have both said so on the record. Vonnegut died in April 2007 — months before the poem was posted the check ↗.

Tone, not evidence vibes-based attribution

Vonnegut really did write plain, kind, aphoristic advice — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind’ is genuinely his. The poem sounds close enough to pass a two-second sniff test, which is all most reposts get.

'pleasefindthis' how it started

Thomas published under a pen name with no byline attached to the image versions. A poem with no author is a vacancy, and the internet fills vacancies with famous dead men.

National press, books, merchandise commercial reuse

It has run in newspapers as ‘the words made famous by American author Kurt Vonnegut’, and been used to sell other people’s books — which is what finally made a quiet poet start replying in public.

The author, in the comments unusual artifact

The line still turns up on quote forums under Vonnegut’s name, and Thomas still turns up underneath to say it is his. Treat any such account as a claim, not proof — but here the claim matches a dated 2007 post, a signed magazine essay and two independent Vonnegut authorities.

Iain S. Thomas, The Fur, August 2007 — a living author, a dated post, and a book you can buy his own account ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It gives permission. Almost every other piece of advice about a hard world tells you to toughen up; this one says the toughening is the injury, and that staying sweet is the achievement. That is why it ends up in cards, eulogies and tattoos.

It also has the shape of something old — short imperative sentences, no proper nouns, no slang to date it. Nothing in the text tells you it was typed on a blog in 2007, which is precisely how it slipped into the public domain in people’s heads.

Vonnegut died in April 2007. The poem was posted that August.

What the wrong name actually costs

Attribution is not vanity for a poet who gives work away free online. The free poem is the advertisement; the book is the income. Strip the name and the model collapses.

A dead-author credit does something worse than misinform: it makes a protected text look like heritage, and heritage looks free to print on a candle.

Thomas has said the corrections rarely stick — the misattributed image outruns the reply every time, because the wrong version is the one with the famous name on it.

This site’s usual finding is that getting the attribution right frees a text. Here it does the reverse, and that is the honest result.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Kindness Resilience

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

It's National Poetry Month. Please Give Me Back My Poem.huffpost.com

Thomas’s own 2016 account — when he wrote it, why he was anonymous, and how the Vonnegut credit took over.
Did Kurt Vonnegut write this poem about bitterness?checkyourfact.com

The independent check: the Vonnegut Museum and the Vonnegut Society both say it is not his.
'The Fur' — the original 2007 postiwrotethisforyou.me

The dated primary source, on the blog where the project began.
'Please stop misquoting me and using my poem to sell your book'x.com

The author policing his own work in public — one of many such posts over a decade.

The true author

About Iain S. Thomas

Iain S. Thomas

b. 1980 · South African poet, author of I Wrote This For You

Iain S. Thomas began posting short prose poems in 2007 under the name pleasefindthis, pairing them with photographs by Jon Ellis. The project became I Wrote This For You, a book in 2011 and a poetry bestseller since. He is the unusual case of an author who watched a single piece of his own writing become globally famous under someone else’s name, and who has spent years politely, publicly and repeatedly correcting it — a living rebuttal you can email.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Thomas, Iain S. (as pleasefindthis). “The Fur.” I Wrote This For You, August 2007; collected in I Wrote This For You (2011).

MLA (9th ed.)

Thomas, Iain S. “The Fur.” I Wrote This For You, 2007.

APA (7th ed.)

Thomas, I. S. (2007). The Fur. I Wrote This For You.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/be-soft-do-not-let-the-world-make-you-hard

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