Something harsh is unpleasantly rough, severe or cruel.

• Abandoning harsh speech, he refrains from it. He speaks whatever is blameless, pleasing to the ear, agreeable, reaching the heart, urbane, pleasing and attractive to the multitude.
  • Gautama Buddha, Digha Nikaya M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 1 (Brahmajala Sutta (Theravada)), verse 1.9, pp. 68-69

• I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.
  • William Lloyd Garrison, Salutatory of the Liberator, Volume I. No. 1. (1 January 1831).

• Even in the harshest places there is still wonder and beauty.
  • Rebecca Helm, in a Twitter post, quoted in Newly discovered 'glitter worms' dance and fight one another underwater (May 14, 2020) by Bonnie Burton, CNET

• Never say harsh things, if kind things will do as well.
  • John Ross Macduff, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert' Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 256.

• Nay, now you are too flat
  And mar the concord with too harsh a descant.
  • William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590s), Act I, scene 2, line 94.

• For those who practise tyranny and deprive others of their rights, I will be harsh and stern, but for those who follow the law, I will be most soft and tender.
  • Umar, as quoted in Al Farooq, Umar (1944) by Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Ch. 5, p. 123

• I will be harsh and stern against the aggressor, but I will be a pillar of strength for the weak.
  I will not calm down until I will put one cheek of a tyrant on the ground and the other under my feet, and for the poor and weak, I will put my cheek on the ground.
  • Umar, as quoted in Al Farooq, Umar (1944) by Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Ch. 5, p. 124