The Power of Friendship
By: Beth McHugh 2006
In the recent blogs, Who Is Your Best Friend? and Be Your Own Best Friend, we looked at the importance of befriending yourself and genuinely liking what you see when you look in the mirror. However, having a good set of supporting friends that we can share good times and bad with is also important to our mental wellbeing.
Let’s take a look at what sages and wits through the ages have said about the importance of friends in our lives. Some of these are just great:
A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks
out.
Walter Winchell
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well
tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant
of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity
before it is entitled to the appellation.
George Washington
Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me,
I may not lead; Walk beside me, and just be my friend.
Albert Camus
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
C.S. Lewis
Friends show their love in times of trouble.
Euripides
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another,
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one!"
C.S. Lewis
Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends
even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.
Thomas Aquinas
Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot
be friends with anyone else in the world.
Eleanor Roosevelt
I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I
nod; my shadow does that much better.
Plutarch
I have lost friends, some by death, others through sheer inability
to cross the street.
Virginia Woolf
In misfortune, which friend remains a friend?
Euripides
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
Aristotle
Never refuse any advance of friendship, for if nine out of ten bring
you nothing, one alone may repay you.
Madam de Tencin
One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
Euripides
Real friends are those who, when you feel you've made a fool of yourself,
don't feel you've done a permanent job.
Erwin T. Randall
So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would
almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he
has a friend.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have
of a man's success in life.
Edward Everett Hale
To the world you might be one person; but to one person you might be
the world.
Anon
Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible
to forget.
G. Randolf
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other
goods.
Aristotle
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