Wise Quotes on Friendship
“Dare Aspire Upward With Good, Healthy Friends”
If you surround yourself with people who support your upward aim, they will not tolerate your cynicism and destructiveness. They will instead encourage you when you do good for yourself and others and punish you carefully when you do not. This will help bolster your resolve to do what you should do, in the most appropriate and careful manner... Every good example is a fateful challenge, and every hero, a judge. Michelangelo's great perfect marble David cries out to its observer you could be more than you are. When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future... Don't think that it is easier to surround yourself with good healthy people than with bad unhealthy people. It's not. A good, healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength and daring to stand up near such a person. Have some humility. Have some courage.
Jordan Peterson
“Affection Opens Our Eyes”
The truly wide taste in humanity will similarly find something to appreciate in the cross-section of humanity whom one has to meet every day. In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who ‘happen to be there.’...Affection can love the unattractive: God and His saints love the unlovable. Affection...turns a blind eye to faults, revives easily after quarrels...Affection opens our eye to goodness we could not have seen, or should not have appreciated without it.”
C.S. Lewis
"Deck The Halls"
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it. There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth...
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Not Good Enough For Evil Companions"
I am inclined to think a Christian would be wise to avoid, where he decently can, any meeting with people who are bullies, lascivious, cruel, dishonest, spiteful, and so forth. Not because we are ‘too good’ for them. In a sense because we are not good enough. We are not good enough to cope with all the temptations, nor clever enough to cope with all the problems, which an evening spent in such society produces. The temptation is to condone, to connive at; by our word, looks and laughter, to 'consent'...We shall hear vile stories told as funny; not merely licentious stories but (to me far more serious and less noticed) stories which the teller could not be telling unless he was betraying someone’s confidence. We shall hear infamous detraction of the absent, often disguised as pity or humor. Things we hold sacred will be mocked.
C.S. Lewis
"Higher Loyalties"
Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency.
H.H. Liddell Hart
"Friendship Affection"
Friendship, affection is not acquired by giving presents. Friendship, affection comes about by two people sharing a significant moment, by having an experience in common.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
“The Feast of Christian Friendship”
A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends “You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.’ The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others...They are, like all others, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests.
C.S. Lewis
"Being Sharpened Tops Being Patted"
Approve not of him who commends all you say
Benjamin Franklin
"The Universe Is Relational"
The most profound thing we know about the universe is that it is relational. Before anything existed, there was relationship. One day God, for His own reasons, wanted to share the throbbing, pulsating joy of it beyond the frontiers of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and so created us. And He made us to be like Him. For better, when there is someone near. For worse, when there is not.
Andree Seu
"Friendship 101"
Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in a common interest...true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth...Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God...Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden)...The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends...Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers...If, at the outset, we had attended more to him and less to the thing our Friendship is "about", we should not have come to know or love him so well. You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him."
C.S. Lewis
"Friendship"
Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another.
Eustace Budgell
“Counterfeit Intimacy”
“If your closeness is built on talking bad about other people. Common enemy intimacy is not intimacy. What we have is not real. The intimacy is built on hating the same people. And that's counterfeit intimacy. That is not real..” Brene Brown
“Friendship Is Brain Candy”
Friendship is the most important external influence in determining your happiness...The happiest 10% of people on earth have one thing in common. They all have Rich, fulfilling social lives and intimate relationships. our desire to bond and belong way out ways almost every other desire often even our desire for survival. relationship connections are like the finger on the pez dispenser of our brain's reward areas. A good connection hits, even momentarily, and Bam, we get brain candy dopamine vasopressin oxytocin. We fill you for it, connected, clingy. We also want to exert our own wheels on the world and our relationships. That's where this conflict comes into play...if you fail to forge meaningful connections in life, then what's it all for? Feeling happy and energized is one thing but being able to share that energy and enthusiasm with others you deeply care about and a door is the real hallmark of a fully charged life. true lifelong happiness comes from connecting with and loving others, so it is best we figure out how to do that as soon as possible and as best we can... consciously design your life and all the relationships within it to the highest degree possible. Defining what your ideal relationship looks like, and then designing your behaviors and interactions to make them a reality...there are two kinds of people in the world those who walk into a room and say here I am and those who walk into a room and say oh there you are...surround yourself with remarkable friends who help lift your life to the level of energy and potential you know it has...If you are not getting the quality of friendship you need from one peer group, go build a new one and focus more of your time, energy, and sharing their. From now on, be on the lookout for remarkable people whose path God has allowed to intersect with yours. Notice them. Ask them to lunch. Keep in touch. introduce them to other remarkable people. Have them share real thoughts, feelings and ambitions in life. Get them together often for new adventures and experiences. actively going to engage with, grow with, and energize your life with. These are growth friends. Growth friends are supremely important to your mental health and spiritual energy and life. These are the people who become your closest confidence, your partners in adventure, the godparents of your children. be a passionately interested friend who brings novelty, Joy, caring, adventure, and closeness to others…I do have this deep belief in fate and God's higher reason for making people's paths cross. I believe that if I meet you, there's a reason, and I ought to try to figure it out and contribute in some way to your life...at the end of our lives when we're looking back and wondering about the meaning of it all will wonder if it mattered. To discover the answer, we'll look uniquely to our connections to our loved ones and those we influenced and to our contributions but even as we evaluate and reflect on our connections, we're really thinking about what we contributed to those connections. We're wondering whether we gave ourselves to our relationships, whether we loved fully and openly and honestly. We're wondering whether we gave others the time, attention, acceptance, and affection they deserve from us. We're wondering, essentially, what we contributed to the world and to those around us. In the end, that's how we gauge the meaning of our lives.
Brendon Burchard