Aziraphale. The Enemy, of course. But an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him a sort of friend.
Interpretation
A long-standing enmity can lead to a deep bond, blurring the lines between friends and foes.
This quote reflects on the complexity of relationships, suggesting that prolonged conflict can foster a unique form of camaraderie. An enemy known for a significant duration becomes intertwined with one's experiences and life, evolving from mere adversary to a friend in a paradoxical sense, highlighting the intricate nature of human connections.
In practice
During a speech about the value of difficult relationships.
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it.
The good man is the friend of all living things.
Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesnβt return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.
My friendship with Mitzi was like the friendship that many children have with their pets. My mother and father thought it was "good for me" to have a dog for a companion. Well it was good for me, but it was only many years after she died that I began to understand how good it was, and why.
To make a point of declaring friendship is to cheapen it. For men's emotions are very rarely put into words successfully.
I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.