QuoteProject
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
Mark Twain
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Both friends and enemies can contribute to emotional pain; one may speak ill of you while the other brings that hurtful news to your attention.

This quote by Mark Twain highlights the complexity of interpersonal relationships, suggesting that both friends and enemies play roles in causing emotional distress. Your enemies may attack your reputation through slander, while friends may inadvertently cause pain by sharing harmful gossip. The quote serves as a reminder that individuals in our lives, regardless of their intentions, can influence our feelings and well-being.

Themes

RelationshipPainTrustBetrayalGossip

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about trust and friendship, you could use this quote to illustrate the duality of relationships.

More from Mark Twain

Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
Mark TwainRead
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
Mark TwainRead
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Mark TwainRead
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
Mark TwainRead
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Mark TwainRead

Similar quotes

By prayer, community is created as well as expressed.
Henri NouwenRead
You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
Sylvia PlathRead
There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.
Milan KunderaRead
If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him.
Neil GaimanRead
I ain't mad at anybody. I don't have any enemies.
PrinceRead
We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions of faith sowing division; we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them,and drives us further apart.
Barack ObamaRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.