What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.
Interpretation
Genuine friendship begins when individuals share their vulnerabilities with each other.
In this quote, Arthur C. Clarke emphasizes that true friendship is built on a foundation of trust and openness. By revealing their vulnerabilities to one another, individuals deepen their connection and foster a sense of mutual understanding and support, marking the beginning of a genuine and lasting friendship.
In practice
In a speech about the value of relationships, you might say, 'As Arthur C. Clarke wisely observed, genuine friendship begins when we share our vulnerabilities.'
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
I never meant to write about the experience of losing a good friend to breast cancer when I was going through it. But after it was over, I realized that although something deeply sad had happened, something truly beautiful also had.
Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.
There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.
I had eventually come to understand that friendship was a delicate, gradual process that mustnβt be rushed or seized upon but allowed and encouraged to take its course over time. I pictured it as a butterfly, simultaneously beautiful and fragile, that once afloat belonged to the air and any attempt to grab at it would only destroy it.
Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.