Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel ButlerRead
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True friends should have the ability to forgive and forget, as well as appreciate the good memories.
Samuel Butler emphasizes the importance of having a forgiving and flexible memory in friendships. A friend who cannot overlook past grievances or who clings too tightly to negative memories is as detrimental to a relationship as one who fails to recall the positive moments shared. Friendship thrives on both the appreciation of the past and the ability to move forward without unnecessary burdens.
Themes
FriendshipForgivenessMemoryRelationshipsUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
During a toast at a wedding, you might mention how true friends embrace both the good and the bad, citing Butler's quote.
More from Samuel Butler
All quotes βTo know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Samuel ButlerRead
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Samuel ButlerRead
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel ButlerRead
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
Samuel ButlerRead
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Samuel ButlerRead
Similar quotes
As widowers proverbially marry again, so a man with the habit of friendship always finds new friends.
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Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Henry David ThoreauRead
What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.
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So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o'clock today I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned. - Sherlock Holmes.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands...Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship...But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse...The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friendβs presence, is concerned with the common world.
Hannah ArendtRead
Where there are friends there is wealth.
PlautusRead