Never promise more than you can perform.
Publilius SyrusRead
Admonish your friends privately, but praise them openly.
Interpretation
It's better to give criticism in private and show appreciation publicly.
This quote emphasizes the importance of handling feedback in a relationship. When offering constructive criticism, it should be done privately to avoid embarrassment, while public praise strengthens bonds and encourages good behavior among friends. This balance promotes honesty and support in friendships.
In practice
In a speech at a friend's celebration, I would emphasize their strengths rather than vulnerabilities.
Never promise more than you can perform.
Pain forces even the innocent to lie.
In a heated argument we are apt to lose sight of the truth.
What a tragedy is help where it harms what it supports!
The miser is as much in want of what he has as of what he has not.
He who lives only for himself is truly dead to others.
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.
Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.
I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.
The sincere friends of this world are as ship lights in the stormiest of nights.
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
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