Friendship is like love at its best; not blind but sympathetically all-seeing; a support which does not wait for understanding; an act of faith which does not need, but always has, reason.
Interpretation
Friendship is a deep, understanding bond that requires faith and support without needing full comprehension.
This quote emphasizes that true friendship, much like love, is characterized by a profound awareness and compassion that goes beyond superficial understanding. It suggests that genuine friendship is built on mutual support and trust, where individuals offer help and faith in one another without the need for complete understanding or justification.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of community, you might quote this to emphasize the strength of friendship.
I had eventually come to understand that friendship was a delicate, gradual process that mustn’t 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.
A blessed thing it is to have a friend; one human soul whom we can trust utterly; who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults; who will speak the honest truth to us, while the world flatters us to our face, and laughs at us behind our back; who will give us counsel and reproof in a day of prosperity and self-conceit; but who, again, will comfort and encourage us in days of difficulty and sorrow, when the world leaves us alone to fight our own battle as we can.
No one can take the place of a friend, no one.
The reason for my starting a diary is that I have no real friend.
And then there are my friends, and they have their own lives. While they like to talk everything through, to analyze and hypothesize, what I really need, what I'm really looking for, is not something I can articulate. It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it.
If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
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