But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend.
Interpretation
True friends can often be difficult to distinguish from flatterers or insincere people.
In this quote, Walter Raleigh illustrates the challenge of discerning genuine friendships from those that are merely self-serving. He compares the subtle similarities between a flattery-driven relationship and a true friendship to the resemblance between a wolf and a dog, suggesting that without careful consideration, one may confuse deceitful behavior with loyalty and affection.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of true friendship, this quote can highlight the challenge of finding sincere companions.
Passions are liken'd best to floods and streams:_x000D_ _x000D_ The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb;_x000D_ _x000D_ So, when affection yields discourse, it seems_x000D_ _x000D_ The bottom is but shallow whence they come._x000D_ _x000D_ They that are rich in words, in words discover
Silence in love betrays more woe - Than words though ne'er so witty; A beggar that is dumb, you know, may challenge double pity.
Even such isTime, which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust, Who in the dark and silent grave When we have wandered all our ways Shuts up the story of our days, And from which earth, and grave, and dust The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.
If she undervalues me, _x000D_ _x000D_ What care I how fair she be?
If all the world and love were young,_x000D_ _x000D_ And truth in every shepherd's tongue,_x000D_ _x000D_ These pretty pleasures might me move_x000D_ _x000D_ To live with thee, and be thy love.
It is the nature of men having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean.
No one can be great, or good, or happy except through the inward efforts of themselves.
People will never know how hard it is to get information, especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp 'top secret' on the color of the walls.
Those who desire to rise as high as our human condition allows, must renounce intellectual pride, the omnipotence of clear thinking, belief in the absolute power of logic.
Ender stepped under the water and rinsed himself, took the sweat of combat and let it run down the drain. All gone, except they recycled it and we'll be drinking Bonzo's blood water in the morning. All the life gone out of it, but his blood just the same, his blood and my sweat, washed down in their stupidity or cruelty or whatever it was that made them let it happen.
I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with-out heresy.
January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year's resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.
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