The best time to make friends is before you need them.
Ethel BarrymoreRead
When life knocks you to your knees, and it will, why, get up! If it knocks you to your knees again, as it will, well, isn't that the best position from which to pray?
Interpretation
The quote encourages resilience in the face of life's challenges and suggests that difficult moments can lead to spiritual reflection.
Ethel Barrymore's quote highlights the inevitability of facing difficulties in life. When we encounter setbacks that bring us down, rather than staying down, we are urged to get back up and persevere. Moreover, it suggests that being on our knees can symbolize a moment of humility and prayer, turning our struggles into an opportunity for introspection and closeness to our higher selves or beliefs.
In practice
In a motivational speech aimed at encouraging students to overcome failure.
The best time to make friends is before you need them.
No more than a surgeon can operate while tweeting can you reach your potential with one ear in, one ear out. You actually have to reacquaint yourself with concentration. We all do.
Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
The world is awaiting your gift - all you have to do is show up with the right intention!
You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.
Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, "Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night." You will be right. For that is the hard home-run. Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along.
If you learn how to defeat that person when you're running. You will know how to not quit when things get hard in your life.
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