Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
William HazlittRead
Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
Interpretation
What this quote means
End a friendship that has lost its essence rather than pretending it still exists.
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing when a friendship has deteriorated beyond repair. Rather than clinging to a superficial bond, it encourages individuals to part ways on amicable terms while the relationship still holds some meaning, rather than continuing to mock the friendship with false pretenses.
Themes
FriendshipPartingHonestyRelationshipsMoving On
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of genuine relationships, one could use this quote to highlight the need for authenticity.
More from William Hazlitt
All quotes →The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
William HazlittRead
Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.
William HazlittRead
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
William HazlittRead
There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
William HazlittRead
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.
William HazlittRead
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I'd like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me. I'd like to be the help that you've been always glad to be; I'd like to mean as much to you each minute of the day, as you have meant, old friend of mine, to me along the way.
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One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.
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Good friends are hard to find and impossible to forget.
John GreenRead