When the strong box contains no more both friends and flatterers shun the door.
Interpretation
True friends are those who stay by your side regardless of your wealth or status.
This quote by Plutarch highlights the idea that many people are drawn to wealth and status rather than true friendship. When someone loses their riches, those who were only interested in them for their fortune may abandon them, while genuine friends remain steadfast, revealing the true nature of relationships based on sincerity rather than materialism.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of loyalty, one might reference this quote.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
Come back with your shield - or on it
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real
A friend in power is a friend lost.
I think they ought to know. You do them a disservice by not confiding something this important to them.β βI didnβt want ββ ββ to worry or frighten them?β said Dumbledore, surveying Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles. βOr perhaps, to confess that you yourself are worried and frightened? You need your friends, Harry. As you so rightly said, Sirius would not have wanted you to shut yourself away.
I do not want a friend who smiles when I smile, who weeps when I weep; for my shadow in the pool can do better than that.
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments...
And the days went by like paper in the wind. Everything changed, then changed again. It's hard to find a friend. It's hard to find a friend.
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