My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.
Interpretation
True friends show their loyalty through their feelings towards those we love.
This quote suggests that genuine friendship can often involve protective instincts towards the ones we cherish. It highlights how true friends will display their devotion by expressing their aversion for the individuals we may be romantically involved with, indicating their concern for our well-being and happiness.
In practice
Sharing this quote at a friend's wedding to celebrate the bond of friendship.
It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.
You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
Truffles must come to the table in their own stock and as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine - if you have never visited it - the desolate kingdom where it rules.
If you desire with all your heart, friendship with every race on earth, your thought, spiritual and positive, will spread; it will become the desire of others, growing stronger and stronger, until it reaches the minds of all men.
I listened so hard because it felt like, while she was telling me stories, she was massaging my soul, letting me know that I was not alone, that I will never have to be alone, that there are friends and family and churches and coffee shops. I was not going to be cast into space.
Friends become wiser together through a healthy clash of viewpoints.
It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam," said Frodo, "and I could not have borne that." "Not as certain as being left behind," said Sam. "But I am going to Mordor." "I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I'm coming with you.
I never meant to write about the experience of losing a good friend to breast cancer when I was going through it. But after it was over, I realized that although something deeply sad had happened, something truly beautiful also had.
Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
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