Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.
Baltasar GracianRead
True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils. Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island... to find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing.
Interpretation
True friendship enhances our lives and helps us cope with hardships.
This quote emphasizes the transformative power of genuine friendship, suggesting that true friends amplify our joys and help mitigate our sorrows. The metaphor of life without friends being akin to being stranded on a desert island highlights the isolation one might feel without companionship, while recognizing that finding and maintaining a loyal friend is a rare and invaluable gift.
In practice
During a speech at a graduation ceremony.
Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.
It is a novel kind of supremacy, the best that life can offer, to have as servants by skill those who by nature are our masters.
Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.
It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.
Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.
The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.
In the Friend-place nothing true can be said. Let Me Just Be Here.
We tiptoed around each other like heartbreaking new friends.
Did I miss?" you asked. "You didn't exactly miss," said Pooh, "But you missed the balloon." "I'm so sorry," you said, and you fired again, and this time you hit the balloon and the air came slowly out, and Winnie-the-Pooh floated down to the ground.
The only friends who are free from cares are the goblet of wine and a book. Give me wine...that I may for a time forget the cares of the world.
No matter what kind of backgrounds two men are from, if you go, 'Hey, man, women are crazy,' you've got a friend.
I would rather die than betray his trust." "That's not saying much, seeing as you're already dead," Ron observed. "Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe," said Nearly Headless Nick in affronted tones.
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