Silence is an ornament for women.
SophoclesRead
Whoever understands how to do a kindness when he fares well would be a friend better than any possession.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True friendship is shown through acts of kindness, not material possessions.
This quote by Sophocles emphasizes that the true value of friendship lies in the ability to perform kind acts for one another. It suggests that a genuine friend is one who understands the importance of caring for others, which surpasses the value of any material possessions one might own.
Themes
FriendshipKindnessValuePossessionCare
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of compassion in friendships.
More from Sophocles
All quotes βNone love the messenger who brings bad news.
SophoclesRead
All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.
SophoclesRead
Not even Ares battles against necessity.
SophoclesRead
You clearly hate to yield, but you will regret it when your anger has passed. Such natures are justly the hardest for themselves to bear.
SophoclesRead
There is nothing more hateful than bad advice.
SophoclesRead
Similar quotes
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
Karl A. MenningerRead
When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.
Albert CamusRead
Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is spiritual and therefore faces a subtler enemy, it must, even more wholeheartedly than they, invoke the divine protection if it hopes to remain sweet. For consider how narrow its true path is. Is must not become what the people call a "mutual admiration society"; yet if it is not full of mutual admiration, of Appreciative love, it is not Friendship at all.
C. S. LewisRead
Prosperity is full of friends.
EuripidesRead
A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends.
Christopher HitchensRead
Whatever will happen will happen, but choose your companions with care. Choose them because you like to look at them and you like the sound of their voices, and they have profound secrets in them that you wish to know. In other words, choose them because you love them. Otherwise you will not be able to bear their company for very long.
Anne RiceRead