Quotes About Friendship

Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.

I have also learned to catch the darkness early, not to allow sadness to grow into depression or let a sense of being rejected develop into a feeling of abandonment. Even in the renewed and deepened friendship, I feel the freedom to point to the little clouds and ask for help in letting them pass by.

When we invite friends for a meal, we do much more than offer them food for their bodies. We offer friendship, fellowship, good conversation, intimacy, and closeness. When we say, 'Help yourself… take some more… don't be shy… have another glass…' we offer our guests not only our food and drink but also ourselves. A spiritual bond grows, and we become food and drink for one another.

Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let's not be afraid to receive each day's surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity

Isn't it important for your friends close by and far away to know the high cost of these insights? Wouldn't they find it a source of consolation to see that light and darkness, hope and despair, love and fear are never very far from each other, and that spiritual freedom often requires a fierce spiritual battle?

With a friend we don't have to say or do something special. With a friend we can be still and know that God is there with both of us.

We may have only a few talents, but we have many gifts. Our gifts are the many ways in which we express our humanity. They are part of who we are: friendship, kindness, patience, joy, peace, forgiveness, gentleness, love, hope, trust and many others. These are the true gifts we have to offer to each other.

Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other.

Deep and mature friendship does not mean that we keep looking each other in the eyes, constantly impressed or enraptured by each other's beauty, talents, and gifts, but it does mean that together we look at the one who calls us to a life of service.

Around the table, we know whether there is friendship and community or hatred and division. Precisely because the table is the place of intimacy for all the members of the household, it is also the place where the absence of that intimacy is most painfully revealed.

Our lives are not problems to be solved but journeys to be taken with Jesus as our friend and finest guide.

When we dare to speak from the depth of our heart to the friends God gives us, we will gradually find new freedom within us and new courage to live our own sorrows and joys to the full. When we truly believe that we have nothing to hide from God, we need to have people around us who represent God for us and to whom we can reveal ourselves with complete trust.

And because of our culture's emphasis on psychology and interpersonal relationships, we import a consumer mentality to our intimacies. We expect more of our friends and partners than they can (or want to) give.

A friend once wrote: "Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.

But real openness to each other also means a real closedness, because only he who can hold a secret can safely share his knowledge. When we do not protect with great care our own inner mystery, we will never be able to form community. It is this inner mystery that attracts us to each other and allows us to establish friendship and develop lasting relationships of love.

Being friendly to everybody, he very often has no friends for himself. Always consulting and giving advice, he often has nobody to go to with his own pains and problems. [...] Looking for acceptance, he tends to cling to his counselees [...] In this way he […] never feels safe, is always on the alert, and finally finds himself terribly misunderstood and lonesome.

We also need guides: spiritual friends, a spiritual director, or a spiritual accountability group that can function for us as a safe place to bear our souls.

The tendency exists to look for a solution to [loneliness] by establishing very demanding and often exhausting friendships. […] the stresses on many students are so intense that they often have inexhaustible needs for intimacy, and clinging friendships. But this is often encouraging the unrealistic fantasy that the true, real, faithful friend is somewhere waiting, able to take away all the feelings of frustration.

I also learned afresh that friendship requires a constant willingness to forgive each other for not being Christ, and a willingness to ask Christ himself to be the true center of the relationship.

When we dare to lift our cup and let our friends know what is in it, they will be encouraged to lift their cups and share with us their own anxiously hidden secrets. The greatest healing often takes place when we no longer feel isolated by our shame and guilt and discover that others often feel what we feel and think what we think and have the fears, apprehensions, and preoccupations we have.

When our friend says, "If my friends found out how I really feel, if I would show my real self, then they would no longer love me but hate me" — he speaks about a real possibility. It is very risky to be honest, because someone just might not respond with love, but take us by our weak spot and turn it against ourselves. Our confession might destroy us.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.

Lifting our cup means sharing our life so we can celebrate it. When we truly believe we are called to lay down our lives for our friends, we must dare to take the risk to let others know what we are living.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim