Convenient Friendship Quotes

Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.

Some of the friendships I've found as an adult are far more rewarding than those forged out of the convenience of adolescence.

In some rare cases, a friendship between two people benefits both of them, and what’s more, in some rarer cases, it benefits both of them equally.

Oh, my dear, love isn't always the coup de foudre--the lightning strike. Sometimes it happens quietly, so quietly you may not even notice.

And when good friends need us, we do what we can to help them, right? We can’t just be friends when it’s convenient. Good friendships are worth a little extra effort!

The old saying is wrong, you know--a common enemy does not a friendship make. You can only ever be as good as the people you are willing to fight beside. [...] Alliances made from convenience only ever weaken a cause.

We can’t just be friends when it’s convenient. Good friendships are worth a little extra effort!

The narrow-minded find it convenient to create stereotypes, and then try to fit everybody, everything and every situation into those stereotypes.

i’d rather be alone than form convenient connections disguised as friendships.

How much of the appeal of mountaineering lies in its simplification of interpersonal relationships, its reduction of friendship to smooth interaction (like war), its substitution of an Other (the mountain, the challenge) for the relationship itself? Behind a mystique of adventure, toughness, footloose vagabondage—all much needed antidotes to our culture’s built-in comfort and convenience—may lie a kind of adolescent refusal to take seriously aging, the frailty of others, interpersonal responsibility, weakness of all kinds, the slow and unspectacular course of life itself.… [T]op

The principle that first you try to solve your problems on your own and only turn to others as a last resort applies to friends. We have an obligation to show our friends that we are turning to them for a favor not because it happens to be convenient for us to do so but because of a compelling reason.

# # My pregnant wife came home with her previously long hair that I loved chopped off and replaced with a short, mommish haircut. She asked what I thought and could tell by my face. She had put a mom's need for convenience before being a wife. She wept.

when good friends need us, we do what we can to help them, right? We can’t just be friends when it’s convenient. Good friendships are worth a little extra effort!

There has been a cultural shift in the way we communicate, and that, in turn, has had an effect on our relating. We have traded substance and depth for speed and convenience.

Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighborly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, bur raise it to that standard. That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance.

Wasn't she a good person? She felt a dim awareness of something almost shameful about the way she'd lived her life. Wasn't there something closed off, even small-minded and mean, about the way she cut herself off from people, ducking down behind the convenient wall of her shyness, her social anxiety? When she sensed the overtures of friendship, she took too long to respond to phone calls and e-mails, and eventually people gave up, and Tess was always relieved.

[On married love] This love is above all fully human, a compound of sense and spirit. It is not, then, merely a question of natural instinct or emotional drive. It is also, and above all, an act of the free will, whose trust is such that it is meant not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment. It is a love which is total—that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience. Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner's own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself.

When you're a child, your best friend in the world is the kid who lives next door. It doesn't occur to you then that this is a matter of arbitrary circumstance. When you grow up you like to imagine that your friendships have a more substantial basis - common interests, like-mindedness, some genuine affinity. It's always a sad revelation that when a good friend acquires a girlfriend or a husband and disappears. You realize that,for them, your friendships was always only a matter of convenience, a fallback, and they simply don't need you anymore. There's nothing especially cynical about this; people are drawn to each other because they're giving each other something they both need, and they drift apart when they aren't getting it or don't need it anymore. Friendship have natural life spans, like love affairs or favorite songs.

It’s so easy and convenient to buy our children gifts, but I encourage and challenge you to give them gifts that TRULY matter! The gift of unconditional love. The gift of encouragement. The gift of support. The gift of friendship. The gift of communication, understanding, and patience. The gift of guidance and support. The gift of quality time. And the gift of loving them for who THEY are. Material things are nice, but NOTHING compares to genuine love! Parenting should be taking seriously.

Some friendships develop like flowers in a garden: they are conscientiously planted and nurtured. The ground about them is kept clear of competition. Then, after some weeks and months of incremental growth and laborious pruning, a flower blooms. Such cultivated friendships are agreeable and convenient, if not enduring. Other friendships seem to arise spontaneously, like an egg in a nest or a freckle upon an arm, and these are often mystifying, as both parties are left to wonder how exactly this unexpected affection took hold.

I did not realize friendships were a matter of convenience or had expiration dates. A true friend is there no matter what. So, what happened to you?

True friendship isn't about being there when it's convenient; it's about being there when it's not. ~Author Unknown

Maybe our friendship had always been about convenience – he didn’t have anyone cooler than me to play video games with.

OPPORTUNITIES TO build friendship and community don’t always come at the most convenient times, but we have to grab them when we get the chance.

Godly friendship doesn’t usually develop through convenience; it develops through devotion.

Maybe this is what friendship actually is. Geographical convenience, the ability to tolerate one another, and waving.

In the end, it's only a story of having had her words and secrets, her confidences, turned against her by someone she once believed entirely beyond any acts of betrayal. A story of pettiness and cruelty and of the lies friends will tell when a friendship has ceased to be profitable or convenient. It is a very simple and inexpressibly complex story of cowardice...

All these openings for closeness--all these humans with their disappointments and their desperate hearts, but it's so much easier, so convenient, to blame emotional distance on a lack of time.

My best friend in all the world really did have a boyfriend and had never told me. My best friend was sharing me with someone else and I knew whatever she had been giving me was only what she had left over from him, the scraps, the tokens, the lies. I had fought for this friendship, worried over it, made sacrifices for it, measured myself against it, lost myself inside it, had little to show for it but this bewildered sense of betrayal. Now I knew that I had never been the one she loved, I was a convenient diversion, a practice run until the real thing came along to claim her.

There’s an unspoken understanding I have with him that I’ve never had with anyone else, and while our friendship might be young and born of convenience, in a lot of ways I feel as though I’ve known him my entire life.

It’s always a sad revelation when a good friend acquires a girlfriend or a husband and disappears. You realize that, for them, your friendship was always only a matter of convenience, a fallback, and they simply don’t need you anymore. There

And no one remembers anything, because why should they? It's all online. When was the last time you remembered a friend's birthday without Facebook reminding you?" He frowned. "It's convenient." "Since when are friendships, let alone love, supposed to be convenient?

Give me your hands," I said. I studied his palms. "Yes, she'll forgive you. She'll realize you saved her." "You're a palm reader now?" "Yes." "When did you learn how to do that?" "While you were sleeping." "I waste so much time sleeping. What else do you see?" "I see food. Max is going to bring food." "Do you see cake?" "No, no cake." "Let me see your hands," he said. I raised an eyebrow. "I learned while you were talking." He studied my palms. "Your scars cross over the lines in your hands, like you have two lives... One to mess up and one to get right." "That's convenient. What else do you see?" "I see you happy," he said. "Yeah?" I asked. He nodded. "And I see you." My fingers itched to reach out and touch his face, to make sure I'd still know him in the dark. "I see you, too," I said.

It’s not like you have anything to lose anymore.” My fingers stop at my thumb ring while Sienna’s words echo in my head. Do I have anything to lose? I mean, after all I did, everything I fought against. I slowly turn the ring on my thumb. This simple band has, like all of my rings, one word engraved on it. Will anything change if I go to him? After all, I did lose everything that is important. It’s funny, actually, after the months I spent pushing him away. I thought, like the silly girl I probably am, that if I didn’t give myself to him, I’d be safe, that as long as I didn’t sleep with him, I wouldn’t lose my heart. Shouldn’t I have this one last memory to take home with me? So lost…I came here lost and I’ll go home lost. How convenient, and so utterly pathetic I want to give myself one strong shake to snap out of this.

Tremors hit, quaking her hard enough for him to feel them. He wrapped his arms around her and bent his face close to hers. He might not understand what was going on in her head, but a mighty squall was battering her hull, and if he couldn't figure out how to shelter her from it, he aimed to be her anchor until it passed.

She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily. By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant. She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track. We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis. ‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’ I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them. And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.

The emotion of love is an affective emotion, directly reacting to goodness, rather than an aggressive one, reacting to challenge. Not only our so-called natural ability to grow and propagate exemplify natural love, but every faculty has a built-in affinity for what accords with its nature. By passion we mean some result of being acted on: either a form induced by the agent (like weight) or a movement consequent on the form (like falling to the ground). Whatever we desire acts on us in this way, first arousing an emotional attachment to itself and making itself agreeable, and then drawing us to seek it. The first change the object produces in our appetite is a feeling of its agreeableness: we call this love (weight can be thought of as a sort of natural love); then desire moves us to seek the object and pleasure comes to rest in it. Clearly then, as a change induced in us by an agent, love is a passion: the affective emotion strictly so, the will to love by stretching of the term. Love unites by making what is loved as agreeable to the lover as if it were himself or a part of himself. Though love is not itself a movement of the appetite towards an object, it is a change the appetite undergoes rendering an object agreeable. Favour is a freely chosen and willing love, open only to reasoning creatures; and charity―literally, holding dear―is a perfect form of love in which what is loved is highly prized. To love, as Aristotle says, is to want someone’s good; so its object is twofold: the good we want, loved with a love of desire, and the someone we want it for (ourselves or someone else), loved with a love of friendship. And just as what exist in the primary sense are subjects of existence, and properties exist only in a secondary sense, as modes in which subjects exist; so too what we love in the primary sense is the someone whose good we will, and only in a secondary sense do we love the good so willed. Friendship based on convenience or pleasure is friendship inasmuch as we want our friend’s good; but because this is subordinated to our own profit or pleasure such friendship is subordinated to love of desire and falls short of true friendship.

And then there are those friends who aren’t really friends at all. For some reason, we all have them. They don’t belong in our lives, not really, not truly, not if we’re honest with ourselves. But we keep them there out of fear and complacency. At best, they slightly upset the equilibrium of our life every time we make contact with them — at worst, they steal from our sense of self-worth until we have nothing left. We cling to these inappropriate friends — people who are incapable of good friendship, people who have drifted from our lives or people we’ve outgrown — because we believe we have no choice, because we are too frightened of the confrontation required to erase them from our lives, or because we suspect we might deserve them. Everyone, at some stage in her life, has kept an unworthy friend around for the sake of convenience, cowardice or that private, but necessary sense of belonging. Any friend is better than no friends, we think. The more, the better. Any company is better than solitude.

The wrath of the devil comes against beginners as by a narrow path, for God does not give him so much license against them, but he advances on those who have defeated him as on a broad road, as though he had sworn not to forgive them, for his intention in making war by bad thoughts is to drive you to despair, or anger you, or make you mad. This is why David says that he sent you three things by his evil angels: tribulation which leads to despair, wrath which provokes to anger; and indignation which conduces to insanity. Lest you, who practice recollection, should fear these interior conflicts that lead to so much evil, know that it is not only on contemplatives the devil uses such artifices, rather, it is want of recollection which gives rise to wrong thoughts and imaginations.   Do not aim all the stones at the devil, for your interior battle may arise from many quarters. It will correspond to the quarter from where it comes. If God instigates it as a punishment for your many habitual faults, it will be a just war against those who wish to make a false friendship with the evil one, like those of whom Paul says: “God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without mercy.” [410]   The Apostle thus shows how God delivers his enemies into the hands of their foes, so that when we are in serious enmity against God with whom we must be in perfect peace, as a penalty for our sin he permits us to be delivered to our chief enemies, which are the vices. Hence follows exterior and interior war, and even, unless we return to him, combat in hell with the phantoms that strike with fiery weapons and devour with open mouth. [411]

All the heart wants is expanding friendship. It is not the kind of friendship that is a social satisfaction and can even lead to dependency and attachment. Rather, it is the friendship of other conscious hearts, who are in that state of remembrance and in that state of coherence and resonance. That's what lifts and heals us. That‘s why Sufis have their dergahs and communities. Sufism is not arranged as an individual tutorial. It‘s not a path for hermits. There may be periods when one benefits from solitude. However, there‘s transformation in friendship. The transformation results from knowing one another and accepting the truth that everything is purposeful. Whoever walks through the door of the Sufi dergah has been invited. We‘re all friends of the Friend. Community is part of the mechanism of transformation. Because Western society is so individualistic, we find ways of avoiding relationship and seek transformation that will occur at our own convenience or according to our own preferences. Sometimes people reach the stage where they say, „I might be better off alone. I think I‘m getting enough of this spiritual stuff that I could do it myself.“ They give up the friction of relationship and the challenge of it, and retreat into their own world. It‘s not usually a healthy sign. However, everyone is free. On this Path, no one is coerced. It‘s not a cult. There‘s no group pressure. If somebody walks away from a Sufi circle, nobody chases after them, except perhaps out of friendship. Sufis don‘t interfere with anybody‘s will. We all have free will. We are happy to find friends who share a common yearning. We are helped and healed by that yearning. We are healed by each other. (p. 27)

So we seek solace in friendships — long-term friends, friends born out of convenience, friends we bonded with last week on the bathroom line and will probably forget about in three days. And we seek solace in ourselves, because no matter how many group dinners you plan and brunches you eat and parties you attend, it is still possible that everyone around you will disappear.

Their marriage would fare much better if they built it upon a foundation of trust and friendship.

Technology promises us greater control, choice, and convenience in every aspect of our lives-- how we shop, whom we date, our friendships, our heart rates, our schedules. But it also sells us the illusion that minutely mapping out and controlling our lives, even if it were possible, is a worthwhile goal-- which it's not. Sleep offers just the opposite. While it makes us better at things our culture celebrates-- performing and doing-- it also teaches us how to trust and let go.

Why is it, when the person *telling* the story about how angry or hurt you got, or why you stopped speaking to or doing business with them, or severed the relationship; that person always conveniently omits what THEY did, to contribute to the situation? If you don't hesitate to bring the drama, you should be big enough to take credit for your supporting role.

Did you ever think maybe you’d just stay, ride it out, see what happened? Was that an option for you?” He didn’t ask defensively, though it took a bit to keep the edge from his voice. He was all but grilling her so he couldn’t go and get upset if he didn’t like the answers he got. But he was human, and this wasn’t any easier on him than it was on her. “It might have been.” “If?” He heard her take a steadying breath and felt himself bracing for her response. “If I’d felt about you the way I felt about the rest of your family. Like you were a brother or something.” “But?” “Looking for a little ego stroke?” She swatted at him then, tried for a playful laugh, but the serious undertone remained. “But I had feelings for you. Well, lust and feelings. We had a friendship, then I had lust. And I really didn’t think, even if you were interested in me, that was something you’d pursue, given your position as employer and me being temporary. So…I don’t know…” “But when you came back here to Maine you didn’t head out again.” “I didn’t go back to Australia either,” she reminded him. When he didn’t say anything for some time, she said, “What are you thinking? I’ve been pretty frank so go ahead, be honest with me.” “Okay,” he said. “I guess I can’t help but think that you didn’t head back out on the road, you didn’t come back to Australia either--but you also didn’t write, keep in touch. And not because you were out in the jungle somewhere, unable to drop a postcard in the mail. You were right here, with all the modern technological conveniences at your fingertips. But you didn’t send a single e-mail. Not even to Sadie. And I can’t help but think that maybe that means we were all a lot more important to you than you wanted to admit or keeping in touch, at least with her, would have been no big deal. You also haven’t even mentioned us to anyone here, as far as I know, other than your uncle. Which, given how long you stayed and how much we’d come to mean to you, seems odd to me, too. So…maybe the only way you thought you could get over us was to put us firmly in your rearview mirror. Only then…you never started looking ahead again either.” She said nothing, and a quick glance showed she was staring out the side window of the car, her hands in her lap, fingers twisting and untwisting. “Or maybe we really were easily left in the past, and the change in you is more because you got home and your entire family was living here, all together, for the first time in your adult life,” he said, giving her an out. “And it makes you want to stay, even though you don’t know what, precisely, you want to do here yourself.” He paused, then said the rest of what he was thinking, what he was feeling. “And maybe you stay because it’s the closest thing you can have to what you had started building with us, and remain safe while having it.

Modern conveniences equate with disposability. When things break, we throw them away. When friendships break, we throw them away. After all, there are so many people.

Moments later, confident but cautious, I stepped into my first classroom as Professor Ball. I couldn't have done it without the mentoring and friendship that John had showed me in the months between our meeting and his death a year later. Ever the marketing professor, he taught me that teaching was about customer service and that these 18-, 19-, and 20- year-old students were my customers. "It is not about knowing everything and dispensing wisdom from on high," he told me. "It is about reaching each student individually, heart to heart. It is about connecting with them as human beings in a way that meets their needs, not your convenience.

I felt a shifting in my brain, pieces of the past rearranging. All this time I’d been thinking in absolutes, like it was an either/or proposition: friends versus not friends, and if it ended badly, the whole thing must have been a lie. But maybe it was more complicated. There could be different types of friendship, and different stages within each one. Deep bonds of loyalty and affection, or ties that have more to do with convenience. Relationships that hold you back, and ones that grow with you.

human happiness buttons that can be pressed—the same basic factors such as friendship, health, community, overcoming challenges with your own ingenuity, and feeling in control of your life. These work for everyone. At the same time, most of us are tempted by the ideas of convenience, status, and luxury, and buying ourselves treats to satisfy these temptations. And we’re really good at justifying some of these trinkets as our true passions.

Comfort food. That was the only thing on Tae's mind as she loaded up her arms in the convenience store. Comfort food and…Riggs Copeland. Big, strong, protective, annoyingly sexy Riggs Copeland.

Fuck heightened consciousness—we aren’t birds. Fuck transcendence-addiction masquerading as evolution. Fuck ‘non-duality’ that conveniently removes everything uncomfortable from the unified field. Fuck ‘enlightenment’ without integrity. Fuck patriarchal detachment models presented as ‘the’ royal road to the ‘Kingdom’ of God—what about the Queendom— our only hope. Fuck “The New Earth” as described by dissociative and disembodied pain bypassers. Fuck the yoga ‘industry’ that feigns awareness it does not hold. Fuck vertical spirituality that ignores what is happening before our very eyes. Fuck the bullshit soulebrities who don’t give a shit about humanity. Fuck the guru who imagines himself realized. Fuck the New Cage movement and its trail of lies. Fuck any version of spirituality that doesn’t SERVE humanity. Fuck the story bashers. Fuck the victim bashers. Fuck the bloodied spiritual lie. Embrace enrealment—before it’s too fucking late.

I decide while I can, I'll take what this group will give me, accept the scraps. Even if I'm a replacement, a convenient placeholder, I'll take the warmth and friendship they offer for now. Because a part of me, somewhere deep and dark, I know she's right. I don't fit. And if I never get this family for myself, never get that group of supportive people to spend the rest of my days with, at least I'll have these memories to keep me warm

Comfort food. That was the only thing on Tae’s mind as she loaded up her arms in the convenience store. Comfort food and… Riggs Copeland. Big, strong, protective, annoyingly sexy Riggs Copeland She tried really hard to not repeat mistakes, but she wasn’t sure she could resist this particular one.

Friendship means little when it's convenient.

To one male seminarian, who complained that all the talk about discrimination dominated too much class time, Murray responded, 'If you have to live with anger, I have to live with pain. I'lI trade you both my pain, my sex, my race and my age--and see how you deport yourself in such circumstances. Barring that, try to imagine for 24 hours what it must be like to be a Negro in a predominantly white seminary, a woman in an institution dominated by men and for the convenience of men, some of whom radiate hostility even though they do not say a word, who are patronizing and kindly as long as I do not get out of my place, but who feel threatened by my intellect, my achievements, and my refusal to be suppressed.' Of their differences, Murray told him, 'If I can't take your judgmental statements and your anger, I am in the wrong place. If you cannot take my methods of fighting for survival, then you have chosen the wrong vocation.

Friendship means little when it’s convenient.

Becoming true friends and transcending our work friendship built on convenience, common ground, and office space?

The sad truth is that we live in a world that encourages selfishness, independence, convenience, isolation, and using people rather than loving them.

How are you getting on when it comes to building community? Are you still waiting for the church to build it for you, or have you worked out the role that you alone can play? It is up to us to take responsibility and allow people to be direct and honest in how we live our lives. The Bible says that your friendships are one way to measure your spiritual health. So how are you doing? Are you willing to give up some of your independence and convenience for friendship and community? Can you honestly say that you’re a friend? Can you say you’re in community right now?

Sometimes one meets someone and senses immediately that that person will be a close friend, almost as though one had known her before though clearly it is impossible. In a previous lifetime, perhaps. It would be very convenient, would it not, to have the sort of religion that believed in such a thing?

Stalin justified his position by saying: “China and Vietnam are sharing the border and related to each other. It’s convenient for China to help [Viet Minh].”39 Mao agreed with Stalin. Mao followed Stalin’s advice and met Ho in Moscow. Ho explained to Mao why the Viet Minh needed international help in their war against the French. Mao made it clear to Ho at their meetings that China would support North Vietnam in order to win the war against the French. Mao also “stressed the importance of reciprocating friendship.

university and I stayed put to look after Dad, we drifted apart. I realized then that our friendships were not based on loyalty or love but convenience and proximity.