False Friendship Quotes

True friends will always push you towards the great possibilities of your future, false friends will always chain you to the mistakes in your past.

Sometimes your dearest friend whom you reveal most of your secrets to becomes so deadly and unfriendly without knowing that they were not really your friend.

Fire False Friends as early as possible. Do it before they dig out the dream seeds you've planted! The earlier, the better; the quicker, the safer!

If the portraits of our absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew our memory of them and relieve our regret for their absence by a false and empty consolation, how much more pleasant are letters which bring us the written characters of the absent friend.

Never surrender your hopes and dreams to the fateful limitations others have placed on their own lives. The vision of your true destiny does not reside within the blinkered outlook of the naysayers and the doom prophets. Judge not by their words, but accept advice based on the evidence of actual results. Do not be surprised should you find a complete absence of anything mystical or miraculous in the manifested reality of those who are so eager to advise you. Friends and family who suffer the lack of abundance, joy, love, fulfillment and prosperity in their own lives really have no business imposing their self-limiting beliefs on your reality experience.

Not all friends know they have lost you.

Fire false friends. They are in to fast-forward your fall and failure.

Learning After some time, you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and imprisoning a soul; You learn that love does not equal sex, and that company does not equal security, and you start to learn…. That kisses are not contracts and gifts are not promises, and you start to accept defeat with the head up high and open eyes, and you learn to build all roads on today, because the terrain of tomorrow is too insecure for plans… and the future has its own way of falling apart in half. And you learn that if it’s too much even the warmth of the sun can burn. So you plant your own garden and embellish your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring flowers to you. And you learn that you can actually bear hardship, that you are actually strong, and you are actually worthy, and you learn and learn…and so every day. Over time you learn that being with someone because they offer you a good future, means that sooner or later you’ll want to return to your past. Over time you comprehend that only who is capable of loving you with your flaws, with no intention of changing you can bring you all happiness. Over time you learn that if you are with a person only to accompany your own solitude, irremediably you’ll end up wishing not to see them again. Over time you learn that real friends are few and whoever doesn’t fight for them, sooner or later, will find himself surrounded only with false friendships. Over time you learn that words spoken in moments of anger continue hurting throughout a lifetime. Over time you learn that everyone can apologize, but forgiveness is an attribute solely of great souls. Over time you comprehend that if you have hurt a friend harshly it is very likely that your friendship will never be the same. Over time you realize that despite being happy with your friends, you cry for those you let go. Over time you realize that every experience lived, with each person, is unrepeatable. Over time you realize that whoever humiliates or scorns another human being, sooner or later will suffer the same humiliations or scorn in tenfold. Over time you learn to build your roads on today, because the path of tomorrow doesn’t exist. Over time you comprehend that rushing things or forcing them to happen causes the finale to be different form expected. Over time you realize that in fact the best was not the future, but the moment you were living just that instant. Over time you will see that even when you are happy with those around you, you’ll yearn for those who walked away. Over time you will learn to forgive or ask for forgiveness, say you love, say you miss, say you need, say you want to be friends, since before a grave, it will no longer make sense. But unfortunately, only over time…

True friends esteem you of greater worth than you feel deserving. False friends demand you prove that worth.

It is not lies or a lack of loyalty that ends a relationship. It is the agonizing truth that one person feels in their heart on a daily basis. It is realizing that you are coping and not living. It is the false belief that there is a verse, quote, phrase or talk that will magically make you feel content, complete or not care. However, it doesn’t last longer than a few days, before your mind and heart goes back to what it wants. It is the moment you realize that you left without ever leaving. It is the moment you realize that fear, shame or guilt is the only thing standing in the way of the life God meant for you to live.

There’s nothing lonelier than empty relationships. At least when you’re alone you can be yourself, but when you’re in empty relationships you can’t even be yourself. You can be real alone, or you can be a ghost with false friends. Pulse proximity is not intimacy, and it’s worse than no friends at all.

It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.

Fake friends are like snow flakes. They descend in their thousands. They disappear in seconds.

There are few things worse than mistaking an enemy for a friend.

If you love somebody, tell them. If there is conflict, let it go and fight instead for peace. Break the numb false silence and break the distance too. Laugh and cry and apologize and start again. This life is short and fragile but friendship is among the greatest miracles.

Each mind conceives god in its own way. There may be as many variation of the god figure as there are people in the world

Remember the friends who stuck with you when they thought you had nothing.

False friends can be bought, but true friendship is priceless.

If the years have taught me one thing it's that those who care are always scarce. Those who genuinely care; not the acquaintances, false friends or those with similar aspirations. The few who seek your company, the souls who would plainly step off the world for you. Once you resolve to ignore them, only regret will follow.

Convince people that you need them, and watch what they do.

Houdini, the magician who debunked magic, could not bear to see the great rationalist [Arthur Conan] Doyle enchanted by ghosts and frauds. And so he did what any friend would: He set out to prove spiritualism false and rob his friend Doyle of the only comforting fiction that was keeping him sane. It was the least he could do.

It is a friend's duty that he does not leave his friend in a difficult position but provide intimacy and support to him. In difficulty who leaves is a false and the one not quitting is a true friend.

Atheists are the most honest of the human race. These people are unable to live a double life; they are unable to lie to themselves. Of course it's an evolutionary handicap, and if that handicap was widespread, our species would run the risk of extinction

Don't create unbelief or doubt in people's minds. When you do so you ruin their lives and you have nothing to give them in its place. It's ok if people delude themselves; those delusions keep their day running.

‎As I get older I see that running has changed for me. What used to be about burning calories is now more about burning up what is false. Lies I used to tell myself about who I was and what I could do, friendships that cannot withstand hills or miles, the approval I no longer need to seek, and solidarity that cannot bear silence. I run to burn up what I don't need and ignite what I do.

But on a Sunday morning when I want to grab an omelet over girl talk, I’m at a loss. My Chicago friends are the let’s-get-dinner-on-the-books-a-month-in-advance type. We email, trading dates until we find an open calendar slot amidst our tight schedules of workout classes, volunteer obligations (no false pretenses here, the volunteers are my friends, not me, sadly), work events, concert tickets and other dinners scheduled with other girls. I’m looking for someone to invite to watch The Biggest Loser with me at the last minute or to text “pedicure in half an hour?” on a Saturday morning. To me, that’s what BFFs are.

To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?

And what is a friend? More than a father, more than a brother: a traveling companion, with him, you can conquer the impossible, even if you must lose it later. Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing. It is a friend that you communicate the awakening of a desire, the birth of a vision or a terror, the anguish of seeing the sun disappear or of finding that order and justice are no more. That's what you can talk about with a friend. Is the soul immortal, and if so why are we afraid to die? If God exists, how can we lay claim to freedom, since He is its beginning and its end? What is death, when you come down to it? The closing of a parenthesis, and nothing more? And what about life? In the mouth of a philosopher, these questions may have a false ring, but asked during adolescence or friendship, they have the power to change being: a look burns and ordinary gestures tend to transcend themselves. What is a friend? Someone who for the first time makes you aware of your loneliness and his, and helps you to escape so you in turn can help him. Thanks to him who you can hold your tongue without shame and talk freely without risk. That's it.

Do not look for company at all costs, and especially do not allow loneliness to lead you to fickle love or false friendship.

Deception' is the word I most associate with anorexia and the treachery which comes from falsehood. The illness appears inviting. It would seem to offer something to those unwary or unlucky enough to suffer from it - friendship, a get-out, or a haven - when, in fact, it is a trap.

Once you believe that god is not a private property of anybody, you are on your way to becoming a new messiah. Maybe your own if not the world's

At the end of the day, there are very few people around you who truly want to see you peaceful, happy and content. Most of your friends only want to see you happy, peaceful and content, in ratio to their own happiness, peace and contentment. It's like, "Yeah, I want all your dreams to come true and I want to see you smile, but only for as much as I smile and only in proportion to how many of my own dreams come true." That's what people today call, "friendship" and "care". It's not really friendship and it's not really care. Then there's like one or two people who would celebrate your own happiness and success even if it's out of proportion to their own. And that's a real blessing right there, that's a real friendship.

Real loved one's aren't afraid, and will suggest to you, what's in your best interest... because they wouldn't want too see you suffer the consequences of your, sideways, emotional impulse(s). To see you crash and burn is the gratification of [the] 'yes folk' lurking in your corner. You may not agree, but always consider the voice(s) that have consistently kept it real.

When you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you can't really fully and honestly take those back, you know? I mean, there are highlights. And there are streaks. And then there are skunk stripes.

Sometimes I want the friendship of a man but other times I only want his passion. Friendship can be false; passion never lies.

This hoary head again thy yoke shall bear: Remembering that my fairest years By Thee were marked with sighs and tears, I think thy friendship false, and shun the guileful snare.

An atheist is someone who is disappointed in his search of god. He is a man who strongly needed god but couldn't find him. Atheism is a cry of despair

If you need me, I'm here. If I am not here, why would you need me for?

In reading, friendship is suddenly brought back to its original purity. There is no false amiability with books. If we spend the evening with these friends, it is because we genuinely want to.

Cold, hunger, and sleeplessness rendered any friendship impossible, and Dugaev – despite his youth – understood the falseness of the belief that friendship could be tempered by misery and tragedy. For friendship to be friendship, its foundation had to be laid before living conditions reached that last border beyond which no human emotion was left to a man – only mistrust, rage, and lies. Dugaev remembered well the northern proverb that listed the three commandments of prison life: ‘Don’t believe, don’t fear, don’t ask.

A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you’re in the same room with him, you know it. But false straightforwardness is like a knife in the back. False friendship is the worst. Avoid it at all costs. If you’re honest and straightforward and mean well, it should show in your eyes. It should be unmistakable.

Why doesn't the pope convert to Calvinism? Why doesn't the Dalai Lama, convert to Christianity, why doesn't Billy Graham convert to Islam, Why doesn't the Ayatollahs convert to Buddhism, Why isn't Buddhism swept away? Religious leaders know that all religions are equal; they know that no one of them has the monopoly to the knowledge of God. They know that each religion is trying to find the hidden God and that no one religion can claim to have found him beyond doubt. That's why they remain where they are and respect each other.

Hope can be foolish or misguided, but there was no such thing as false hope. Hope was always true even when there was no evidence to support its claim.” - Liam

After a decade of false friendship, Larry would finally get his revenge. In

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Ephesians 4, 14). Having a clear Faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching', looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an 'Adult' means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth.

Be careful in your relations with those in power; they draw you close or allow you to approach them only when they need you. They are your friends when your friendship is useful to them and affords them pleasure, but they forget you when you are in trouble. Elie Wiesel quoting Rabban Gamliel

The key to understnading masculinity is Jesus Christ. Jesus was tough with religious blockheads, false teachers, the proud, and bullies. Jesus was tender with women, children, and those who were suffering or humble. Additionally, Jesus took responsability for Himself. He worked a jon for the first thirty years of His life, swinging a hammer as a carpenter. He also took responsability for us on the cross, where He substituted Himself and died in our place for our sins. My sins are my fault, not Jesus'fault, but Jesus has made them His responsability. This is the essence of the gospel, the "good news". If you understand this, it will change how you view masculinity.

There’s nothing worse than a wolf befriending sheep. Avoid false friendship at all costs. If you are good, straightforward, and well meaning it should show in your eyes and not escape notice.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 11.15

Dear my strong girls, you will all go through that phase of life making a mistake of helping a toxic girl whose friendship with you turns into her self-interest. This kind of girls is a real burden towards the empowerment of other females as they can never get past their own insecurity and grow out of high-school-like drama. Despite how advanced we are in educating modern women, this type will still go through life living in identity crisis, endlessly looking for providers of any kind at the end of the day. They can never stand up for others or things that matter because they can't stand up for themselves. They care what everyone thinks only doing things to impress men, friends, strangers, everyone in society except themselves, while at the same time can't stand seeing other women with purpose get what those women want in life. But let me tell you, this is nothing new, let them compete and compare with you as much as they wish, be it your career, love or spirit. You know who you are and you will know who your true girls are by weeding out girls that break our girlie code of honor, but do me a favor by losing this type of people for good. Remind yourself to never waste time with a person who likes to betray others' trust, never. Disloyalty is a trait that can't be cured. Bless yourself that you see a person's true colors sooner than later. With love, your mama. XOXO

We are called at certain moments to comfort people who are enduring some trauma. Many of us don't know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show up. They provide a ministry of presence. Next, they don't compare. The sensitive person understands that each person's ordeal is unique and should not be compared to anyone else's. Next, they do the practical things--making lunch, dusting the room, washing the towels. Finally, they don't try to minimize what is going on. They don't attempt to reassure with false, saccharine sentiments. They don't say that the pain is all for the best. They don't search for silver linings. They do what wise souls do in the presence of tragedy and trauma. They practice a passive activism. They don't bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. She just sits simply through the nights of pain and darkness, being practical, human, simple, and direct.

And it is in New York I have those strangest things of all: human friendships. Not many friendships and not of spent familiarities: for I don't like actual human beings too much around me. But yet friendships made of the edges of thoughts and vivid pathos and pregnant odds and ends of nervous human flesh and fire. It is in New York I go to the apartment of a Friend at the end of an afternoon. In the apartment are some persons having tea, men and women. The Friend greets me at the door. She wears maybe a dress of thin dark and light silk, shaped in the quaint outlandish fashion of the hour. And she has shrewd kindly eyes like a Rembrandt portrait, and a worn New-York-ish Latin-ish brain and heart both of which are made of steel, sparkle and the very plain red meat of living. She says, 'Hello-Mary-Mac-Lane,' and clasps my hand, and we exchange a glance of no real understanding at all but suggesting warmed challenge of personality, and an oblique sweet call of depth to depth, and of friendship which by mere force of preference and of our separate quality and calibre is true rather than false. So close and no closer may friendship be. And friendship with-all, is closer than any love. It is the closest human beings ever come to meeting.

43. To his friend a man should bear him as friend, to him and a friend of his; but let him beware that he be not the friend of one who is friend to his foe. 44. Hast thou a friend whom thou trustest well, from whom thou cravest good? Share thy mind with him, gifts exchange with him, fare to find him oft. 45. But hast thou one whom thou trusbut falsely think, and leasing pay for a lie. 47. Young was I once, I walked alone, and bewildered seemed in the way; then I found me another and rich I thought me, for man is the joy of man. 50. The pine tree wastes which is perched on the hill, nor bark nor needles shelter it; such is the man whom none doth love; for what should he longer live?

Remember the nature of knowing insider information. It's like a drug. It makes you feel both superior and special. But what if those rumors are false? And even if they are true, you didn't experience them firsthand, and there is most likely a slant to the story you know nothing about.

While there is no solution to existential isolation, therapists must discourage false solutions. One’s efforts to escape isolation can sabotage one’s relationships with other people. Many a friendship or marriage has failed because, instead of relating to, and caring for, one another, one person uses another as a shield against isolation.

When I became a Christian as a teenager, I gathered a false belief to myself that my Christian friends would be my forever friends. Surely, since we both loved Jesus and followed Him, we would always be in each other's lives. No one would hurt the other -- because Jesus! It didn't take long for that theory of mine to be tested by reality.

At times she found Lucy’s friendship stifling, though if pressed, she would have to admit that the extremity of Lucy’s devotion gave her a sense of comfort that far outweighed the claustrophobia, perhaps because Florence’s mother had trained her early on to recognize only the most acute forms of emotion. Anything tempered felt cold and false to her.

They try and figure each other out, because there's fuck-all else to do. They each carry a private register of who is genuinely not OK, who is liable to go psycho, who is hard, who is a pussy, who is actually alright, and friendship seeps into the gaps of these false registers in unexpected ways, just as hatred does, just as terrible loneliness does.

It is, I think, this glamour, this magic, this incomparable keying up of the spirit in a time of mortal conflict, which constitute the pacifist's real problem--a problem still incompletely imagined and still quite unsolved. The causes of war are always falsely represented; its honour is dishonest and its glory meretricious, but the challenge to spiritual endurance, the intense sharpening of all the senses, the vitalising consciousness of common peril for a common end, remain to allure those boys and girls who have just reached the age when love and friendship and adventure call more persistently than at any later time. The glamour may be the mere delirium of fever, which as soon as war is over dies out and shows itself for the will-o'-the-wisp that it is, but while it lasts, no emotion known to man seems as yet to have quite the compelling power of this enlarged vitality.

Am I so difficult to understand and so easy to misunderstand in all my intentions, plans, and friendships? Ah, we lonely ones and free spirits—it is borne home to us that in some way or other we constantly appear different from what we think. Whereas we wish for nothing more than truth and straightforwardness, we are surrounded by a net of misunderstanding, and despite our most ardent wishes we cannot help our actions being smothered in a cloud of false opinion, attempted compromises, semi-concessions, charitable silence, and erroneous interpretations. Such things gather a weight of melancholy on our brow; for we hate more than death the thought that pretence should be necessary, and such incessant chafing against these things makes us volcanic and menacing. From time to time we avenge ourselves for all our enforced concealment and compulsory self-restraint. We emerge from our cells with terrible faces, our words and deeds are then explosions, and it is not beyond the verge of possibility that we perish through ourselves. Thus dangerously do I live! It is precisely we solitary ones that require love and companions in whose presence we may be open and simple, and the eternal struggle of silence and dissimulation can cease.

Do not care for people and see who will care for you Hence, you will know whether your friendship is false or true

God has not yet revealed himself to no one in no unclear terms. Religions are attempts to find him; on that level they are all equal

God was giving me a friendship do-over, and I determined to learn from my false starts, mistakes, and all those seedling friendships I’d never truly watered. Eight

If you can hate what you loved, then you never really loved it!

Les faux savants sont comme tes amis qui chantent avec les chansons anglaises ; de loin, tu penses qu'ils connaissent les paroles par cœur, mais une fois la chanson s'arrête, tu te rends compte qu'ils ne savent rien!

Even if you were taken out of school for want of money, Hugh. It's no excuse for false values. The world is full of poor people who understand that love and friendship are more important than riches - Maisie Greenbourne

Charity must teach us that friendship is a holy thing, and that it is neither charitable nor holy to base our friendship on falsehood. We can be, in some sense, friends to all men because there is no man on earth with whom we do not have something in common. But it would be false to treat too many men as intimate friends. It is not possible to be intimate with more than very few, because there are only very few in the world with whom we have practically everything in common.

The first hint that anyone is offering us the highest love of all is a terrible shock. This is so well recognised that spiteful people will pretend to be loving us with Charity precisely because they know that it will wound us. To say to one who expects a renewal of Affection, Friendship, or Eros, ‘I forgive you as a Christian’ is merely a way of continuing the quarrel. Those who say it are of course lying. But the thing would not be falsely said in order to wound unless, if it were true, it would be wounding.

His feelings towards his friends were, that while they stuck to him he would stick to them; that he would work with them shoulder to shoulder; that he would be faithful to the faithful. He knew nothing of the beautiful love which can be true to a false friend.

The enemy of mine enemy is not necessarily also my friend!..For a friend and ally today, maybe an enemy and adversary tomorrow!...friendships and alliances which are forged upon necessity as opposed to mutually shared respect and common values..Is a House built upon a foundation of mud!

So I was going to let it go.  And then he said something about sickness being 80% mental.  And then the poor victim of his babbling said, “Really?”  And I couldn’t help myself. “No,” I interjected, “not really.”  Because at a certain point my brain ignores the social instinct and says that when people are spreading demonstrably false medical information correcting that is more important than being polite.  So I was an asshole.  And I was just enough of an asshole to make my point without permanently alienating our friendship, because, like I said, I’m good at the asshole thing.

When we miss the meaning of a language, we miss the real essence and impact of communication. If we lose the real meaning of a language, we lose the real understanding of a language. Friendship is developed and nurtured through effective communication and that is the great tool that shapes friendship. A good communication, regardless of how short it might be is a great litmus paper that proves who a true friend or false friend is. A good communication does not only trigger the best bond but it also uncovers things in the heart that are hidden from the eyes. Without an effective communication, real friendship and real love between two great people is just like two great mountains with a valley between them. Without communication, we lose what we could have heard from real people. When we miss the meaning of a language, we miss the real essence and impact of communication!!!

If you teach people that something as deep inside them as their very personality is either a source of unimaginable shame or unmentionable sin, and if you tell them that their only ethical direction is either the suppression of that self in a life of suffering or a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation, then it is perhaps not surprising that their moral and sexual behavior becomes wildly dichotic; that it veers from compulsive activity to shame and withdrawal; or that it becomes anesthetized by drugs or alcohol or fatally distorted by the false, crude ideology of easy prophets. A

Historians imposed false order upon random events, too, probably without even realizing what they were doing. Amos had a phrase for this. “Creeping determinism,” he called it—and jotted in his notes one of its many costs: “He who sees the past as surprise-free is bound to have a future full of surprises.

FRIENDSHIP, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul. The sea was calm and the sky was blue; Merrily, merrily sailed we two. (High barometer maketh glad.) On the tipsy ship, with a dreadful shout, The tempest descended and we fell out. (O the walking is nasty bad!) Armit Huff Bettle

Looking back into childhood is like turning a telescope the wrong way around. Everything appears in miniature, but with a clarity it probably does not deserve; moreover it has become concentrated and stylized, taking shape in symbolism. Thus it is that I sometimes see my infant self as having been set down before a blank slate on which to construct a map or schema of the external world, and as hesitantly beginning to sketch it, with many false starts and much rubbing-out, the anatomy of my universe. Happiness and sorrow, love and friendship, hostility, a sense of guilt and more abstract concepts still, must all find a place somewhere, much as an architect lays out the plan of a house he is designing - hall, dining-room and bedrooms - but must not forget the bathroom. In a child’s map, too, some of the rooms are connected by a serving-hatch, while others are sealed off behind baize doors. How can the fragments possibly be combined to make sense? Yet this map or finished diagram, constructed in the course of ten or twelve years’ puzzling, refuses to be ignored, and for some time to come will make itself felt as bones through flesh, to emerge as the complex organism which adults think of as their philosophy of life. Presumably it has its origins in both heredity and enviorment. So with heredity I shall begin.

The despicable phoniness of people who say, “Listen, I’m going to level with you here.” What does that mean? It shouldn’t even need to be said. It should be obvious—written in block letters on your forehead. It should be audible in your voice, visible in your eyes, like a lover who looks into your face and takes in the whole story at a glance. A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you’re in the same room with him, you know it. But false straightforwardness is like a knife in the back. False friendship is the worst. Avoid it at all costs. If you’re honest and straightforward and mean well, it should show in your eyes. It should be unmistakable.

Real loved one's aren't afraid, and will suggest to you, what's in your best interest because they wouldn't want too see you suffer the consequences of, sideways, emotional impulse(s). To see you crash and burn, time after time, is the gratification of 'yes folk' lurking in your corner. You may not agree, but always consider the voice(s) that have consistently kept it real.

Welcome to the island of misfit toys, Dex.” I expand my hands in front of me, gesturing to the room as I walk backward. “The only thing I expect from my friends is loyalty and honesty. What they choose to do apart from that is up to them. I’ve no room to judge anyone. But here’s a tip. You might want to stop tryin’ to understand me because you’re not going to like what you find. Okay?

As you move along life’s journey, you will also become acquainted with people who do not believe in God. Many of them have not yet found divine truth and don’t know where to look for it. You could be of help to them there. But as you mingle with nonbelievers, be aware that a few may not have your best interest at heart. As soon as you discern that, flee from them quickly and permanently.

What if something happens to me out here and I can’t get home again?” Susan worried. “I’ll take care of you,” Martie promised, although in light of her own peculiar state of mind, the promise might prove empty. “But what if something happens to you?” “Nothing is going to happen to me,” Martie vowed as she switched on the windshield wipers. “Something can happen to anybody. Look at what happened to me.

I find it hard to understand how men with some claim to genius—Nietzsche, for instance—can have been such simpletons as to ascribe to it a certain intellectual value, and consequently to deny themselves friendships in which intellectual esteem would have no part. Yes, it has always been a surprise to me to find a man who carried sincerity towards himself to so high a pitch as to cut himself off, by a scruple of conscience, from Wagner’s music, imagining that the truth could ever be attained by the mode of expression, naturally vague and inadequate, which our actions in general and acts of friendship in particular furnish, or that there could be any kind of significance in the fact of one’s leaving one’s work to go and see a friend and shed tears with him on hearing the false report that the Louvre was burned.

The world had two types of people. The first were the takers. They only noticed those who could help them, offering friendship for false reasons—their egos preventing improvement of their superficial interest. The second were the givers. Those who knew they were being taken advantage of but couldn’t stop it. They’d give and give until they had nothing left. But by giving, they saw things, watching silently in the shadows.

Speaking to a foreigner was the dream of every student, and my opportunity came at last. When I got back from my trip down the Yangtze, I learned that my year was being sent in October to a port in the south called Zhanjiang to practice our English with foreign sailors. I was thrilled. Zhanjiang was about 75 miles from Chengdu, a journey of two days and two nights by rail. It was the southernmost large port in China, and quite near the Vietnamese border. It felt like a foreign country, with turn-of-the-century colonial-style buildings, pastiche Romanesque arches, rose windows, and large verandas with colorful parasols. The local people spoke Cantonese, which was almost a foreign language. The air smelled of the unfamiliar sea, exotic tropical vegetation, and an altogether bigger world. But my excitement at being there was constantly doused by frustration. We were accompanied by a political supervisor and three lecturers, who decided that, although we were staying only a mile from the sea, we were not to be allowed anywhere near it. The harbor itself was closed to outsiders, for fear of 'sabotage' or defection. We were told that a student from Guangzhou had managed to stow away once in a cargo steamer, not realizing that the hold would be sealed for weeks, by which time he had perished. We had to restrict our movements to a clearly defined area of a few blocks around our residence. Regulations like these were part of our daily life, but they never failed to infuriate me. One day I was seized by an absolute compulsion to get out. I faked illness and got permission to go to a hospital in the middle of the city. I wandered the streets desperately trying to spot the sea, without success. The local people were unhelpful: they did not like non-Cantonese speakers, and refused to understand me. We stayed in the port for three weeks, and only once were we allowed, as a special treat, to go to an island to see the ocean. As the point of being there was to talk to the sailors, we were organized into small groups to take turns working in the two places they were allowed to frequent: the Friendship Store, which sold goods for hard currency, and the Sailors' Club, which had a bar, a restaurant, a billiards room, and a ping-pong room. There were strict rules about how we could talk to the sailors. We were not allowed to speak to them alone, except for brief exchanges over the counter of the Friendship Store. If we were asked our names and addresses, under no circumstances were we to give our real ones. We all prepared a false name and a nonexistent address. After every conversation, we had to write a detailed report of what had been said which was standard practice for anyone who had contact with foreigners. We were warned over and over again about the importance of observing 'discipline in foreign contacts' (she waifi-lu). Otherwise, we were told, not only would we get into serious trouble, other students would be banned from coming.

On the contrary, I’m too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.

I know that these things will never come back. I may see the rocks again, and smell the flowers, and watch the dawn sunshine chase the shadows from the old sulphuric-colored walls, but the light that sprang from the heightened consciousness of wartime, the glory seen by the enraptured ingenious eyes of twenty-two, will be upon them no more. I am a girl no longer, and the world, for all its excitements of chosen work and individualistic play, has grown tame in comparison with Malta during those years of our anguish. It is, I think, this glamour, this magic, this incomparable keying up of the spirit in a time of mortal conflict, which constitute the pacifist’s real problem — a problem still incompletely imagined, and still quite unresolved. The causes of war are always falsely represented; its honour is dishonest and its glory meretricious, but the challenge to spiritual endurance, the intense sharpening of all the senses, the vitalising consciousness of common peril for a common end, remain to allure those boys and girls who have just reached the age when love and friendship and adventure call more persistently than at any later time. The glamour may be the mere delirium of fever, which as soon as war is over dies out and shows itself for the will-o’-the-wisp that it is, but while it lasts no emotion known to man seems as yet to have quite the compelling power of this enlarged vitality.

any. Make sure your drink doesn’t get spiked. Don’t drink too much to make yourself vulnerable. Make sure you don’t get an unlicensed cab. Don’t let yourself get picked in the wrong way. Look at this woman in the papers who has had more than three boyfriends – the slut. A guy grabbing your arse in the club is a compliment. A guy telling you you’re ugly is actually him saying he likes you. Do you know how many men are falsely accused of rape? Isn’t it disgusting? Don’t ever lie about something so terrible. We won’t believe you anyway. Go to a festival and see no women onstage, but try to have fun, when it’s not safe to be near the front. You’re so basic to put a flower in your hair. Go to the cinema and see men grow, and women help them grow while wearing next to no clothes and then getting raped and dying. Give it an Oscar. Fuck like a porn star. Make me a sandwich. Stop being difficult. Shut up. Put up. Use this anti-ageing cream. Nobody wants to fuck you any more, Karen. Oh, come on, it’s only a joke.

SADNESSES OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[tic]ated birds; Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness . . .    INTERPERSONAL SADNESSES: Sadness of being sad in front of one’s parent; Sa[dn]ess of false love; Sadness of love [sic]; Friendship sadness; Sadness of a bad conversation; Sadness of the could-have-been; Secret sadness . . . 

Stephen was honourable and courageous; she was steadfast in friendship and selfless in loving; intolerable to think that her only companions must be men and women like Jonathan Brockett—and yet—after all what else? What remained? Loneliness, or worse still, far worse because it so deeply degraded the spirit, a life of perpetual subterfuge, of guarded opinions and guarded actions, of lies of omission if not of speech, of becoming an accomplice in the world's injustice by maintaining at all times a judicious silence, making and keeping the friends one respected, on false pretences, because if they knew they would turn aside, even the friends one respected.

What were you thinking of just now?” he asked instead of answering my question. He walked over to the window, stood beside me and joined me looking out. We gazed across the Elbe River, marveling at the amazing and incredible beauty spread out before us in the glorious sunny early morning. Then he continued, “When we came and opened the door, your face was so intent on some sort of dream. Not a happy one I think,” it was a very gentle tone, the loving nuances. I saw the look of longing in his eyes and my heart skipped a crazy beat. I clasped my hand more firmly and gazed toward the view of the far line that marked the edge of the Elbe river of Hamburg Harbor. I was thinking about Hamburg,” I told him. “Thinking about the escape they seem to offer.” “Escape?” he asked. “I would have said a prison, rather.” “That, too. It’s a false escape of course. I was thinking about their dangers, too. “Go on,” he said. Then I put my fancy into words. “I suppose I used to love the feeling of shutting out the world, of drawing a line of that water in the harbor around me and letting all the achingly familiar scenes stay outside the line. I started to cry. “It’s been years, Adrian. I kept everything in my heart because that’s what all was left; everything, absolutely everything. It’s completely messed up and you have no idea, at all. I was left alone to mourn.

Friendship between tow persons, or two nations, is an unbreakable bond, a tie which cannot be cut. An honourable heart does not cast aside a friend because he is in trouble, nor even if he changes his nature and becomes a criminal. Between two nations friendship must also be eternal, else the friend is false and being false in one event was always false. And what was our crime against the Americans? The Great Change? But is it a crime to change a government? By whose law can it be called a crime? It is of no more importance, between friends, than for one to change his garment! For this lack of reason our love for Americans is changed to hate. I fear for the future! A generation is growing up here in our country which has never seen an American face or heard an American voice. What do they know of Americans except to hate them as they are taught to do? There is no hate so dangerous as that which once was love. .... - To the Americans, Communism is a crime. They will have none of it. - But why, when it is ours, not theirs? .... - I suppose this American concern with a form of government springs from their own history. Their ancestors fled from Europe to escape tyranny from their ancient rulers. Freedom was their dream. To them, therefore, tyranny is endemic in Communism. They will have none of it. It is not we who are Chinese whom they hate. It is the tyranny they imagine.

SOME People are subject to a certain delicacy of passion,1 which makes them extremely sensible to all the accidents of life, and gives them a lively joy upon every prosperous event, as well as a piercing grief, when they meet with misfortunes and adversity. Favours and good offices° easily engage their friendship; while the smallest injury provokes their resentment. Any honour or mark of distinction elevates them above measure; but they are as sensibly touched with contempt.° People of this character have, no doubt, more lively enjoyments, as well as more pungent° sorrows, than men of cool and sedate tempers: But, I believe, when every thing is balanced, there is no one, who would not rather be of the latter character, were he entirely master of his own disposition. Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal: And when a person, that has this sensibility° of temper, meets with any misfortune, his sorrow or resentment takes entire possession of him, and deprives him of all relish in the common occurrences of life; the right enjoyment of which forms the chief part of our happiness. Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains; so that a sensible temper must meet with fewer trials in the former way than in the latter. Not to mention, that men of such lively passions are apt to be transported beyond all bounds of prudence and discretion, and to take false steps in the conduct of life, which are often irretrievable. There

Any Justification that does not lead to Biblical sanctification and mortification of sinful desires is a false justification no matter how many Solas you attach to it”. “See that your chief study be about the heart, that there God’s image may be planted, and his interest advanced, and the interest of the world and flesh subdued, and the love of every sin cast out, and the love of holiness succeed; and that you content not yourselves with seeming to do good in outward acts, when you are bad yourselves, and strangers to the great internal duties. The first and great work of a Christian is about his heart.” ~ Richard Baxter Never forget that truth is more important to the church than peace ~ JC Ryle "Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless.” ~ Francis Schaeffer I am not permitted to let my love be so merciful as to tolerate and endure false doctrine. When faith and doctrine are concerned and endangered, neither love nor patience are in order...when these are concerned, (neither toleration nor mercy are in order, but only anger, dispute, and destruction - to be sure, only with the Word of God as our weapon. ~ Martin Luther “Truth must be spoken, however it be taken.” ~ John Trapp “Hard words, if they be true, are better than soft words if they be false.” – C.H. Spurgeon “Oh my brethren, Bold hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards” – CH Spurgeon “The Bible says Iron sharpens Iron, But if your words don't have any iron in them, you ain't sharpening anyone”. “Peace often comes as a result of conflict!” ~ Don P Mt 18:15-17 Rom 12:18 “Peace if possible, truth at all costs.” ~ Martin Luther “The Scriptures argue and debate and dispute; they are full of polemics… We should always regret the necessity; but though we regret it and bemoan it, when we feel that a vital matter is at stake we must engage in argument. We must earnestly contend for the truth, and we are all called upon to do that by the New Testament.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Romans – Atonement and Justification) “It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher “Truth bites and it stings and it has a blade on it.” ~ Paul Washer Soft words produce hard hearts. Show me a church where soft words are preached and I will show you a church of hard hearts. Jeremiah said that the word of God is a hammer that shatters. Hard Preaching produces soft hearts. ~ J. MacArthur Glory follows afflictions, not as the day follows the night but as the spring follows the winter; for the winter prepares the earth for the spring, so do afflictions sanctified, prepare the soul for glory. ~ Richard Sibbes “Cowards never won heaven. Do not claim that you are begotten of God and have His royal blood running in your veins unless you can prove your lineage by this heroic spirit: to dare to be holy in spite of men and devils.” ~ William Gurnall

The savage lives within himself; social man lives always outside himself; he knows how to live only in the opinion of others, it is, so to speak, from their judgement alone that he derives the sense of his own existence. It is not my subject here to show how such a disposition gives birth to so much indifference to good and evil coupled with such beautiful talk about morality; or how, as everything is reduced to appearances, everything comes to be false and warped: honour, friendship, virtue, and often even vices themselves, since in the end men discover the secret of boasting about vices; or show how, as a result of always asking others what we are and never daring to put the question to ourselves in the midst of so much philosophy, humanity, civility and so many sublime maxims, we have only façades, deceptive and frivolous, honour without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.

That they were false, the general had learnt from the very person who had suggested them, from Thorpe himself, whom he had chanced to meet again in town, and who, under the influence of exactly opposite feelings, irritated by Catherine’s refusal, and yet more by the failure of a very recent endeavour to accomplish a reconciliation between Morland and Isabella, convinced that they were separated forever, and spurning a friendship which could be no longer serviceable, hastened to contradict all that he had said before to the advantage of the Morlands—confessed himself to have been totally mistaken in his opinion of their circumstances and character, misled by the rhodomontade of his friend to believe his father a man of substance and credit, whereas the transactions of the two or three last weeks proved him to be neither; for after coming eagerly forward on the first overture of a marriage between the families, with the most liberal proposals, he had, on being brought to the point by the shrewdness of the relator, been constrained to acknowledge himself incapable of giving the young people even a decent support. They

God has made me so that when once I love I love for ever, and so I continue to pray for this girl and I love her still. When I saw how Céline loved one of the nuns, I tried to imitate her, but I didn’t succeed, as I didn’t know how to get into people’s good graces. It was a fortunate ignorance which has saved me from much evil. I am profoundly grateful to Jesus who has never let me find anything but bitterness in earthly friendships. With a nature like mine, I should have been trapped and had my wings clipped and then how should I have “flown away and found rest”? It’s impossible for one bound by human affection to have intimate union with God. I’ve seen so many souls, dazzled by this deluding light, fly into it and burn their wings like silly moths. Then they turn again to the true unfading light of love and, with new and more splendid wings, fly to Jesus, that divine Fire which burns yet does not destroy. I know that Jesus considered me too weak to be exposed to temptation. If I had seen this false light shining before me, I should have been wholly destroyed. I’ve been saved from that. I have found nothing but bitterness where stronger souls have found happiness and yet remained properly detached. So it’s no merit on my part that I never became entangled by love of creatures; I was saved only by the great mercy of God.

All the sentiments of the human mind, gratitude, resentment, love, friendship, approbation, blame, pity, emulation, envy, have a plain reference to the state and situation of man, and are calculated for preserving the existence and promoting the activity of such a being in such circumstances. It seems, therefore, unreasonable to transfer such sentiments to a supreme existence or to suppose him actuated by them; and the phenomena, besides, of the universe will not support us in such a theory. All our ideas derived from the senses are confessedly false and illusive, and cannot therefore be supposed to have place in a Supreme Intelligence. And as the ideas of internal sentiment, added to those of the external senses, compose the whole furniture of human understanding, we may conclude that none of the materials of thought are in any respect similar in the human and in the Divine Intelligence. Now, as to the manner of thinking, how can we make any comparison between them or suppose them anywise resembling? Our thought is fluctuating, uncertain, fleeting, successive, and compounded; and were we to remove these circumstances, we absolutely annihilate its essence, and it would in such a case be an abuse of terms to apply to it the name of thought or reason. At least, if it appear more pious and respectful (as it really is) still to retain these terms when we mention the Supreme Being, we ought to acknowledge that their meaning, in that case, is totally incomprehensible; and that the infirmities of our nature do not permit us to reach any ideas which in the least correspond to the ineffable sublimity of the Divine Attributes.

Sometimes, though, friendship is like love. You can’t plan for it. It finds you in unlikely places. Or in the most obvious place imaginable. One evening, I get back from a run and am doubled over, recovering and panting in front of my building. The entrance opens and a woman pops out, taking out her rubbish. ‘I’m not loitering,’ I tell her when she gives me a funny look. ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were loitering,’ she says. ‘I thought you lived here.’ ‘Oh. I do. I do live here. On the third floor.’ We introduce ourselves. Her name is Hannah and she’s from the Netherlands. As she turns to go back inside, I say, ‘Hey! Do you want to swap numbers? Just in case … there’s a fire or something?’ I can tell my year is already changing me. Talking to strangers has made me less shy and even though I still had to make it a bit weird with the whole fire thing. A few weeks later, Hannah and her husband have Sam and me over for dinner in their flat because we stored a package for them when they were on holiday. Hannah has hundreds of books and I leave her flat with an armful to borrow. A few months later Hannah texts out of the blue, saying, ‘Want to grab a coffee with me right now?’ And I do. The elusive perfect friend-date: spontaneous, with good coffee, great conversation and no commute. We’d also had the spark, both having read several of the same books, both of us the same age, both of us struggling with similar things. She’d been living downstairs the entire time. But if I hadn’t gone through so many friend-dates and false starts, I know I would have asked for her number when we met. In fact, given how I normally treated my neighbours in London and how insular I was before all this began, I probably would have just pretended to be loitering.

I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.

I don't have social media" "Oh right." He rolls his eyes. "Too good for all that." She shakes her head. "Not at all. On the contrary, I'm too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It's designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody's loneliness and promises us a community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that - weaponizing a person's isolation - it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody's like 'words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people,' blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody's influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they're lovable. And then, once you're nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people's triumphs, that's when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don't get m e started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that's just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don't need it. Any of it." Blandine cracks her neck. "I'm corrupt enough.

There is no solution for Europe other than deepening the democratic values it invented. It does not need a geographical extension, absurdly drawn out to the ends of the Earth; what it needs is an intensification of its soul, a condensation of its strengths. It is one of the rare places on this planet where something absolutely unprecedented is happening, without its people even knowing it, so much do they take miracles for granted. Beyond imprecation and apology, we have to express our delighted amazement that we live on this continent and not another. Europe, the planet's moral compass, has sobered up after the intoxication of conquest and has acquired a sense of the fragility of human affairs. It has to rediscover its civilizing capabilities, not recover its taste for blood and carnage, chiefly for spiritual advances. But the spirit of penitence must not smother the spirit of resistance. Europe must cherish freedom as its most precious possession and teach it to schoolchildren. It must also celebrate the beauty of discord and divest itself of its sick allergy to confrontation, not be afraid to point out the enemy, and combine firmness with regard to governments and generosity with regard to peoples. In short, it must simply reconnect with the subversive richness of its ideas and the vitality of its founding principles. Naturally, we will continue to speak the double language of fidelity and rupture, to oscillate between being a prosecutor and a defense lawyer. That is our mental hygiene: we are forced to be both the knife and the wound, the blade that cuts and the hand that heals. The first duty of a democracy is not to ruminate on old evils, it is to relentlessly denounce its present crimes and failures. This requires reciprocity, with everyone applying the same rule. We must have done with the blackmail of culpability, cease to sacrifice ourselves to our persecutors. A policy of friendship cannot be founded on the false principle: we take the opprobrium, you take the forgiveness. Once we have recognized any faults we have, then the prosecution must turn against the accusers and subject them to constant criticism as well. Let us cease to confuse the necessary evaluation of ourselves with moralizing masochism. There comes a time when remorse becomes a second offence that adds to the first without cancelling it. Let us inject in others a poison that has long gnawed away at us: shame. A little guilty conscience in Tehran, Riyadh, Karachi, Moscow, Beijing, Havana, Caracas, Algiers, Damascus, Yangon, Harare, and Khartoum, to mention them alone, would do these governments, and especially their people, a lot of good. The fines gift Europe could give the world would be to offer it the spirit of critical examination that it has conceived and that has saved it from so many perils. It is a poisoned gift, but one that is indispensable for the survival of humanity.