Friendship Fragments Quotes

A fragment for my friend-- If your soul left this earth I would follow and find you Silent, my starship suspended in night

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

When I was very young and in the cave of Trophonius I forgot to laugh. Then, when I got older, when I opened my eyes and saw the real world, I began to laugh and I haven’t stopped since. I saw that the meaning of life was to get a livelihood, that the goal of life was to be a High Court judge, that the bright joy of love was to marry a well-off girl, that the blessing of friendship was to help each other out of a financial tight spot, that wisdom was what the majority said it was, that passion was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined 10 rix-dollars, that cordiality was to say ‘You’re welcome’ after a meal, and that the fear of God was to go to communion once a year. That’s what I saw. And I laughed.

The same thing happened to me that, according to legend, happened to Parmeniscus, who in the Trophonean cave lost the ability to laugh but acquired it again on the island of Delos upon seeing a shapeless block that was said to be the image of the goddess Leto. When I was very young, I forgot in the Trophonean cave how to laugh; when I became an adult, when I opened my eyes and saw actuality, then I started to laugh and have never stopped laughing since that time. I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living, its goal to be- come a councilor, that the rich delight oflove was to acquire a well-to-do girl, that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties, that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be, that enthusiasm was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined ten dollars, that cordiality was to say "May it do you good" after a meal, that piety was to go to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.

We gave each other the childhoods we had lost.

February 13, 1936 I ask of people more than they can give me. It is useless to maintain the contrary. But what a mistake and what despair. And myself perhaps... Seek contacts. All contacts. If I want to write about men, should I stop talking about the countryside? If the sky or light attract me, shall I forget the eyes or voices of those I love? Each time I am given the elements of a friendship, the fragments of an emotion, never the emotion or the friendship itself.

For paradise we long. For perfection we were made...This longing is the source of the hunger and dissatisfaction that mark our lives...This longing makes our loves and friendships possible, and so very unsatisfactory. The hunger is for...nothing less than perfect communion with the...one in whom all the fragments of our scattered existence come together...we must not stifle this longing. It is a holy dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction is not a sickness to be healed, but the seed of a promise to be fulfilled...The only death to fear is the death of settling for something less.

Memory cannot be understood, either, without a mathematical approach. The fundamental given is the ratio between the amount of time in the lived life and the amount of time from that life that is stored in memory. No one has ever tried to calculate this ratio, and in fact there exists no technique for doing so; yet without much risk of error I could assume that the memory retains no more than a millionth, a hundred-millionth, in short an utterly infinitesimal bit of the lived life. That fact too is part of the essence of man. If someone could retain in his memory everything he had experienced, if he could at any time call up any fragment of his past, he would be nothing like human beings: neither his loves nor his friendships nor his angers nor his capacity to forgive or avenge would resemble ours. We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper (it cannot fail to be), but it doesn't count for much unless a more basic critique precedes it: a critique of human memory as such. For after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why just this scrap and not some other one, since in each of us the choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests. We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed.

Because you don’t owe them your trauma. No one has a right to know who you are and if you don’t want them to.” -Dr. Hartfield

In post-modern culture there is a deep hunger to belong. An increasing majority of people feel isolated and marginalised. Experience is haunted by fragmentation. Many of the traditional shelters are in ruins. Society is losing the art of fostering community. Consumerism is now propelling life towards the lonely isolation of individualism. Technology pretends to unite us, yet more often than not all it delivers are simulated images. The “global village” has no roads or neighbours; it is a faceless limbo from which all individuality has been abstracted. Politics seems devoid of the imagination that calls forth vision and ideals; it is becoming ever more synonymous with the functionalism of economic pragmatism. Many of the keepers of the great religious traditions now seem to be frightened functionaries; in a more uniform culture, their management skills would be efficient and successful. In a pluralistic and deeply fragmented culture, they seem unable to converse with the complexities and hungers of our longing. From this perspective, it seems that we are in the midst of a huge crisis of belonging. When the outer cultural shelters are in ruins, we need to explore and reawaken the depths of belonging in the human mind and soul; perhaps, the recognition of the depth of our hunger to belong may gradually assist us in awakening new and unexpected possibilities of community and friendship.

7. Character is built in the course of your inner confrontation. Character is a set of dispositions, desires, and habits that are slowly engraved during the struggle against your own weakness. You become more disciplined, considerate, and loving through a thousand small acts of self-control, sharing, service, friendship, and refined enjoyment. If you make disciplined, caring choices, you are slowly engraving certain tendencies into your mind. You are making it more likely that you will desire the right things and execute the right actions. If you make selfish, cruel, or disorganized choices, then you are slowly turning this core thing inside yourself into something that is degraded, inconstant, or fragmented. You can do harm to this core thing with nothing more than ignoble thoughts, even if you are not harming anyone else. You can elevate this core thing with an act of restraint nobody sees. If you don’t develop a coherent character in this way, life will fall to pieces sooner or later. You will become a slave to your passions. But if you do behave with habitual self-discipline, you will become constant and dependable. 8. The things that lead us astray are short term—lust, fear, vanity, gluttony. The things we call character endure over the long term—courage, honesty, humility. People with character are capable of a long obedience in the same direction, of staying attached to people and causes and callings consistently through thick and thin. People with character also have scope. They are not infinitely flexible, free-floating, and solitary. They are anchored by permanent attachments to important things. In the realm of the intellect, they have a set of permanent convictions about fundamental truths. In the realm of emotion, they are enmeshed in a web of unconditional loves. In the realm of action, they have a permanent commitment to tasks that cannot be completed in a single lifetime.

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.

Each of us has a different life puzzle to assemble. The choices you make in the midst of your life journey do have eternal consequences. Yes, you can throw the pieces at God in anger and say, “I do not like the life You have given me, and I refuse to live within these limitations with a humble heart. You have made me a victim. You have ruined my life. I will choose to live in darkness.” If that is your choice, the puzzle of your life will remain fragmented and separated, with holes in the picture. However, if you choose to bow your knee and submit to the varied circumstances of your life, God will do miracles. If you choose to trust and develop your integrity and an inner standard of holiness that isn’t dependent on cultural standards, the puzzle pieces will begin to come together. No matter what your limitations are—health issues, financial problems, a difficult marriage or divorce, a loss of friendship, death of a dream—your life is meant to be filled to the brim with the potential of God’s blessings. But in order to thrive and heal, you must accept any limitations by faith, trust in His faithfulness each step of the way, and wait for His grace so you can live a faithful story right in the place you find yourself.

WHEN WE shift our attention from the mechanics and structures of a relationship to its soul, a number of changes occur. We no longer have to carry the weight of guilt about not having done relationship properly, we can give ourselves a pardon for having engaged in folly in our younger days, we can feel the sting of endings without bearing a neurotic degree of responsibility, and we can enjoy the pleasures that a lifetime of relationships has given us. We can end the impossible quest for the perfect structure—the happy family, the completely satisfying marriage, the unbroken friendship. We can find some purpose in the failures, the intimacies that never got off the ground, the possibilities that never took flesh. The soul does not share the spirit’s love of perfection and wholeness, but finds value in fragmentation, incompleteness, and unfulfilled promise.

Leyel had buried himself within the marriage, helping and serving and loving Deet with all his heart. She was wrong, completely wrong about his coming to Trantor. He hadn't come as a sacrifice, againt his will, solely because she wanted to come. On the contrary: because she wanted so much to come, he also wanted to come, changing even his desires to coincide with hers. She commanded his very heart, because it was impossible for him not to desire anything that would bring her happiness. But she, no, she could not do that for him. If she went to Terminus, it would be as a noble sacrifice. She wold never let him forget that she hadn't wanted to. To him, their marriage was his very soul. To Deet, their marriage was just a friendship with sex. Her soul belonged as much to these other women as to him. By dividing her loyalties, she fragmented them; none were strong enough to sway her deepest desires. Thus he discovered what he supposed all faithful men eventually discover--that no human relationship is ever anything but tentative. There is no such thing as an unbreakable bond between people. Like the particles in the nucleus of the atom. They are bound by the strongest forces in the universe, and yet they can be shattered, they can break. Nothing can last. Nothing is, finally, waht it once seemed to be. Deet and he had had a perfect marriage until there came a stress that exposed its imperfection. Anyonewho thinks he has a perfect marriage, a perfect friendship, a perfect trust of any kind, he only believes this becasue the stress that will break it has not yet come. He might die with the illusion of happiness, but all he has proven is that sometimes death comes before betrayal. If you live long enough, betrayal will inevitably come.

This is the very basis of inspiration and friendship, both of which are, in essence, spiritual connections. No two people are exactly the same, though they may share fragments of each other’s personality. Some may feel so uncannily connected as to be kindred spirits, watching the world through different eyes but hearts aligned, the canvas of consciousness cast in common colors, struggling to express the same thoughts and gleefully snapping their fingers when the other puts it just right, finishing each other’s sentences on page, screen, or scroll—across the decades, centuries, millennia. Great men and women influence “a number of people,” even after they die. People will take up their mantle and continue the endless work of human progress. By giving new voice to the echoes fading in time, we elevate both ourselves and the person from whom we draw inspiration. Our souls interpenetrate through the broken chains of eternity, and through us, they live once again.

Dear Shift in the storm, This is abnormal, but I love how the clouds are shifting in my life. I noticed the lens flare as the clouds drift away. I used to think I was better off because the storm was the storyteller of my life, and I thought it was here to stay. Now that the clouds are finally drifting away, the scattered light is awaking my soul to a brighter day. I use to be so lost, but Nurse Hope's kindness is helping me find my way. Her actions have made me realize that love doesn’t cost a thing and that I want more out of life. I know that it is possible. Dear shift in the storm, would you take my complex memories with you? Therefore, curiosity will not enable me to continue to think of the ‘what-ifs.' If you can, would you do me the honor of shrinking my and Kace's memories? Could you void them as they shrink in the fading light? There’s no need to expand what we are trying to do away with. May you melt our frozen tears? If not, could you please make them invincible in the light? Could Kace and I become intangible as our old life disappears in the shift of the storm? We’ve had more than our share of fragments—and we are ready to be set free. For far too long, we’ve reached our breaking point. Dear shift in the storm, could you wash away our fears and wash us whole—as we step into our new life? Let there be no more secrets and lies, for Kace and I have endured enough. We are ready to shed our skin, and we are most certainly ready for our new beginning. I feel the change because the tear stains on my face have left their footprints for me to walk into a new world. During this shift, I am going to be still because I know when the storm is over that I am going to be alright. I no longer have to be selfish for all the wrong reasons.

After dinner Karamenaios would drop in. We had about fifty words with which to make lingual currency. We didn't even need that many, as I soon discovered. There are a thousand ways of talking and words don't help if the spirit is absent. Karamenaios and I were eager to talk. lt made little difference to me whether we talked about the war or about knives and forks. Sometimes we discovered that a word or phrase which we had been using for days, he in English or I in Greek, meant something entirely different than we had thought it to mean. It made no difference. We understood one another even with the wrong words. I could learn five new words in an evening and forget six or eight during my sleep. The important thing was the warm handclasp, the light in the eyes, the grapes which we devoured in common, the glass we raised to our lips in sign of friendship. Now and then I would get excited and, using a melange of English, Greek, German, French, Choctaw, Eskimo, Swahili or any other tongue I felt would serve the purpose, using the chair, the table, the spoon, the lamp, the bread knife, I would enact for him a fragment of my life in New York, Paris, London, Chula Vista, Canarsie, Hackensack or in some place I had never been or some place I had been in a dream or when lying asleep on the operating table. Sometimes I felt so good, so versatile and acrobatic, that I would stand on the table and sing in some unknown language or hop from the table to the commode and from the commode to the staircase or swing from the rafters, anything to entertain him, keep him amused, make him roll from side to side with laughter. I was considered an old man in the village because of my bald pate and fringe of white hair. Nobody had ever seen an old man cut up the way I did. "The old man is going for a swim," they would say. "The old man is taking the boat out." Always "the old man." If a storm came up and they knew I was out in the middle of the pond they would send someone out to see that "the old man" got in safely. If I decided to take a jaunt through the hills Karamenaios would offer to accompany me so that no harm would come to me. If I got stranded somewhere I had only to announce that I was an American and at once a dozen hands were ready to help me.

What Will Linger/Hollow of Him - They crept so quietly back. Mere hints of words, at first, then whispers in the loud echoing a winter past. In this place, hollow of Him, his poetry resounded. I could almost taste the fragments of the worlds he had discovered. I remember the ache in his words; you could see each syllable smoulder in his gaze.

It is an easy thing to overlook true love. Our eyes are searching for event and objects Found in movies, Novels, And journals bursting with dreams. We glance above the murky reality. Our hearts do not notice the consistent presence Of loyalty, Friendship, And dishes again scrubbed clean

The central question posed by Gestalt psychologists was the question the behaviorists had elected to ignore: How does the brain create meaning? How does it turn the fragments collected by the senses into a coherent picture of reality?

„Say, Pythias… Are you trying to flirt with me?“ „Have been for years.“, they sip from their coffee, „You’re catching on only now?“ There is this blush Pythias enjoys seeing on Damon’s face. He already reminds him of a painting which came to life but especially this rush of blood to his face turns him almost human instead of ethereal. There are still streaks of the paint from their art session clinging like nettles on his beautiful face. „I mean, how could I not? I owe you my life, but instead I’ve sworn my friendship to you. My lifelong loyalty and my heart. It is all I can offer you and I would hand it over to you even without anything in return. Although it would be nice to get at least a fragment of my affection back.

Apart from Kallenbach, Gandhi had also written about his new friend to his Tamil protégé C. Rajagopalachari (popularly known as Rajaji). Gandhi’s letter has been lost, but we do have fragments of Rajaji’s reply. Where Mahadev was approving of, or at least acquiescent in, the development of the relationship, Rajaji was dismayed. In his letter, Gandhi seems to have suggested that Sarala and he were thinking of taking the friendship a step further. What this was is not clear—perhaps a public proclamation of their ‘spiritual marriage’? Rajaji wrote back that this would bring ‘unutterable shame and ruin’ to Gandhi, and destroy ‘all saintliness, all purity, all asceticism, all India’s hope’. That Gandhi had even contemplated such a step filled his protégé with horror. ‘How could you venture out,’ wrote Rajaji agitatedly, ‘when in your boat was the faith and fate of millions of simple souls who if the boat had capsized would have seen neither beauty nor love nor grandeur, but unspeakable shame and death.’ Rajaji had met Saraladevi briefly, and been unimpressed. ‘I fail to see any “greatness” in the lady,’ he wrote to Gandhi. ‘She is like a hundred other women, whom a little education makes very attractive. I have seen scores of bigger-minded [and] better-souled women.’ Rajaji thought Saraladevi was ‘not worthy to unloose the latchet of Miss Faring [a Danish missionary who admired Gandhi and joined the ashram] and as to Mrs Gandhi, it would be like comparing a kerosene oil Ditmar lamp to the morning sun...' Rajaji chastised Gandhi, but blamed Saraladevi too. ‘It is difficult to forgive her reckless indifference to consequences,’ he remarked. He advised Gandhi to ‘pray disengage yourself at once completely: No delay is allowable when you hold such great trusts’ (namely, the fate of the nation itself). This was a brave and necessary letter: brave because few of Gandhi’s Indian admirers ever criticized him directly; necessary because Gandhi does not seem to have recognized the enormous risks of the step he was contemplating. Gandhi’s asceticism was a vital part of his mass appeal. Although polygamy was allowed under Hindu law, Hindu myths and Hindu social custom were both strongly in favour of monogamous marriages. Had Gandhi publicly taken another wife, albeit even a ‘spiritual’ one, it might have massively eroded his standing among his fellow Hindus, endangering the wider movement for political and social change that he was leading. Gandhi was taken aback by Rajaji’s forthrightness, and he did heed his advice—in part. He would not publicly take Saraladevi as his spiritual wife, but he would not—or not yet—disengage from her completely.

Powerful forces led me to the Hammers and then to the neighbors and suggested that the qualities I witnessed in their lives – strength, goodness, harmony, universal order – were worth preserving. Out of friendship alone, nothing more, they consented to become my allegories for those things. In authentic ways, their lives say for me what I cannot say without them about the spiritual and the American heritage of farm families and rural life. With them and with other fragments of experience, I have learned that what I was taught as a child is, or can be, mostly true. I learned that there has been only one true creative act, the making of something out of nothing, an act performed only by the sole Creator. All else is circumstance, experience, invention, innovation, discovery – more than anything else – and a putting together in a particular fashion of things that have always existed. Perhaps every act and every discovery, as Bill Hammer, Jr. would say, "was meant to be.

My Blue Orchid A fragment of dust grow to a droplet All alone... awaiting my turn... Looking from far... Looking at you... My Blue Orchid... As kinship relation of an offspring with earth concluded Not so long clanship, leaving little tuft of grass behind With seven elements, firmed by wild, Outgrow Deeply rooted inside, seeking freedom outside Blossom with the benediction of nature As beautiful as Grundarfjordur sunset Flourish flawless and voluptuous Signatured breeze, merited aroma Charismatic grin in gesture of friendship Reminded my affection for gravity Eternal journey to reach you, To see you smile... My Blue Orchid...

You will fall short of achieving your goals if your focus is fragmented and your attention, energy, and concentration diversified.

There was another reason for mating the Twelve. Each of them was only a fragment of a man—not one of them was full-rounded, a complete man, strong at every point. Each had a strength of his own, with a corresponding weakness. Then Jesus yoked them together so that each two made one good man. The hasty, impetuous, self-confident Peter needed the counterbalancing of the cautious, conservative Andrew. Thomas the doubter was matched by Matthew the strong believer. It was not an accidental grouping by which the Twelve fell into six parts. Jesus knew what was in man; and he yoked these men together in a way which brought out the best that was in each of them, and by thus blending their lives, turned their very faults and weaknesses into beauty and strength. He did not try to make them all alike. He made no effort to have Peter grow quiet and gentle like John, or Thomas become an enthusiastic, unquestioning believer like Matthew, He sought for each man's personality, and developed that. He knew that to try to recast Peter's tremendous energy into staidness and caution would only rob him of what was best in his nature. He found room in his apostle family for as many different types of temperament as there were men, setting the frailties of one over against the excessive virtues of the other.

We were more alike than any of the others, neither of us quite human and both hated by the two species we drifted between.

Often female friendships were ruined by jealousy, competitiveness, fragmented loyalities and destructive tendencies. Male friendships would often be complicated by sexual agenda's, unreciprocated emotions and sexual tensions.

The historians in his audience of course prided themselves on their “ability” to construct, out of fragments of some past reality, explanatory narratives of events which made them seem, in retrospect, almost predictable. The only question that remained, once the historian had explained how and why some event had occurred, was why the people in his narrative had not seen what the historian could now see. “All the historians attended Amos’s talk,” recalled Biederman, “and they left ashen-faced.

She looked at me tiredly. “I bet you wish you would have kicked the tires before falling for this hot mess.” She smiled weakly. “Aren’t you glad I saved you from yourself?” I shook my head. “No, that’s not how that works, Kristen. Love is for better or worse. It’s always and no matter what. The no-matter-what just happened first for us.” Her eyes teared up and she pressed her lips together. “I miss you.” My throat got tight. “Then be with me, Kristen. Right now. We can move in together, today. Sleep in the same bed. Just say okay. That’s all you have to say. Just say okay.” I wanted it so badly my heart felt like it was screaming. I wanted to shake her, kidnap her and hold her hostage until she stopped this crap. But she shook her head. “No.” I let go of her hand and leaned away from her against the door, my fingers to the bridge of my nose. “You’re killing both of us.” “One day—” “Stop talking to me about one day.” I turned to her. “I’m never going to feel differently about this.” She waited a beat. “Neither am I.” We sat in silence for a moment, and I closed my eyes. I felt her move across the seat, and then her body was pressed against my side. I wrapped an arm around her and let her tuck her head under my chin. The feel of her was therapeutic. I think it was for both of us. A warm compress for my soul. I’d never had all of her at once. I’d only ever gotten pieces. Her friendship without her body. Her body without her love. And now her love without any of the rest of it. But even with what little fragments I’d had, it was enough to tell me I would never stop chasing all of her. Never. Not if I lived to be a hundred. She was it. She just was. “Kristen, you’re the woman I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with,” I whispered. “I know it in my fucking soul.” She sniffed. “I know it too, Josh. But that was before.” “Before what?” I wrapped my arms around her tighter, tears pricking my eyes. “Before I broke inside. Before my body made me wrong for you. Sometimes soul mates don’t end up together, Josh. They marry other people. They never meet. Or one of them dies.” I squeezed my eyes shut and felt the lump in my throat get bigger. Just to have her admit it, to have her acknowledge that’s what we were to each other, was the most validating thing she’d ever given me.

We are all beautiful fragments of magic Weaving through the hearts of those that meet us along the way