“
Friendship- my definition- is built on two things. Respect and trust. Both elements have to be there. And it has to be mutual. You can have respect for someone, but if you don't have trust, the friendship will crumble.
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Stieg Larsson (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1))
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It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.
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John Joseph Powell (The Secret of Staying in Love)
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Whenever you feel ‘short’ or in ‘need’ of something, give what you want first and it will come back in buckets. That is true for money, a smile, love, friendship. I know it is often the last thing a person may want to do, but it has always worked for me. I just trust that the principle of reciprocity is true, and I give what I want.
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Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad)
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What is a friend? We probably all have our own definitions. For me, it's someone I don't feel alone with. Who doesn't bore me. Whose life I connect with and who takes reciprocal interest in my life. It's someone I feel comfortable turning to when I need to be talked off the ledge, and for whom I am glad to return the favor.
Just a few people in my life fit that bill.
”
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Sophia Dembling (The Introvert's Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World (Perigee Book))
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Friendship rests on the presumption of reciprocity, of drifting in and out of one another’s lives, with occasional moments of wild intensity.
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Hua Hsu (Stay True)
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My attitude toward friendship has remained the same. I will support and encourage you with all the love in my heart, but if it's not reciprocal, I gotta go [...] If your friends are bitter about your success to the extent that they act out, don't expect them to change [...] Move on.
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RuPaul (Workin' It! Rupaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style)
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Friendship, as far as I'm concerned, is a delicate and rare thing that's built up over time and is predicated on mutual trust, mutual respect, reciprocal interests and share commitments. It's a relation that ultimately is lived out, at least as if it were chosen not taken for granted or assumed in advance. It's something that has to be renegotiated at every step, not demanded unconditionally.
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Chris Kraus (I Love Dick)
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The key to love is to love back. Enthusiastically embrace people who love you. Reciprocate the same level of energy, affection, respect, and attention.
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Germany Kent
“
A dog only got hurt if its love was repudiated, intentional or not, though it never had long to feel true sorrow in response because it never held its love back, regardless of reciprocation; the dog just tried to love you more. No other distractions such as work, home, friendships, or lovers—just the insistence of undying and unwavering affection in the truest sense of the word—asking for only a fraction of what it gave.
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Michael A. Ferro (TITLE 13: A Novel)
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Friendship is merely a glorified expression. In reality it is nothing but a reciprocal outpouring of slops.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
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A few years ago I heard Jerome Kagan, a distinguished emeritus professor of child psychology at Harvard, say to the Dalai Lama that for every act of cruelty in this world there are hundreds of small acts of kindness and connection. His conclusion: "To be benevolent rather than malevolent is probably a true feature of our species." Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives. Numerous studies of disaster response around the globe have shown that social support is the most powerful protection against becoming overwhelmed by stress and trauma.
Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else's mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don't need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers - but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens.
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Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
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Love never lives on a one-way street, for it will always come back up the road bigger than how we had sent it down the road.
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Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
Make time for those who make time for you. Treasure those who care enough to invest their time and energy. Friendship is for giving.
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Akiroq Brost
“
Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities.
”
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Bessel van der Kolk
“
So by the time the morning came, Odysseus and I were indeed friends, as Odysseus had promised we would be. Or let me put it another way: I myself had developed friendly feelings towards him - more than that, loving and passionate ones - and he behaved as if he reciprocated them. Which is not quite the same thing.
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Margaret Atwood (Penelopiad, The (The Myths Series, 2))
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Locating friendship at the heart of mission involves certain assumptions -- that reconciliation with God is something for which every human being is made and relationships are reciprocal.
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Christopher L. Heuertz (Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission (Resources for Reconciliation))
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For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off!
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Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
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It’s also OK to rely on people, ask for help. Friendship can only work if it’s reciprocated.
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Namrata Patel (The Candid Life of Meena Dave)
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It tried to rescue sex from Christian original sin and to recover the union of body and soule of Platonic eros while guaranteeing the reciprocity missing from the Platonic understanding of love and friendship..
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Allan Bloom (Love and Friendship)
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The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it 2540 is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion:
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Catholic Church (Catechism of the Catholic Church)
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What is particularly striking about his reconstruction and criticisms of the traditional account of friendship is that he finds it deficient not only by the light of his own Christian viewpoint; he also finds friendship deficient when judged from the perspective of its own self-proclaimed ethical foundations. Thus, Kierkegaard concludes that the reciprocity involved in friendship actually betrays its essential selfishness.
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Graham Smith
“
Exemplary friendship embraces, in a resolutely unrequited way, an unwearied capacity for loving generously without being loved back. Marking the limit of possibility—the friend need not be there—this structure recapitulates in fact the Aristotelian values according to which acts and states of loving are preferred to the condition of being-loved, which depends for its vigor on a mere potentiality. Being loved by your friend just pins you to passivity. For Aristotle, loving on the contrary, constitutes an act. To the extent that loving is moved by a kind of disclosive energy, it puts itself out there, shows up for the other, even where the other proves to be a rigorous no-show. Among other things, loving has to be declared and known, and thus involves an element of risk for the one who loves and who, abandoning any guarantee of reciprocity, braves the consequences when naming that love.
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Avital Ronell
“
Friendships live and thrive upon a system of reciprocal benefits.
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Alexandre Dumas (Louise de La Vallière)
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Those who make withdrawals without making deposits, eventually find the relationship empty for future withdrawals
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Making deposits in relationships are as important as making withdrawals.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Those who make withdrawals without making deposits, eventually find the relationship empty for future withdrawals.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Scopul nostru nu este de a ne contopi unul intr-altul, ci a ne recunoaste reciproc si a invata sa vedem si sa respectam fiecare in celalalt ceea ce e contrariul si completarea sa.
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Hermann Hesse (Narcissus and Goldmund)
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Friendship should be fair. It becomes charity if you’re always the giver and the other person the receiver …and without reciprocation.
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Mitta Xinindlu
“
Books keep and reciprocate our secrets, dreams, regrets, and hopes better than any friend in the world.
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Drea Damara (The Weeping Books Of Blinney Lane)
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Here’s something to consider: If you have a friend whose friendship you wouldn’t recommend to your sister, or your father, or your son, why would you have such a friend for yourself? You might say: out of loyalty. Well, loyalty is not identical to stupidity. Loyalty must be negotiated, fairly and honestly. Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement. You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place. Quite the opposite. You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse. It’s a good thing, not a selfish thing, to choose people who are good for you. It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve. If you surround yourself with people who support your upward aim, they will not tolerate your cynicism and destructiveness. They will instead encourage you when you do good for yourself and others and punish you carefully when you do not. This will help bolster your resolve to do what you should do, in the most appropriate and careful manner. People who are not aiming up will do the opposite. They will offer a former smoker a cigarette and a former alcoholic a beer. They will become jealous when you succeed, or do something pristine. They will withdraw their presence or support, or actively punish you for it. They will over-ride your accomplishment with a past action, real or imaginary, of their own. Maybe they are trying to test you, to see if your resolve is real, to see if you are genuine. But mostly they are dragging you down because your new improvements cast their faults in an even dimmer light.
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Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
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Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement. You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place. Quite the opposite. You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse. It’s a good thing, not a selfish thing, to choose people who are good for you. It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.
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Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
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And I saw then again, and for good, what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in him: that he was a woman as well as a man. Any need to explain the sources of that fear vanished with the fear; what I was left with was, at last, acceptance of him as he was. Until then I had rejected him, refused him his own reality. He had been quite right to say that he, the only person on Gethen who trusted me, was the own Gethenian I distrusted. For he was the only one who had entirely accepted me as a human being: who had liked me personally and given me entire personal loyalty, and who therefore had demanded of me an equal degree of recognition, of acceptance. I had not been willing to give it. I had been afraid to give it. I had not wanted to give my trust, my friendship to a man who was a woman, a woman who was a man.
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Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness)
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...You're so real. That's why we love you." ... Her friend's response reflected the reciprocity of showing vulnerability. It is a gift not only to the one who has the meltdown but also to the ones who witness it.
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Deborah Tannen (You're the Only One I Can Tell: Inside the Language of Women's Friendships)
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All of these arenas of American life are facets of the same widely discussed phenomenon: the decline of what is termed “social capital.” As defined by political scientist Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone, “… social capital refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called ‘civic virtue.’” It’s the trust, friendships, group affiliations, helping, and expectation of being helped built up by actively participating in and being a member of all sorts of groups, ranging from book clubs, bowling clubs, bridge clubs, church groups, community organizations, and parent-teacher associations to political organizations, professional societies, rotary clubs, town meetings, unions, veterans associations, and others.
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Jared Diamond (Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis)
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It entered into a Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance with North Korea in 1961, containing a clause on mutual defense against outside attack that is still in force at this writing. But that was more in the nature of the tributary relationship familiar from Chinese history: Beijing offered protection; North Korean reciprocity was irrelevant to the relationship. The Soviet alliance frayed from the very outset largely because Mao would not accept even the hint of subordination.
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Henry Kissinger (On China)
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Trust is the reciprocal experience, knowledge and understanding of another that enables them to feel safe whether they are present or absent, each person knowing that neither will betray mutual faith, friendship and loyalty, which endures through the most challenging of circumstances.
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Suzy Davies
“
My views in my early 20’s and kept me separate from those around me. Those views were all about making myself feel significant by bringing other people down. I thought having special problems made me special. Problems don’t make people special. Solving them does.
My views created an Us-vs-Them perspective of the world. Solving my problem required finding more Us people and to avoid Them. I wanted a special club of Us people. The problem was that all the Us people I found thought that their problems were more unique than the other Us people. We never bonded. We were still separating ourselves by one-upping each other about the uniqueness of our problems.
The upside to Us-Vs-Them is that we feel special being Us. Unfortunately feeling special doesn’t outweigh the significant downside.
There will always be more Them than Us
There has to be. Otherwise, the exclusively club of Us wouldn’t be exclusive. So to maintain the exclusivity, we make more rules in our head to keep others out. We become more dependent on less people and are devastated when those people don’t reciprocate by valuing our friendship with the same mindfulness.
Finding more people to connect with seems beyond our control because we automatically put everyone in the Them column and wait for people to work their way into the Us column. The problem is no one wants to have to prove themselves in order to become friends. We end up waiting and waiting.
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Corin
“
Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love:
”
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Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
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The difference could be grouped into categories of mature and immature love. Preferable in almost every way, the philosophy of mature love is marked by an active awareness of the good and bad within each person, it is full of temperance, it resists idealization, it is free of jealousy, masochism, or obsession, it is a form of friendship with a sexual dimension, it is pleasant, peaceful, and reciprocated (and perhaps explains why most people who have known the wilder shores of desire would refuse its painlessness the title of love). Immature love on the other hand (though it has little to do with age) is a story of chaotic lurching between idealization and disappointment, an unstable state where feelings of ecstasy and beatitude combine with impressions of drowning and fatal nausea, where the sense that one has finally found the answer comes together with the feeling that one has never been so lost. The logical climax of immature (because absolute) love comes in death, symbolic or real. The climax of mature love comes in marriage, and the attempt to avoid death via routine (the Sunday papers, trouser presses, remote-controlled appliances). For immature love accepts no compromise, and once we refuse compromise, we are on the road to some kind of cataclysm. 6.
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Alain de Botton (Essays In Love)
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The philosophy of mature love is marked by an active awareness of the good and bad within each person, it is full of temperance, it resists idealization, it is free of jealousy, masochism, or obsession, it is a form of friendship with a sexual dimension, it is pleasant, peaceful, and reciprocated (and perhaps explains why most people who have known the wilder shores of desire would refuse its painlessness the title of “love”).
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Alain de Botton (On Love)
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No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments, and tender officiousness; and therefore no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained. Kindness is preserved by a constant reciprocation of benefits or interchange of pleasures; but such benefits can only be bestowed as others are capable to receive, and such pleasures only imparted as others are qualified to enjoy.
By this descent from the pinnacles of art no honour will be lost; for the condescensions of learning are always overpaid by gratitude. An elevated genius employed in little things appears, to use the simile of Longinus, like the sun in his evening declination; he remits his splendour but remains his magnitude, and pleases more, though he dazzles less.
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Samuel Johnson (The Major Works)
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Trading favors, the relationship tit for tat that social scientists call reciprocal altruism, was long thought to be the basic backbone of friendship. But recent research has revealed that we actually care less about 'fairness' with our friends than we do when dealing with strangers and acquaintances. In a friendship, when either person insists on repaying a favor it's seen as signaling a weakness in the relationship. Friendship is what happens beyond the tracking of favors.... Among the traits exclusive to -Homo sapiens-, altruism and selflessness are near the top of what makes us human.
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Billy Baker (We Need to Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends)
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Beyond the ties of blood, friendship and immediate reciprocity, Rajkumar recognised no loyalties, no obligations and no limits on the compass of his right to provide for himself. He reserved his trust and affection for those who earned it by concrete example and proven goodwill. Once earned, his loyalty was given wholeheartedly, with none of those unspoken provisions with which people usually guard against betrayal. In this too he was not unlike a creature that had returned to the wild. But that there should exist a universe of loyalties that was unrelated to himself and his own immediate needs – this was very nearly incomprehensible.
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Amitav Ghosh (The Glass Palace)
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Here’s something to consider: If you have a friend whose friendship you wouldn’t recommend to your sister, or your father, or your son, why would you have such a friend for yourself? You might say: out of loyalty. Well, loyalty is not identical to stupidity. Loyalty must be negotiated, fairly and honestly. Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement. You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place. Quite the opposite. You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse. It’s a good thing, not a selfish thing, to choose people who are good for you. It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve. If
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Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
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But friendship isn't one of life's little luxuries.
It's a necessity.
To go through the world without the closest of friends is like walking it with a missing leg, with no crutch to be found when you need that support.
Friends are the breath left to us when we run out of our own. They're the mirrors we need when we cannot see ourselves clearly. They point out our little flaws and, in times, the larger ones we must tend to. And, of course, they help us out of trouble as much as they help us into it. They are the truest form of reciprocation.
You may think me callow for describing friendship in this way. That I demean friendship--make it seem like an exchange. But you are wrong. Friends are the ones willing and most able to give anything--everything when they can. And you do the same. It is never said. But it is the unspoken agreement in friendship. A reciprocation of feelings--actions. Of time.
Which, I have learned over the course of my life, is an alternate way of spelling the word "love." People want time given to them--for them. For it's a kind of love the world is in all too short supply of. And for that, they will love you back. That is friendship.
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R.R. Virdi (The Doors of Midnight (Tales of Tremaine, #2))
“
The app is designed for reciprocity. You swipe right on the people you’re interested in but if they don’t swipe back, poof, you’ll never get a chance to talk. And apparently, the woman who lunches in Paris and regrets nothing doesn’t want to talk to me. Which is fine. That’s her right. Whatever. I’m fine. (I hope she regrets it.)
When you have a match, there’s a ding (such a rush) and the app encourages you to send a message to ‘your future BFF’.
Crucially, after you’ve matched, you only have twenty four hours to message each other before your potential friendship expires. And if they don’t reply to your message within twenty-four hours, they disappear for ever. There are so many areas for rejection with this app.
A woman named Elizabeth appears. Her bio reads: ‘I’m into cooking, trying new restaurants, trash TV, theatre, reading, travelling, and exploring. Love a girls’ night in as much as a night out. Lived in New York for a few years. Looking for friends to explore the city with or maybe start or join a feminist book club.’
Yes! Yes, Elizabeth, yes! I send her a message about how I’d be up for her feminist book club and trying new restaurants. Safe. Solid. Not groundbreaking, but friendly enough.
Elizabeth doesn’t reply.
‘Elizabeth, don’t do this to us!’ I yell at her photo. I watch the time dwindle away.
And then, before we have even begun, our time is up. Her profile photo fades to grey, like she’s dead. Which she is. To me.
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Jessica Pan (Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously)
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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.
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Pascal Bruckner (The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism)
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maternal love, the most successful object of the religious imagination of romantic art. For the most part real and human, it is yet entirely spiritual, without the interest and exigency of desire, not sensuous and yet present: absolutely satisfied and blissful spiritual depth. It is a love without craving, but it is not friendship; for be friendship never so rich in emotion, it yet demands a content, something essential, as a mutual end and aim. Whereas, without any reciprocity of aim and interests, maternal love has an immediate support in the natural bond of connection. But in this instance the mother’s love is not at all restricted to the natural side. In the child which she conceived and then bore in travail, Mary has the complete knowledge and feeling of herself; and the same child, blood of her blood, stands all the same high above her, and nevertheless this higher being belongs to her and is the object in which she forgets and maintains herself. The natural depth of feeling in the mother’s love is altogether spiritualized; it has the Divine as its proper content, but this spirituality remains lowly and unaware, marvellously penetrated by natural oneness and human feeling. It is the blissful maternal love, the love of the one mother alone who was the first recipient of this joy. Of course this love too is not without grief, but the grief is only the sorrow of loss, lamentation for her suffering, dying, and dead son, and does not, as we shall see at a later stage,[9] result from injustice and torment from without, or from the infinite battle against sins, or from the agony and pain brought about by the self. Such deep feeling is here spiritual beauty, the Ideal, human identification of man with God, with the spirit and with truth: a pure forgetfulness and complete self-surrender which still in this forgetfulness is from the beginning one with that into which it is merged and now with blissful satisfaction has a sense of this oneness.
In such a beautiful way maternal love, the picture as it were of the Spirit, enters romantic art in place of the Spirit itself because only in the form of feeling is the Spirit made prehensible by art, and the feeling of the unity between the individual and God is present in the most original, real, and living way only in the Madonna’s maternal love. This love must enter art necessarily if, in the portrayal of this sphere, the Ideal, the affirmative satisfied reconciliation is not to be lacking. There was therefore a time when the maternal love of the blessed Virgin belonged in general to the highest and holiest [part of religion] and was worshipped and represented as this supreme fact. But when the Spirit brings itself into consciousness of itself in its own element, separated from the whole natural grounding which feeling supplies, then too it is only the spiritual mediation, free from such a grounding, that can be regarded as the free route to the truth; and so, after all, in Protestantism, in contrast to mariolatry in art and in faith, the Holy Spirit and the inner mediation of the Spirit has become the higher truth.
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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WHOEVER YOU ARE, WHEREVER YOU ARE..I'M STARTING TO THINK WE'RE A LOT ALIKE. HUMAN BEINGS SPINNING ON BLACKNESS. ALL WANTING TO BE SEEN, TOUCHED, HEARD, PAID ATTENTION TO. MY LOVED ONES ARE EVERYTHING TO ME HERE. IN THE LAST YEAR OR 3 I'VE SCREAMED AT MY CREATOR. SCREAMED AT CLOUDS IN THE SKY. FOR SOME EXPLANATION. MERCY MAYBE. FOR PEACE OF MIND TO RAIN LIKE MANNA SOMEHOW. 4 SUMMERS AGO, I MET SOMEBODY. I WAS 19 YEARS OLD. HE WAS TOO. WE SPENT THAT SUMMER, AND THE SUMMER AFTER, TOGETHER. EVERYDAY ALMOST. AND ON THE DAYS WE WERE TOGETHER, TIME WOULD GLIDE. MOST OF THE DAY I'D SEE HIM, AND HIS SMILE. I'D HEAR HIS CONVERSATION AND HIS SILENCE..UNTIL IT WAS TIME TO SLEEP. SLEEP I WOULD OFTEN SHARE WITH HIM. BY THE TIME I REALIZED I WAS IN LOVE, IT WAS MALIGNANT. IT WAS HOPELESS. THERE WAS NO ESCAPING, NO NEGOTIATING WITH THE FEELING. NO CHOICE. IT WAS MY FIRST LOVE, IT CHANGED MY LIFE. BACK THEN, MY MIND WOULD WANDER TO THE WOMEN I HAD BEEN WITH, THE ONES I CARED FOR AND THOUGHT I WAS IN LOVE WITH. I REMINISCED ABOUT THE SENTIMENTAL SONGS I ENJOYED WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER.. THE ONES I PLAYED WHEN I EXPERIENCED A GIRLFRIEND FOR THE FIRST TIME. I REALIZED THEY WERE WRITTEN IN A LANGUAGE I DID NOT YET SPEAK. I REALIZED TOO MUCH, TOO QUICKLY. IMAGINE BEING THROWN FROM A PLANE. I WASN'T IN A PLANE THOUGH. I WAS IN A NISSAN MAXIMA, THE SAME CAR I PACKED UP WITH BAGS AND DROVE TO LOS ANGELES IN. I SAT THERE AND TOLD MY FRIEND HOW I FELT. I WEPT AS THE WORDS LEFT MY MOUTH. I GRIEVED FOR THEM, KNOWING I COULD NEVER TAKE THEM BACK FOR MYSELF. HE PATTED MY BACK. HE SAID KIND THINGS. HE DID HIS BEST, BUT HE WOULDN'T ADMIT THE SAME. HE HAD TO GO BACK INSIDE SOON, IT WAS LATE AND HIS GIRLFRIEND WAS WAITING FOR HIM UPSTAIRS. HE WOULDN'T TELL ME THE TRUTH ABOUT HIS FEELINGS FOR ME FOR ANOTHER 3 YEARS. I FELT LIKE I'D ONLY IMAGINED RECIPROCITY FOR YEARS. NOW IMAGINE BEING THROWN FROM A CLIFF. NO, I WASN'T ON A CLIFF, I WAS STILL IN MY CAR TELLING MYSELF IT WAS GONNA BE FINE AND TO TAKE DEEP BREATHS. I TOOK THE BREATHS AND CARRIED ON. I KEPT UP A PECULIAR FRIENDSHIP WITH HIM BECAUSE I COULDN'T IMAGINE KEEPING UP MY LIFE WITHOUT HIM. I STRUGGLED TO MASTER MYSELF AND MY EMOTIONS. I WASN'T ALWAYS SUCCESSFUL.
THE DANCE WENT ON.. I KEPT THE RHYTHM FOR SEVERAL SUMMERS AFTER. IT'S WINTER NOW. I'M TYPING THIS ON A PLANE BACK TO LOS ANGELES FROM NEW ORLEANS. I FLEW HOME FOR ANOTHER MARRED CHRISTMAS. I HAVE A WINDOWSEAT. IT'S DECEMBER 27, 2011. BY NOW I'VE WRITTEN TWO ALBUMS, THIS BEING THE SECOND. I WROTE TO KEEP MYSELF BUSY AND SANE. I WANTED TO CREATE WORLDS THAT WERE ROSIER THAN MINE. I TRIED TO CHANNEL OVERWHELMING EMOTIONS. I'M SURPRISED AT HOW FAR ALL OF IT HAS TAKEN ME. BEFORE WRITING THIS I'D TOLD SOME PEOPLE MY STORY. I'M SURE THESE PEOPLE KEPT ME ALIVE, KEPT ME SAFE.. SINCERELY. THESE ARE THE FOLKS I WANNA THANK FROM THE FLOOR OF MY HEART. EVERYONE OF YOU KNOWS WHO YOU ARE.. GREAT HUMANS, PROBABLY ANGELS. I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NOW, AND THAT'S ALRITE. I DON'T HAVE ANY SECRETS I NEED KEPT ANYMORE. THERE'S PROBABLY SOME SMALL SHIT STILL, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. I WAS NEVER ALONE, AS MUCH AS I FELT LIKE IT. AS MUCH AS I STILL DO SOMETIMES. I NEVER WAS. I DON'T THINK I EVER COULD BE. THANKS. TO MY FIRST LOVE, I'M GRATEFUL FOR YOU. GRATEFUL THAT EVEN THOUGH IT WASN'T WHAT I HOPED FOR AND EVEN THOUGH IT WAS NEVER ENOUGH, IT WAS. SOME THINGS NEVER ARE.. AND WE WERE. I WON'T FORGET YOU. I WON'T FORGET THE SUMMER. I'LL REMEMBER WHO I WAS WHEN I MET YOU. I'LL REMEMBER WHO YOU WERE AND HOW WE'VE BOTH CHANGED AND STAYED THE SAME. I'VE NEVER HAD MORE RESPECT FOR LIFE AND LIVING THAN I HAVE RIGHT NOW. MAYBE IT TAKES A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE TO FEEL ALIVE. THANKS. TO MY MOTHER, YOU RAISED ME STRONG. I KNOW I'M ONLY BRAVE BECAUSE YOU WERE FIRST.. SO THANK YOU. ALL OF YOU. FOR EVERYTHING GOOD. I FEEL LIKE A FREE MAN. IF I LISTEN CLOSELY.. I CAN HEAR THE SKY FALLING TOO.
- FRANK
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Frank Ocean (Channel Orange)
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Whenever you feel ‘short’ or in ‘need’ of something, give what you want first and it will come back in buckets. That is true for money, a smile, love, friendship. I know it is often the last thing a person may want to do, but it has always worked for me. I just trust that the principle of reciprocity is true, and I give what I want
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Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad)
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Esența prieteniei este binele reciproc pe care prietenii vor să și-l facă. Nu este «sinceritatea», înțeleasă ca o continuă bombardare cu problemele pe care le poți avea. (...) Confidența este o formă a indiscreției, este un apel excesiv la toleranța și la răbdarea celuilalt.
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Ion Vianu
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I can't count the times I've thought about telling Jessa how I feel, but to be honest I've never been sure she's interested. And admitting something like that to someone is purely a one time deal. If it's not reciprocated, then not only do you look like a prize fool but you also loose a friendship.
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Mila Gray (Come Back to Me (Come Back to Me, #1))
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If friendship is the point of human life, we seem to have a problem with Jesus' rightly famous teaching that we should love our neighbor, indeed, that we should love even our enemy. It certainly seems that friendship and this commanded love (shall we call it 'Christian love'?) stand at odds. Friendship is particular, but Christian love is universal. Friendship is reciprocal, but Christian love is unidirectional. Friendship is drawn to the good and thus discriminates, unlike the rain that falls on the just and the unjust alike....The word translated 'love' here [in Matt. 5:44-45] is agape, and agape is generally taken as self-giving performed selflessly. It is taken as altruism, a turning to the other without regard to who the other is. It is said to act without regard for any internal attraction to the beloved, in distinction from erotic love, eros, which builds upon such attraction. And it is said to lack the particularity that characterizes philia, which is friendship.
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Victor Lee Austin (Friendship: The Heart of Being Human)
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When we talk about friendship, it has to be reciprocal, right? You can’t just be expecting good friendships when you’re not a good friend yourself.
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Luvvie Ajayi Jones (Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual)
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By living outside India, Gandhi had been able to free himself from custom and convention, and forge friendships across the gender divide. In his years in the diaspora he was close to three women in particular: his long-time secretary in South Africa, Sonja Schlesin; Henry Polak’s wife, Millie, since the Polaks and the Gandhis shared a home in Johannesburg; and Polak’s sister, Maud, whom he had met in London.
Maud Polak was in love with Gandhi—this was not reciprocated. With Millie and Sonja the friendship was entirely platonic. He liked and respected them—indeed, they were among the few colleagues who dared challenge or criticize him.
Saraladevi was Gandhi’s first woman friend in India, and also his first Indian woman friend. Their relationship was shot through with passion and romance. He found her stimulating, interesting, even glamorous. He was possessive about her, he wished to be with her as much as possible.
The relationship between Gandhi and Saraladevi was never consummated sexually. But it seems it came very close to doing so. Years later, in an exchange with a Gujarati colleague about the merits of brahmacharya, Gandhi remarked: ‘I myself am a proof before you that sex does not discriminate between the young and the old. Even today I have to erect all sorts of walls around me for the sake of safety.’ Then he continued: ‘Despite this, I was in danger of succumbing a few years ago'.
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Ramachandra Guha (Gandhi 1915-1948: The Years That Changed the World)
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Stalin justified his position by saying: “China and Vietnam are sharing the border and related to each other. It’s convenient for China to help [Viet Minh].”39 Mao agreed with Stalin. Mao followed Stalin’s advice and met Ho in Moscow. Ho explained to Mao why the Viet Minh needed international help in their war against the French. Mao made it clear to Ho at their meetings that China would support North Vietnam in order to win the war against the French. Mao also “stressed the importance of reciprocating friendship.
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Xiaobing Li (The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War)
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Georgiana didn’t need to be his girlfriend; she didn’t need to stake that claim, because she knew, completely and positively, that everything she felt for Brady was reciprocated, that they could call it friendship and he would still look at her in a way that made her insides go hot and electric. They were friends with benefits, and for Georgiana that benefit was that she was sleeping with someone she loved completely.
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Jenny Jackson (Pineapple Street)
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came away with a few metaphorically memorable concepts, including the bizarre proposition that two particles could become “entangled” at the quantum level in such a way that anything you did to one particle would happen to the other. Even if they were banished to opposite ends of the universe, they behaved like reciprocating voodoo dolls or invisibly conjoined twins bound to each other’s fate despite billions of light-years between them. Quantum entanglement was so weird that Einstein called it “spooky actions at a distance,
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Jonathan Rosen (The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions)
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It has to be okay for a child not to be an alpha male or queen bee–otherwise almost everyone is doomed to misery. Set your sights a little lower and look to see if your child has the basics covered. Watch your child with a friend. Are they happy to see one another? Do they engage in reciprocal play? Do they take each other’s feelings into account? Can they resolve conflict without help? Do they have more peaceful time than fighting time? If your child can do these things at least some of the time, you can relax.
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Michael G. Thompson (Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children)
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As a social force, Reciprocation is one of the primary psychological tendencies that underlie human cooperation. The “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” instinct is powerful and forms the foundation of friendships and alliances. Historically, gift giving was how the powerful remained in Power: in throwing lavish parties or generously awarding titles and land, leaders increased their influence by amassing a store of favors that could be called in during times of need.
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Josh Kaufman (The Personal MBA: A World-Class Business Education in a Single Volume)
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In the early twentieth century, the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski ventured to the Trobriand Islands, part of present-day Papau New Guinea, in order to study the region's practice of gift exchange. People of the islands would travel great distances to offer one another symbolic, seemingly worthless necklaces and armbands. Malinowski believed he was observing a kind of soft power. Gift exchange was not a form of altruism, since there was the expectation of reciprocity. And it wasn't random, since the flow of gifts followed discernible patterns. Instead, he argued that this act of giving and receiving bound everyone in a political process. The expansion of these exchanges across the islands represented an expansion of political authority.
The sociologist Marcel Mauss found Malinowski's explanation insufficient. He felt that Malinowski placed too much emphasis on transaction, rather than how feelings of indebtedness actually work. In 1923, he published "Essay on the Gift," which placed Malinowski's island networks in conversation with gifting practices in other societies, like indigenous traditions in the Americas, systems of communal ownership in China. Mauss introduced the idea of delayed reciprocity. You give expecting to receive. Yet we often give and receive according to intermittent, sometimes random intervals. That time lag is where a relationship emerges. Perhaps gifts serve political ends. But Mauss believed that they strengthened the bonds between people and communities. Your obligation isn't just to repay the gift according to a one-to-one ratio. You're beholden to the "spirit of the gift", a kind of shared faith. Every gesture carries a desire for connection, expanding one's ring of associations.
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Hua Hsu (Stay True)
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The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love:
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Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
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Occasionally, we face challenges in relationships and friendships due to our reluctance to acknowledge when someone's time in our life has ended. There are moments when we're coerced into remaining with those who don't value us. It's crucial to realize that what's truly meant for us will naturally flow; if effort isn't reciprocated, we should question why we're striving so intensely to maintain that bond. We mustn't feel obligated to mend those who consistently cause us harm. It's essential to assess the expiry date of relationships or friendships.
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Carson Anekeya
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Having a spouse who understands the power of reciprocity will make you feel cherished in a marriage than the one who doesn't.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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A one-sided friendship is not a real friendship.
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John Arthur
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A true friendship requires two; not one.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Reciprocity sustains life.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Reciprocity keeps doors you once entered continually opened for future entry, either for you or someone close to you, whenever the need arises.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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The Law of Reciprocity helps us to appreciate our friendships, return kindness that have been done to us, recognize the impacts of our friends on us and reward them as required, as well as to give appropriate responses to our friends anytime we receive any acts of benevolence from them.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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The simple act of return on kindness is what keeps friendships alive.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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If friendship is therefore a relationship, then it means it doesn't rely on only one person to make it work; both parties of the relationship have to commit themselves to it in order to have a successful lifelong friendship relationship.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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The concept of friendship carries with it the ability to relate. In friendship, you have to relate with me and I also have to relate with you. It's a mutual relationship.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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You cannot be in friendship and sit at one corner always expecting people to come to you. You also have to move and go to them. That's friendship. It's a relationship.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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You need to sow seeds of kindness, love, care, time, compassion, forgiveness, and selflessness into friendships before you can really enjoy them.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Nothing destroys the spirit of greediness faster than the spirit of giving.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Our inability to give activates the spirits of hoarding, selfishness and greediness.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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God's love is our greatest anchor and motivation for giving.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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The basis of our giving is the love of God.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Where nothing is given reciprocity has no essence.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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The Law of Reciprocity both includes giving and receiving.
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John Arthur
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Something you are unwilling to receive may be the reason for your stunt growth and development.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Anytime you reject nutrition, you malfunction.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Life is not only about giving; but also mastering the art of receiving.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Never undermine opportunities to receive.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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God only gives to those willing to receive.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Your inability to develop a receiving heart will always limit what you could get from God.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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What you receive dies with you, but what you give lives after you.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Giving always enriches the one who gives.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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couples, dating, friend, friendship, love, marriage, partners, reciprocity, relationship
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Once you give out what you have, you open up your treasures to receive abundance in greater proportions.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Learning to give is the easiest way we can grow.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Learning to give is the simplest way to live.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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The two basic pillars for the Law of Reciprocity are giving and the other is receiving. These two pillars come together to make what is called sharing.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Your friendships become as rich and enduring as your application of the law of reciprocity.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Have the humility to receive from your friends no matter how little they contribute to your life.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Successful friendships are established on both giving and receiving. Develop a heart to give not only to receive.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Friendships dwell on the law of reciprocity.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Every friendship will have an impact on your life.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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A one-sided friendship is the friendship where you are the only person who does all the work. You do all the calling, all the visiting, all the giving and all the everything.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))
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Most people live in friendship without living as friends.
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John Arthur (The Law Of Reciprocity (The Laws Of Friendship))