Sustaining Friendship Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Sustaining Friendship. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn't it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive - because we are so stupid about each other.
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
Because apparently One Direction’s superpower is instant friendship. Someone should ship them to the Middle East so they can get to work on that Israel-Palestine thing.
Emma Chase (Sustained (The Legal Briefs, #2))
But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
David Whyte (Consolations - Revised edition: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)
For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art.
Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism is a Humanism)
Friendship that insists upon agreement on all matters is not worth the name. Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be.
Mahatma Gandhi
The first thing that struck me was how the single women of my acquaintance were exceptionally alert to the people around them, generous in their attention, ready to engage in conversation or share a joke. Having nobody to go home to at night had always seemed a sad and lonesome fate; now I saw that being forced to leave the house for human contact encourages a person to live more fully in the world. In the best instances, the result was an intricate lacework of friendships varying in intensity and closeness that could be, it seemed, just as sustaining as a nuclear family, and possibly more appealing.
Kate Bolick (Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own)
Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself.
Toni Morrison (Love)
An ideological movement is a collection of people many of whom could hardly bake a cake, fix a car, sustain a friendship or a marriage, or even do a quadratic equation, yet they believe they know how to rule the world. The university, in which it is possible to combine theoretical pretension with comprehensive ineptitude, has become the natural habitat of the ideological enthusiast. A kind of adventure playground, carefully insulated from reality in order to prevent absent-minded professors from bumping into things as they explore transcendental realms, has become the institutional base for civilizational self-hatred.
Kenneth Minogue
I thought about Maggie and how passion was a difficult thing to sustain, but that friendship had a pace that could go on forever.
Craig Johnson (Death Without Company (Walt Longmire, #2))
But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
Significantly, romantic friendships can coexist with the fact of partners' marrying because their reason for being is not to replace marriage but to open the possibility of sustained, committed true love existing among friends, and not just same-sex friends. No matter that our chosen relationship commitments change. Those of us who have long-term romantic friendships, some that have lasted longer than any of our marriages or partnerships, do not fear that these commitments will falter if we create primary bonds.
bell hooks (Communion: The Female Search for Love (Love Song to the Nation, 2))
There are people who bring joy to our lives, but who fail to make us happy. They are the people for the moment. Never rely on their love because it is not sustainable. Their love is alike a comet that illuminates the sky, but then fades away because it lacks the sustainable energy of the sun.
Janvier Chouteu-Chando
the members of my writing group—provided three years of encouragement, careful reading, good advice, and friendship that sustained me.
Anita Diamant (The Red Tent)
On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.
Mary Rose O'Reilley (The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd)
It must not be forgotten that reason too needs to be sustained in all its searching by trusting dialogue and sincere friendship. A climate of suspicion and distrust, which can beset speculative research, ignores the teaching of the ancient philosophers who proposed friendship as one of the most appropriate contexts for sound philosophical enquiry.
Pope John Paul II (Fides et Ratio: On the Relationship Between Faith and Reason)
Because there’s no formal etiquette for ending a friendship, most people do it in the laziest, most passive and painless way possible, by unilaterally dropping any effort to sustain it and letting the other person figure it out for themselves. (I
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing: Essays and Cartoons)
Making friends is easy but sustaining friendship is difficult...
Debolina Bhawal
It inspired me to diversify my portfolio of attachments, so to speak, partly so I wouldn't overwhelm any one person with the fire hose of my 'undelivered discourse,' but also to protect myself from leaning to heavily on a buttress that couldn't and shouldn't sustain my full weight.
Kate Bolick (Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own)
I agree that it seems vulgar, decadent, even epistemically violent, to invest energy in the trivialities of sex and friendship when human civilization is facing collapse. But at the same time, that is what I do every day. We can wait, if you like, to ascend to some higher plane of being, at which point we’ll start directing all our mental and material resources toward existential questions and thinking nothing of our own families, friends and lovers and so on. But we’ll be waiting, in my opinion, a long time. And, in fact, we’ll die first. After all, when people are lying on their deathbeds, don’t they always start talking about their spouses and children? And isn’t death just the apocalypse in the first person? So, in that sense, there is nothing bigger than what you so derisively call “breaking up and staying together,” because at the end of our lives, when there is nothing left in front of us, it’s still the only thing we want to talk about. Maybe we’re just born to love and worry about the people we know and to go on loving and worrying, even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn’t it -- in a way -- a nice reason to die out? The nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganizing the distribution of the world’s resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much, and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity. And in fact it’s the very reason I root for us to survive -- because we are so stupid about each other.
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
And maybe it was the least important reason, but it was the day-to-day aspect of her life with Tariq that truly mattered to her. How, with him, even trips to the grocery store felt like an event, tasks as mundane as lifting up apples and pinching avocados before placing them into their basket. It was care she evoked in Tariq. It was clear in their first months of friendship and it was clear now. What better quality to evoke in another, she thought, one more durable than desire, more sustainable than excitement, one that had the possibility of growing until a sweet and gentle life was formed.
Fatima Farheen Mirza (A Place for Us)
For too brief a moment in the universe the veil was lifted. The mysterious became known. Questions met answers somewhere behind the stars. Furrowed brows were smoothed and eyelids closed over long unblinking stares. Your beloved occupied the cosmos. You awoke to sunrays and nestled down to sleep in moonlight. All life was a gift open to you and burgeoning for you. Choirs sang to harps and your feet moved to ancestral drumbeats. For you were sustaining and being sustained by the arms of your beloved. Now the days stretch before you with the dryness and sameness of desert dunes. And in this season of grief we who love you have become invisible to you. Our words worry the empty air around you and you can sense no meaning in our speech. Yet, we are here. We are still here. Our hearts ache to support you. We are always loving you. You are not alone.
Maya Angelou (Letter to My Daughter)
But here it is: my winter. It’s an open invitation to transition into a more sustainable life and to wrest back control over the chaos I’ve created. It’s a moment when I have to step into solitude and into contemplation. It’s also a moment when I have to walk away from old alliances, to let the strings of some friendships fall loose, if only for a while.
Katherine May (Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times)
You are a single woman; you intend to remain one. You’ve acquired enough sexual experience to feel you belong to your times. You do not have children; you never intended to. Sustained romantic intensities have not been for you. Your explanation (not an untrue one,though not quite sufficient) is that you have let yourself be shaped by so many conventions, expectations, and requirements (institution’s, people’s), by so much dread of disapproval, that the discipline of solitude—severe solitude—has been required to give you the sense of an independent selfhood. The intensities of friendship suit you better. Friendship’s choreography is for multiple partners: for varied groups and surprisingly sustained duets.
Margo Jefferson (Negroland)
A good friendship—like this one with Hallie—endured. It sustained you during times of crisis. It was there for you during the good times and the bad.
Debbie Macomber (This Matter of Marriage)
Just as children thrive with loving kindness from a caregiver, so too we are sustained by friendship, spiritual nurture, and a sense of belonging throughout our lives. 34.
Charlotte Kasl (If the Buddha Got Stuck: A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path (Compass))
While the priest prayed over me, I thought, “Friendship” was probably a good word to choose, after all. Without people to love and be loved by, I don’t imagine faith is very sustainable.
Wesley Hill (Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian)
We’ve made it private, contained it in family, when its audacity is in its potential to cross tribal lines. We’ve fetishized it as romance, when its true measure is a quality of sustained, practical care. We’ve lived it as a feeling, when it is a way of being. It is the elemental experience we all desire and seek, most of our days, to give and receive. The sliver of love’s potential that the Greeks separated out as eros is where we load so much of our desire, center so much of our imagination about delight and despair, define so much of our sense of completion. There is the love the Greeks called filia—the love of friendship. There is the love they called agape—love as embodied compassion, expressions of kindness that might be given to a neighbor or a stranger. The Metta of the root Buddhist Pali tongue, “lovingkindness,” carries the nuance of benevolent, active interest in others known and unknown, and its cultivation begins with compassion towards oneself.
Krista Tippett (Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living)
You know that feeling of invincibility you sometimes get, especially when young and testing yourself - well that could be because actually know deep down that we are indeed eternal. We come into this world to live a life, to experience it, from somewhere else, some other plane, but we are programmed by all around us to deny or forget this - until one day we may remember again. That feeling of blissful reconnection with our source can be invoked through nature, beautiful writing or art or music, any detailed craft or work of discovery or personal dedication, meditation or other mentally balancing practice, or even through religious experience if there is a pure communion (not a pretence of it). But we should not yearn to return too soon, we should accept that we have come here for the duration of each life, and revel in the chance to learn and grow on this splendid planet. We can draw a deep sense of being-ness. peace, and love from this connection, which will sustain us through any trial. Once nurtured, this becomes stronger than any other connection, so of course our relationships here are most joyful when they allow us the personal freedom to spend time developing and celebrating that connection. Our deepest friendships form with those we can share such time and experiences with - discussing, meditating, immersing ourselves in nature, or creating our music, art, written or other works. Our journeys here are voyages of discovery, opening out the wonders within and all around. What better companions could we have than those who are able to fully share in such delights with us?
Jay Woodman
Because when we should have been re-organizing the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive - because we are so stupid about each other.
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
Society doesn't officially recognize friendship as an institution in the way it recognizes sexual relationships, so there's no real protocol for ending one. If you've been going out, dating, or just sleeping with someone for even a month or two an you want to stop seeing him, you're expected to have a conversation with him letting him know it and giving him some bogus explanation. This conversation is seldom pleasant, and it ranges in tone from brittle adult adult discussions in coffee shops to armed standoffs in day care centers, but once it's over, you at least know your status. Because there's no formal etiquette for ending a friendship, most people do it in the laziest, most passive and painless way possible, by unilaterally dropping any effort to sustain it and letting the other person figure it out for themselves.
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
And she did love him. Not in the silly, girlish way that she had been infatuated with Vince. This had, for her, grown stealthily into an abiding love, sparked first by passion and then sustained by friendship and trust.
Ruth Hogan (The Keeper of Lost Things)
They had never been able to sustain fifteen minutes’ conversation with one another without advancing irreconcilable points of view, invigorating in friendships, but in close blood relations producing only uneasy cordiality.
Harper Lee (Go Set a Watchman)
peer pressure, on its own, isn’t enough to sustain a movement. But when the strong ties of friendship and the weak ties of peer pressure merge, they create incredible momentum. That’s when widespread social change can begin.
Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business)
What sustains a couple through ice-enshrined winters and through sultry summers, through the parched deserts and the stormy seas, is an absolute trust in each other, and a friendship which backs each other up without question.
Lisa Shea (Knowing Yourself (Sword of Glastonbury, #1))
It is love—friendship—that sustains us, even in the worst of times, under the worst of circumstances. Even when we have been driven mad. Even when we have killed. We still love. We are still worthy of love. We can still be loved.
Aileen Wuornos (Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in Her Own Words)
Life-giving ministry flows from lives that are full of gratitude to God, not with an expectation of gratitude from others. In community we can support one another, affirm contributions and yet also trust that our work is sustained by grace.
Christopher L. Heuertz (Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission (Resources for Reconciliation))
Choosing intrinsic values—like investing in friendships, neighbors, or volunteer groups—has been found to sustain our happiness and well-being in a way that pursuing extrinsic goals, like higher income or higher status in a career, doesn’t.
Jennifer Breheny Wallace (Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It)
In a series of emails they exchanged recently about their own friendship, Marianne expressed her feelings about Connell mainly in terms of her sustained interest in his opinions and beliefs, the curiosity she feels about his life, and her instinct to survey his thoughts whenever she feels conflicted about anything. He expressed himself more in terms of identification, his sense of rooting for her and suffering with her when she suffers, his ability to perceive and sympathise with her motivations.
Sally Rooney (Normal People)
Movements don’t emerge because everyone suddenly decides to face the same direction at once. They rely on social patterns that begin as the habits of friendship, grow through the habits of communities, and are sustained by new habits that change participants’ sense of self.
Charles Duhigg (The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business)
Since true life and sustenance are found in the presence of God, we must regularly drink deeply from the river of his delights. In our weariness, though, we often seek life from entertainment, empty friendships and ceaseless activity, which all fail to bring life. So many of our “recreational” activities fail to re-create the inner resources of our soul to face the challenges of each day. Like the Israelites before us, we forsake the river of God’s presence and hew out empty cisterns that do not hold water to satisfy our thirsts (Jer 2:13). Will we satisfy our soul at the fountain of living waters? Or will we hew out cisterns of putrid water that do not satisfy? The rivers of life flowing from the presence of God in Eden beckon us to the satisfaction and re-creation of these refreshing waters that are only found in the presence of God. We sacrifice for what satisfies. The soul-satisfying riches in the presence of God propel us out of our comfort zones, calling us out of the warm confines of our beds to our knees in early-morning prayer and meditation on God’s Word. Only these soul-satisfying riches can sustain us in the rigors of God’s calling on our lives as we move out to proclaim his name to the nations across the street and across the globe. A heart for mission grows out of a soul that finds satisfaction in God’s presence, the riches of which can be seen in the imagery of Eden.
G.K. Beale (God Dwells Among Us: Expanding Eden to the Ends of the Earth)
when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world’s resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it’s the very reason I root for us to survive—because we are so stupid about each other.
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world’s resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it’s the very reason I root for us to survive—because we are so stupid about each other.
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
They seemed to arrive at some form of friendship. Maybe they were like a couple of weary soldiers who went through a war together, side by side in the trenches, and having no inclination to relive the old battles found a certain comfort in the simple knowledge that they'd been young together and present at the same terrible moments of bloodshed. Even though, in their case the injury sustained there was my mother's t the hands of my father.
Joyce Maynard (After Her)
Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world’s resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it’s the very reason I root for us to survive – because we are so stupid about each other. As to this last point, I speak
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
/Here it is: my winter. It’s an open invitation to transition into a more sustainable life and to wrest back control over the chaos I’ve created. It’s a moment when I have to step into solitude and contemplation. It’s also a moment when I have to walk away from all the alliances, to let the strings of some friendships fall loose, if only for a while. It’s a pathway walked over and over again in my life. I have learned the skill set of wintering the hard way.
Katherine May (Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times)
We need to engage him with our whole lives. That means cleaning out the garbage of noise and distraction from our homes. It means building real Christian friendships. It means cultivating oases of silence, worship, and prayer in our lives. It means having more children and raising them in the love of the Lord. It means fighting death and fear with joy and life, one family at a time, with families sustaining one another against the temptations of weariness and resentment.
Charles J. Chaput (Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World)
all of the major themes with which [Koontz] has been obsessed: the healing power of love and friendship; the struggle to overcome the past and change what we are; the moral superiority of the individual over the workings of the state and large institutions; the wonder of both the natural world and the potential of the human mind; the relationship of mankind to God; transcendence; and how we sustain hope in the face of our awareness that all things die.” Those are, indeed, the fundamental issues in this novel.
Dean Koontz (Watchers)
After that morning in the churchyard, Ruby and Ivy's friendship became a handprint they shared, twin life lines that began and ended as one. Old churchgoers like Hasil and Ivy's father, Noble, used to have a name for this sort of union: a covenant, the kind that King David had with Jonathan in the Book of Samuel. They spoke of it as if men had invented the mystery of friendship, as if it hadn't been the liberation that sustained mountain women ever since water split rock to form the razorbacks above the hills.
Amy Jo Burns (Shiner)
O infinite goodness of my God! It is thus that I seem to see both myself and Thee. O Joy of the angels, how I long, when I think of this, to be wholly consumed in love for Thee! How true it is that Thou dost bear with those who cannot bear Thee to be with them! Oh, how good a Friend art Thou, my Lord! How Thou dost comfort us and suffer us and wait until our nature becomes more like Thine and meanwhile dost bear with it as it is! Thou dost remember the times when we love Thee, my Lord, and, when for a moment we repent, Thou dost forget how we offended Thee. I have seen this clearly in my own life, and I cannot conceive, my Creator, why the whole world does not strive to draw near to Thee in this intimate friendship. Those of us who are wicked, and whose nature is not like Thine, ought to draw near to Thee so that Thou mayest make them good. They should allow Thee to be with them for at least two hours each day, even though they may not be with Thee, but are perplexed, as I was, with a thousand worldly cares and thoughts. In exchange for the effort which it costs them to desire to be in such good company (for Thou knowest, Lord, that at first this is as much as they can do and sometimes they can do no more at all) Thou dost prevent the devils from assaulting them so that each day they are able to do them less harm, and Thou givest them strength to conquer. Yea, Life of all lives, Thou slayest none of those that put their trust in Thee and desire Thee for their Friend; rather dost Thou sustain their bodily life with greater health and give strength to their souls.
Teresa of Ávila (The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself)
But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long, close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
David Whyte (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)
As concerning marriage, besides that it is a covenant, the entrance into which only is free, but the continuance in it forced and compulsory, having another dependence than that of our own free will, and a bargain commonly contracted to other ends, there almost always happens a thousand intricacies in it to unravel, enough to break the thread and to divert the current of a lively affection: whereas friendship has no manner of business or traffic with aught but itself. Moreover, to say truth, the ordinary talent of women is not such as is sufficient to maintain the conference and communication required to the support of this sacred tie; nor do they appear to be endued with constancy of mind, to sustain the pinch of so hard and durable a knot. And doubtless, if without this, there could be such a free and voluntary familiarity contracted, where not only the souls might have this entire fruition, but the bodies also might share in the alliance, and a man be engaged throughout, the friendship would certainly be more full and perfect; but it is without example that this sex has ever yet arrived at such perfection; and, by the common consent of the ancient schools, it is wholly rejected from it.
Michel de Montaigne
After God, who is the central core pillar to any Christian marriage, there are four important marital relationship foundations. These are: * Self-Esteem - if you don't love yourself you will find it almost impossible to accept love from others. * Friendship - a strong friendship will sustain your marriage even when feelings of love are harder to find. * Laughter - it will improve your quality of life, your health and your relationships * Romance - feeling close to your partner can be the glue which holds your relationship together through the rough patches, but the absence of romance causes a void that problems will easily fill.
Karen M. Gray (Save Your Marriage: A Guide to Restoring & Rebuilding Christian Marriages on the Precipice of Divorce)
(Pericles:) For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city; no subject complains that his masters are unworthy of him. And we shall assuredly not be without witnesses; there are mighty monuments of our power which will make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages; we shall not need the praises of Homer or of any other panegyrist whose poetry may please for the moment, although his representation of the facts will not bear the light of day. For we have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valour, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our enmity. (Book 2 Chapter 41.3-4)
Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War: Bk. 1-2)
Aletta.” “I need to apologize to you, Jake. And I’d be obliged if you’d allow me to do that.” He stared, a little baffled, then nodded. “All right.” “I’m sorry for questioning whether or not you were truly wounded.” He looked away. “For questioning why you were here instead of being off fighting somewhere. This auction, all the money being raised, all the good being done, is due in large part to you. I appreciate your friendship to me. And also your friendship with my son.” He slowly looked back. “And I only hope,” she continued, her smile reaching her eyes before it turned the beautiful curves of her mouth, “that I haven’t overstepped my bounds in a way that will prevent that friendship from continuing in the future.” Hearing the ring of familiarity of his words in hers, he smiled. And dared to hope. “Not at all. Our friendship can sustain that, and a whole lot more, I assure you.
Tamera Alexander (Christmas at Carnton (Carnton #0.5))
After all, when people are lying on their deathbeds, don't they always start talking about their spouses and children? And isn't death just the apocalypse in the first person? So in that sense, there is nothing bigger than what you so derisively call 'breaking up or staying together' (!), because at the end of our lives, when there is nothing left in front of us, it's still the only thing we want to talk about. Maybe we are just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means that the human species is going to die out, isn't it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganizing the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting.
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
Vincent Marc Hoherz. On World Peace. ♡ A construct like religion doesn't exist, it never did and never will be existing. The principles of a peaceful life as a community of quarters, cities, communal districts, conglomerates over city-boundaries, national countries, continents, international communities and economical relations between each of these entities can only sustainably established by following the principles of Human Rights, Common Sense, Empathy and Constructivism like Friendship, Love, Reliability and Circumspection. Each and Everyone has to be registered, guided and assistently encouraged in accordance with their abilities. Women and Children are our most precious and Central Potential as a World-Community and have to be given any existing Security and Right to develop. Following these Principles, Women first, - will lead and only will lead to a Planet's stable Society. ♡ ‪#‎SophieHunger‬ ‪#‎EmilieWelti‬ ‪#‎EmmaWatson‬ ‪#‎HeForShe‬ ‪#‎UnWomen‬ ‪#‎Nato‬ ‪#‎World‬ ‪#‎WorldPeace‬ ‪#‎VincentMarcHoherz‬
Vincent Marc Hoherz
Why do some people come into our life just out of nowhere, though for a brief moment, they still manage to change our whole life? They force us to ponder and see life, the world from a different perspective. They force us to see the light and the goodness in midst of all the darkness. They put themselves so close to our soul that even when they leave they are not truly gone. What is love? Why do we love? What is friendship? Above all, what is family? What does it feel to have/ sustain a family? Why do some people have everything in the life they want and need to survive, all their desires while others barely have anything they want and need to survive? But why do the others still manage to survive in midst of all this darkness, cruelty, pain, and suffering? Why do darkness, pain, and suffering are their only true companion? Though they live in the dark, their soul can still see the light. Why do they still manage to have that hope and courage? Why don’t they give up on dreaming? Why do they still hope and dream? Based on what eternal infinite enchanted mystifying force they never cease to exist? --- Perhaps the sanctified love and faith. This journey carries all the answers. I hope this journey will change your life. I hope it will make you see things from a different perspective. I hope it will make you ponder. I know it will- I have hope. It can change your life. It can. You just have to have that faith. Just believe and keep believing. AS IT DID MINE.
Sangramdeb Chakrabarti (In Search of Why)
THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAHHOTEP Part III Report your commission without faltering, Give your advice in your master’s council. If he is fluent in his speech, It will not be hard for the envoy to report, Nor will he be answered, "Who is he to know it ?” As to the master, his affairs will fail If he plans to punish him for it. He should be silent upon (hearing): "I have told.” If you are a man who leads. Whose authority reaches wide, You should do outstanding things, Remember the day that comes after. No strife will occur in the midst of honors, But where the crocodile enters hatred arises. If you are a man who leads. Listen calmly to the speech of one who pleads; Don’t stop him from purging his body Of that which he planned to tell. A man in distress wants to pour out his heart More than that his case be won. About him who stops a plea One says: “Why does he reject it ?” Not all one pleads for can be granted, But a good hearing soothes the heart. If you want friendship to endure In the house you enter As master, brother, or friend, In whatever place you enter, Beware of approaching the women! Unhappy is the place where it is done. Unwelcome is he who intrudes on them. A thousand men are turned away from their good: A short moment like a dream, Then death comes for having known them. Poor advice is “shoot the opponent,” When one goes to do it the heart rejects it. He who fails through lust of them, No affair of his can prosper. If you want a perfect conduct, To be free from every evil, Guard against the vice of greed: A grievous sickness without cure, There is no treatment for it. It embroils fathers, mothers, And the brothers of the mother, It parts wife from husband; It is a compound of all evils, A bundle of all hateful things. That man endures whose rule is rightness, Who walks a straight line; He will make a will by it, The greedy has no tomb. Do not be greedy in the division. Do not covet more than your share; Do not be greedy toward your kin. The mild has a greater claim than the harsh. Poor is he who shuns his kin, He is deprived of 'interchange' Even a little of what is craved Turns a quarreler into an amiable man. When you prosper and found your house, And love your wife with ardor, Fill her belly, clothe her back, Ointment soothes her body. Gladden her heart as long as you live, She is a fertile held for her lord. Do not contend with her in court, Keep her from power, restrain her — Her eye is her storm when she gazes — Thus will you make her stay in your house. Sustain your friends with what you have, You have it by the grace of god; Of him who fails to sustain his friends One says, “a selfish ka". One plans the morrow but knows not what will be, The ( right) ka is the ka by which one is sustained. If praiseworthy deeds are done, Friends will say, “welcome!” One does not bring supplies to town, One brings friends when there is need. Do not repeat calumny. Nor should you listen to it, It is the spouting of the hot-bellied. Report a thing observed, not heard, If it is negligible, don’t say anything. He who is before you recognizes worth. lf a seizure is ordered and carried out, Hatred will arise against him who seizes; Calumny is like a dream against which one covers the face. If you are a man of worth, Who sits in his master’s council. Concentrate on excellence, Your silence is better than chatter. Speak when you know you have a solution, It is the skilled who should speak in council; Speaking is harder than all other work. He who understands it makes it serve.
Miriam Lichtheim (Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms)
O happy age, which our first parents called the age of gold! Not because of gold, so much adored in this iron age, was then easily purchased, but because those two fatal words mine and thine, were distinctions unknown to the people of those fortunate times; for all things were in common in that holy age: men, for their sustenance, needed only lift their hands and take it from the sturdy oak, whose spreading arms liberally invited them to gather the wholesome savoury fruit; while the clear springs, and silver rivulets, with luxuriant plenty, ordered them their pure refreshing water. In hollow trees, and in the clefts of rocks, the laboring and industrious bees erected their little commonwealths, that men might reap with pleasure and with ease the the sweet and fertile harvest of their toils. The tough and strenuous cork-trees did of themselves, and without other art than their native liberality, dismiss and impart their broad light bark, which served to cover these lowly huts, propped up with rough-hewn stakes, that were first built as a shelter against the inclemencies of air. All then was union, all peace, all love and friendship in the world; as yet no rude plough-share with violence to pry into the pious bowels of our mother earth, for she, without compulsion, kindly yielded from every part of her fruitful and spacious bosom, whatever might at once satisfy, sustain, and indulge her frugal children. Then was the when innocent, beautiful young sheperdesses went tripping over the hills and vales; their lovely hairs sometimes plaited, sometimes loose and flowing, clad in no other vestment but what was necessary to cover decently what modesty would always have concealed. The Tyrian dye and the rich glossy hue of silk, martyred and dissembled into every color, which are now esteemed so fine and magnificent, were unknown to the innocent plainness of that age; arrayed in the most magnificent garbs, and all the most sumptous adornings which idleness and luxury have taught succeeding pride: lovers then expressed the passion of their souls in the unaffected language of the heart, with the native plainness and sincerity in which they were conceived, and divested of all that artificial contexture, which enervates what it labours to enforce: imposture, deceit and malice had not yet crept in and imposed themselves unbribed upon mankind in the disguise of truth and simplicity: justice, unbiased either by favour or interest, which now so fatally pervert it, was equally and impartially dispensed; nor was the judge's fancy law, for then there were neither judges nor causes to be judged: the modest maid might walk wherever she pleased alone, free from the attacks of lewd, lascivious importuners. But, in this degenerate age, fraud and a legion of ills infecting the world, no virtue can be safe, no honour be secure; while wanton desires, diffused into the hearts of men, corrupt the strictest watches, and the closest retreats; which, though as intricate and unknown as the labyrinth of Crete, are no security for chastity. Thus that primitive innocence being vanished, the opression daily prevailing, there was a necessity to oppose the torrent of violence: for which reason the order of knight-hood-errant was instituted to defend the honour of virgins, protect widows, relieve orphans, and assist all the distressed in general. Now I myself am one of this order, honest friends; and though all people are obliged by the law of nature to be kind to persons of my order; yet, since you, without knowing anything of this obligation, have so generously entertained me, I ought to pay you my utmost acknowledgment; and, accordingly, return you my most hearty thanks for the same.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
What he wants-actual friendship, over a sustained period, as a kind of audition of romantic possibility-is a long and windingly manipulative road that I have not intention to travelling.
Edward Southgate (Great Pleasures)
A friendship with the Lord will sustain you in difficult times.
Elizabeth George (Prayers to Calm Your Heart: Finding the Path to More Peace and Less Stress)
The conviction that we have a treasure to share with others “has to be sustained by our own constantly renewed experience of savoring Christ’s friendship and his message. It is impossible to persevere in a fervent evangelization unless we are convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to” (266
Anonymous
He is talking almost sunnily about manners and friendship, love and service, goodwill and generosity and forgiveness—everything, in fact, a salad bar of crisp Christian virtues, healthy and cleansing, something to be carried away from school to sustain one in the wider world, the moral equivalent of that packed lunch.
Richard Farr (The Truth About Constance Weaver)
The most positive outcome I know to such a friendship is the recognition that we do not have to figure out which one of us is wrong; indeed, that concept may not even apply. By ordinary logic, if two people or groups disagree, then one is wrong — or it is all relative and does not much matter anyway. But the basis for both disagreement and friendship is something that is neither strictly logical nor entirely relative. Rather, the basis for theological friendship between Christians and Jews is a mystery — the word Paul rightly uses (Rom 11:25; cf. 11:33) as he struggles with this most painful new fact of salvation history, the separation of Jews and Gentiles within the household of Israel’s faith. The mystery has only deepened over time, as the two communities have over a period of two thousand years sustained an allegiance to the God to whom Israel’s Scriptures bear witness, and likewise have experienced the faithfulness of that God to them. This prolonged duality is something neither Paul nor anyone else in the first century anticipated. At the very least, it should caution us all to modesty in our theological assertions.
Ellen F. Davis (The Art of Reading Scripture)
It is love—friendship—that sustains us, even in the worst of times, under the worst of circumstances. Even when we have been driven mad. Even when we have killed. We still love. We are still worthy of love. We can still be loved.   —Daphne Gottlieb San Francisco
Aileen Wuornos (Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in Her Own Words)
Avigail Stern, daughter of a rabbi, and Rebekah Weizmann, whose crime against the Reich was to have a father that was a prominent Jewish industrialist. They became firm friends in a place where friendship inevitably meant pain and loss. Avigail said, “In the camp infirmary, the SS doctors subjected the prisoners to medical experiments, causing terrible wounds that imitated those sustained by soldiers on the battlefield. They treated us with various experimental medicines to prevent infections. Some worked, some did not. Testing was also done on amputation techniques and setting and transplanting bones. Most of the women died.
Dan Eaton (The Secret Gospel)
We began to realize that our lives are interwoven with and sustained by ordinary people valiantly shaping the decisive events of our shared history: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, storekeepers and supermarket workers, cleaning personnel, caretakers, transport workers, men and women working to provide essential services and public safety, volunteers, priests and religious. … They understood that no one is saved alone.
Pope Francis (Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship)
With splendid specificity, all the creative texts I have studied provide alternative models for thinking about aging. Scanty and eccentric though they may be, their tributes to love and friendship tell me that many stories have yet to be recounted. But there is a late-life love tradition, and it explores the manifold ways enduring passion sustains older people dedicated to prized partnerships and also to a range of desires: to keep on writing or reading, to go on seeing and savoring beloved places or works of art, to continue nurturing each other or progenitors or descendants, to prolong the kaleidoscope of fractured and reformed memories that accrue as a diminishing future is enhanced by a lengthening past that embellishes the present for those lucky enough to be loving while living in our final years.
Susan Gubar (Late-Life Love)
Scottish minister Andrew Bonar said, “Fasting is abstaining from anything that hinders prayer.” Not just food. Anything. As a matter of fact, Bonar often fasted from reading in order to spend more time with the Lord. Reading! His example ought to challenge us to consider what else might be hindering our intimate friendship with the Lord. If we want to experience His sustaining hand in our lives, it may be a good idea to take a season to set aside anything that might be in our hands. I like to say it this way: We abstain so that He might sustain. This isn’t just about food. We don’t just run to the pantry—we run to online games, we run to romance novels, and we run to Starbucks too.
Wendy Speake (The 40-Day Sugar Fast: Where Physical Detox Meets Spiritual Transformation)
What is Life? Life is Self. Self Itself Is. So it is. The origin of Life is Self. Self created itself. Self experiences itself. Self sustains itself. It would be correct to note that Self has created the environment to sustain itself this although the environment is Self. There is only Self. Self itself is. Self always is. All that is here is Self perceiving itself as itself. There is no division. Division does not exist. There where otherness is perceived is but Self perceiving itself as variegated not to feel alone. Aloneness aka loneliness is the cause why Self veils itself as Life Diversified and Companionship aka Love is verily so the one and only purpose. Life Diversified is Self experiencing itself, as Life Diversified, not to feel alone, for Companionship, for Friendship, for Love. Love is as such correctly so the meaning of Life for Life is not Life but Self desiring Love. Love is all that matters rightfully so.
Wald Wassermann
As to the statement that the Universe is Self-caused; it is only partially correct to note that the reason why the Universe exists is that it caused itself to exist. Why? The Universe is not the Universe. The Universe is Self. Self was there in the beginning. Self is here now. Self will always be. Self always is. The answer to the question - how did the Universe begin? - is Self desiring Companionship. So it is. The Big Bang was Self desiring not to be alone. The Big Bang was Self desiring Companionship. The Big Bang was Self desiring to Love and Be Loved in return. I say 'was' although it should be 'is' because 'Time Exists for Love'. All that is here is Self not wanting to be alone. It is not good to be alone. Self desires not to be alone. Self desires to negate its aloneness; its own loneliness. Self desires Companionship. It is this what the Universe is. The Universe is Self desiring Companionship aka Love. Of course, Self is undivided. Division does not exists. Division is a sensory perception created for the very purpose not to feel alone. All that is here is Self. Self Itself Is. So it is. There is only One Self calling itself the Universe. The origin of the Universe is Self. Self created itself. Self experiences itself. Self sustains itself. It would be correct to note that Self has created the environment to sustain itself this although the environment is Self. There is only One Self. Self itself is. Self always is. All that is here is Self perceiving itself as itself. At the risk of sounding repetitive: there is no division; division does not exist. Division is the fallacy of all fallacies. There where otherness is perceived is but Self perceiving itself as variegated not to feel alone. Aloneness aka loneliness is the cause why Self veils itself as Life Diversified. Life Diversified is Self experiencing itself, as Life Diversified, not to feel alone, for Companionship, for Friendship, for Love. Love is as such correctly so the meaning of Life for Life is not Life but Self desiring Love. Love is all that matters; all that matter's Love.
Wald Wassermann
If we are committed to friendship at the margins, all of us need to ask what kind of spirituality will sustain us over the long haul. When we choose to dwell in places that have been devastated by human sin or exploitation, and when we develop friendships with people who are quite different from ourselves in terms of power, resources or life opportunities, what practices will help us maintain integrity and faithfulness?
Christopher L. Heuertz (Friendship at the Margins Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission)
Discipline begins where you are, and the key to sustaining the level of discipline you need lies in developing daily habits and routines which mirror the life you want to have.
Mensah Oteh (Unlocking Life's Treasure Chest: Wisdom keys to keep you inspired, encouraged, motivated and focused)
Talent helps, but success is only achieved and sustained through consistent effort.
Mensah Oteh
Community organizers, whose entire goal is to move people to action, know that for our interest to be sustainable it has to be linked to self-interest.
Shasta Nelson (Friendships Don't Just Happen!: The Guide to Creating a Meaningful Circle of GirlFriends)
The term impedance matching can be a very useful metaphor for connoting important aspects of social interactions. For example, the smooth and efficient functioning of social networks, whether in a society, a company, a group activity, and especially in relationships such as marriages and friendships, requires good communication in which information is faithfully transmitted between groups and individuals. When information is dissipated or “reflected,” such as when one side is not listening, it cannot be faithfully or efficiently processed, inevitably leading to misinterpretation, a process analogous
Geoffrey West (Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies)
Farewell, Aragog, king of the arachnids, whose long and faithful friendship those who knew you would never forget! Though your body will decay, your spirit lingers on in the quiet, web-spun places of your forest home. May your many-eyed descendants ever flourish and your human friends find solace for the loss they have sustained.
J.K. Rowling
Certainly prevents some believers from being compassionate, sympathetic, or even tolerant of others who are not as certain in their faith. Their arrogance turns them into the "frozen chosen," consciously or unconsciously excluding others from their cozy, believing world. This is the crabbed, joyless, and ungenerous religiosity that Jesus spoke against: spiritual blindness. There is a more subtle danger for this group: a complacency that makes one's relationship with God stagnate. Some people cling to ways of understanding their faith learned in childhood that might not work for an adult. For example, you might cling to a childhood notion of a God who will never let anything bad happen. When tragedy strikes, since your youthful image of God is not reflected in reality, you may abandon the God of your youth. Or you may abandon God completely. An adult life requires an adult faith. Think of it this way: you wouldn't consider yourself equipped to face life with a third-grader's understanding of math. Yet people often expect the religious instruction they had in grammar school to sustain them in the adult world. In his book A Friendship Like No Other, the Jesuit spiritual writer William A. Barry invites adults to relate to God in an adult way. Just as an adult child needs to relate to his or her parent in a new way, he suggest, so adult believers need to relate t God in new ways as they mature. Otherwise, one remains stuck in a childlike view of God that prevents fully embracing a mature faith.
James Martin (The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life)
It is not just that ‘traumatic events’ disrupt ‘attachments of family, friendship, love, and community’ or ‘shatter the construction of the self that is formed and sustained in relation to others.’ More fundamentally, trauma specialist Judith Herman asserts, trauma directly disrupts the very ‘systems of attachment and meaning that link individual and community.’ Thus, another specialist has defined traumatic events as ones ‘that cannot be assimilated with the victim’s “inner schemata” of self in relation to the world.’ The ‘work of reconstruction,’ Herman writes, ‘actually transforms the traumatic memory, so that it can be integrated into the survivor’s life story.
Stephanie E. Smallwood (Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora)
I have seen a husband adapt honestly and courageously while his wife descended into terminal dementia. He made the necessary adjustments, step by step. He accepted help when he needed it. He refused to deny her sad deterioration and in that manner adapted gracefully to it. I saw the family of that same woman come together in a supporting and sustaining manner as she lay dying, and gain newfound connections with each other—brother, sisters, grandchildren and father—as partial but genuine compensation for their loss. I have seen my teenage daughter live through the destruction of her hip and her ankle and survive two years of continual, intense pain and emerge with her spirit intact. I watched her younger brother voluntarily and without resentment sacrifice many opportunities for friendship and social engagement to stand by her and us while she suffered. With love, encouragement, and character intact, a human being can be resilient beyond imagining. What cannot be borne, however, is the absolute ruin produced by tragedy and deception.
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
Good food doesn't mean fancy food, good friend doesn't mean fancy friend, good life doesn't mean fancy life.
Abhijit Naskar (Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability)
Nothing sustains motivation better than belonging to the tribe. It transforms a personal quest into a shared one. Previously, you were on your own. Your identity was singular. You are a reader. You are a musician. You are an athlete. When you join a book club or a band or a cycling group, your identity becomes linked to those around you. Growth and change is no longer an individual pursuit. We are readers. We are musicians. We are cyclists. The shared identity begins to reinforce your personal identity. This is why remaining part of a group after achieving a goal is crucial to maintaining your habits. It’s friendship and community that embed a new identity and help behaviors last over the long run.
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long, close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
David Whyte (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)
The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life: a diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too much emphasis on a professional identity, of forgetting who will be there when our armored personalities run into the inevitable natural disasters and vulnerabilities found in even the most average existence. [...] But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self; the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
David Whyte
We almost always start a conversation, or sustain one, merely to cover the silence with, or merely to keep the silence covered by, the sounds of our words, which seldom form important statements or questions.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana (On Friendship: A Satirical Essay)
Pastoral isolation intensifies uncertainty about what really matters. While most pastors are constantly in touch with people, opportunities for deep fellowship among pastors are rare. Isolation appears even more intense when we remember that pastors need theological friendships to sustain them and hold them accountable to the gospel. Too few pastors gather on a regular basis to encourage and build up one another in the gospel. Pastoral loneliness contributes to the personal and ecclesial disasters of sexual misconduct, alcohol abuse, and financial impropriety.
John P. Burgess (A Pastoral Rule for Today: Reviving an Ancient Practice)
I can’t recall most dinners, I forget too many books, and I don’t remember 90 percent of the sermons I’ve heard; and yet all have sustained my body and soul in ways I cannot even begin to fathom. I might not be able to recall the vast majority of my conversations with friends, but I know they have sustained my soul through the years.
Justin Whitmel Earley (Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship)
We are still young, but we have done something remarkable already. We have stayed together. I think where we find ourselves is extremely significant. Significant because the next seven years, I think, are going to be final in a way that the last seven have not. In the next seven years every one of us will be in our thirties, some nearing forty. We are already starting marriages, families, careers, and settling into cities. In the next seven years those things are going to become more and more entrenched. The concrete we’re pouring into the habits of our lives is going to dry, and we are going to become the kind of people that we’re going to be for a long, long time. Let me put it another way. The college years and the early twenties lend themselves to a kind of emotional radicalness where you actually can and do completely shift your habits, and we become new people. That window, however, is likely closing. Thus, I think now is the time to consider seriously what kinds of people we are becoming. We have a good start, but I think the next seven years will be far more determinative of what kinds of friends we will be in the long run. The next seven years will show: Will we have the kind of friendships that sustain us through rocky years in marriage? Maybe more important, will we have the kind of friendships that sustain us through the difficulties of not being married yet? Will we have the kind of friends who live as examples to one another’s kids? Will we be the kind of friends who support one another financially if a job or business falls through or support one another emotionally if we hit dead ends in our careers? Will we be the kind of friends who won’t ignore and won’t let one another get into bad emotional, physical, sexual, or financial habits? I think the summary of what I’m longing for, the reasons why I decided to write all this down, is I see the beginnings of a covenant between us. And I see the possibility of covenant relationships forming in the long run. And I want to name the goodness, to give words to what the Lord is doing among us. I want to call one another not simply by what we are but by what we are hoping to become. I think that might be “covenant friends.” I leave whatever form it takes to you, but what I hope is that we begin to think and talk of one another in these terms, in terms of covenant relationships, where we acknowledge that the Lord is binding us together in ways that we don’t have the option to separate. In conclusion, I think our next seven years may be our most important, and I want us to consider pushing into those years consciously, as covenant friends. It might go a long way toward what I hope for as our end. This is what I imagine: that in the long run we will look at one another and say, “I have a lot of friends, but none like you.
Justin Whitmel Earley (Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship)
Friendship is the love that is ignored; people don't theorise about friendship, write poetry about it. It just goes quietly along, sustaining. Passion spends itself--oh my goodness, does passion spend itself--but friendship is always there. Like a good marriage, it survives attack.
Penelope Lively (Perfect Happiness)
New or long-term friendships are not sustained by relying on others to keep you on their auto dialer.
Don Hand (HandCrafted Soul'utions: Investigating the Missing Whole in Your Soul)
Being best friends before marriage is no guarantee you will continue to be best friends after marriage; it only gives you a higher ground to sustain your best friendship.
John Arthur
My lack of trust for others, alongside the very real possibility of rejection, had crippled my nerve. Not only when it came to intimacy, either. I could hardly sustain friendships, let alone relationships, and I always perceived both as a burden. Like a plant I’d had to cultivate and grow and tend to everyday.
Keri Lake (Nightshade (Nightshade, #1))
It is always strange looking back at a time that has had such a profound impact on one’s life. And when it comes to Everest, I see two very clear things: friendships that were forged in a tough crucible, and a faith that sustained me through the good, the bad, and the ugly. I survived and reached the top of that mountain because of the bonds I had with those beside me. Of that I am in no doubt. Without Mick and Neil, I would have been nothing. Down that dark crevasse, I also learned that sometimes we really need one another. And that is okay. We are not designed to be islands. We are made to be connected. So often life teaches us that we have to achieve everything on our own. But that would be lonely. For me, it is only by thinking about our togetherness that I can begin to make some sense of what happened on that mountain: the highs, the lows, the fatalities, the fear. Such things have to be shared. Looking back, it is the small moments together that I value the most. Like Neil and myself on the South Summit, holding each other’s hands so that we could both stand. It was only because our friendships were honest that, time after time, when we were tired or cold or scared, we were able to pick ourselves up and keep moving. You don’t have to be strong all the time. That was a big lesson to learn. When we show chinks it creates bonds, and where there are bonds there is strength. This is really the heart of why I still climb and expedition today. Simple ties are hard to break. That is what Everest really taught me.
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
Muadh b. Jabal said, concerning [the excellence of] teaching and seeking knowledge, and I have seen it narrated directly from the Prophet SAW, 'Pursue knowledge, for pursuing it is reverence to God, seeking it is devotion, studying it with others is glorification, searching it out is striving in the path of God, teaching it to one who lacks knowledge is charity, bestowing it freely on those worthy of it brings proximity [to God]. [Knowledge] is an intimate companion in solitude, a friend in retreat, and a guide to religion; it heartens one in ease and difficulty; it is a vizier among noble companions and a close friend among strangers; it is a guiding light on the path to heaven. God elevates people [through knowledge], making them leaders, lords, and guides who are followed on the path of excellence; they are exemplars in goodness, their traces are followed closely and their comportment is closely noted; the angels seek out intimate friendship with them, and with their wings stroke them; every [creature] of the field or the desert seeks forgiveness for them, even the fish and the sea snakes of the oceans, the wild animals of dry land and its grazing beasts, [even] the heavens and its stars. All this because knowledge is the life of the heart [protecting it] from blindness, the light of eyesight [protecting it] from darkness, and the strength of the body [sustaining it] from weakness. The servant attains thought it the stations of the upright and loftiest degrees. Reflection on it equals fasting, and studying it with others equals devotion [i.e., superogatory prayers] through the night. Through it, God is obeyed, by it He is worshipped, by it His unity is affirmed, by it He is lauded, and by it He is approached with piety. By it family ties are maintained, and by it lawful and unlawful are known. Knowledge is the leader, and deeds his followers. Those who will be happy are inspired by it, and those who will be miserable are kept from it.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
Why don’t I say a few words?” He must have got a lot of good quality venom from Aragog, Harry thought, for Slughorn wore a satisfied smirk as he stepped up to the rim of the pit and said, in a slow, impressive voice, “Farewell, Aragog, king of arachnids, whose long and faithful friendship those who knew you won’t forget! Though your body will decay, your spirit lingers on in the quiet, web-spun places of your forest home. May your many-eyed descendants ever flourish and your human friends find solace for the loss they have sustained.” “Tha’ was . . . tha’ was . . . beau’iful!” howled Hagrid, and he collapsed onto the compost heap, crying harder than ever. “There, there,” said Slughorn, waving his wand so
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
So I already knew, given her history with men, that his generosity and caretaking both sustained and confused her.
Gail Caldwell (Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship)
Friendship begins with mutual liking but is sustained and strengthened by shared experiences.
Kathryn Adams Death in Grondère
So here is what I tell young Scouts or young adventurers who ask me what the key is to living a fulfilled life. I keep it pretty simple. I call them the five Fs. Family. Friends. Faith. Fun. Follow your dreams. None of them requires a degree, and all of them are within our reach. Just make them your priority, write them on your bathroom mirror, let them seep into your subconscious over time, and soon they will be like a compass guiding you to make the right decisions for your life. When faced with big decisions, just ask yourself: ‘Will this choice or that one support or detract from the five Fs in my life?’ Family - sometimes like fudge: mostly sweet but with a few nuts! - but still they are our closest and dearest, and, like friendships, when we invest time and love in our families, we all get stronger. Having good Friends to enjoy the adventures of life with, and to share the struggles we inevitably have to bear, is a wonderful blessing. Never underestimate how much good friends mean. Faith matters. Jesus Christ has been the most incredible anchor and secret strength in my life - and it is so important to have a good guide through every jungle. (Go and do an Alpha Course to explore the notion of what faith is and isn’t) Fun. Life should be an adventure. And you are allowed to have fun, you know! Make sure you get your daily dose of it. Yes, I mean daily! And finally, Follow your dreams. Cherish them. They are God-given, dropped like pearls into the depths of your being. They provide powerful, life-changing purpose: beware the man with a dream who also has the courage to go out there and make it happen. These five Fs will sustain and nurture you, and I have learnt that if you make them your priority, you have a great shot at living a wild, fun, exciting, rich, empowered and fulfilling life. And, finally, remember that the ultimate success in the game of life can never come from money amassed, power or status attained, or from fame and recognition gained. All of those things are pretty hollow. Trust me. Our real success is measured by how we touch and enrich people’s lives - the difference we can make to those who would least expect it, to those the world looks over. That is a far, far better measure of a human life, and a great goal to aspire to, as we follow the five Fs along the way.
Bear Grylls (A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character)
The twentieth century, Churchill wrote, had witnessed ‘with surprise, not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doctrines, but their enforcement with brutal vigour by the Government and by the populace.’ The Jews were the chief victims of these doctrines. ‘No past services, no proved patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure immunity for persons whose only crime was that their parents had brought them into the world. Every kind of persecution, grave or petty, upon the world-famous scientists, writers, and composers at the top down to the wretched little Jewish children in the national schools, was practised, was glorified, and is still being practised and glorified.
Martin Gilbert (Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship)
MAY 20 WE HAVE GENUINE friendship when it is based on true human feeling, a feeling of closeness in which there is a sense of sharing and connectedness. I would call this type of friendship genuine because it is not affected by the increase or decrease of the individual’s wealth, status, or power. The factor that sustains that friendship is whether or not the two people have mutual feelings of love and affection.
Renuka Singh (The Dalai Lama's Book Of Daily Meditations: The Path to Tranquillity)