7.08.2010

a test of friendship

The worst part about loving people, is that you ultimately hand them weapons that undo you. Your Achilles' heel is vulnerable, your heart laid naked. So it is much easier (especially if they can't seem to communicate to them that there are things which are bothering them about your behaviors) to cut you to the quick and wound you deeply. People who love one another might as well be soft-bodied things with appendages of razors, gutting a person with merely a flick of a finger or a bat of an eye.

The friendship that can cease has never been real. - Saint Jerome (374 AD - 419 AD), Letter

Rule of thumb?

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

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