What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.
Interpretation
Genuine friendship begins when individuals share their vulnerabilities with each other.
In this quote, Arthur C. Clarke emphasizes that true friendship is built on a foundation of trust and openness. By revealing their vulnerabilities to one another, individuals deepen their connection and foster a sense of mutual understanding and support, marking the beginning of a genuine and lasting friendship.
In practice
In a speech about the value of relationships, you might say, 'As Arthur C. Clarke wisely observed, genuine friendship begins when we share our vulnerabilities.'
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth,well known to all intelligent people.
A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry's brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision. "You'll stay with me?" "Until the very end," said James.
The paradox of friendship is that it is both the strongest thing in the world and the most fragile. Wild horses cannot separate friends, but whining words can. A man will lay down his life for his friend but will not sacrifice his eardrums.
As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.
We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.
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