The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered.
Interpretation
Friendship brings great benefits, but even small acts of kindness can put it at risk.
This quote by Samuel Johnson suggests that friendship has a profound positive impact on our lives, providing us with support and happiness. However, it also implies that the delicate nature of friendship can be threatened by our actions, emphasizing the need for care in how we express kindness and regard towards our friends.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of maintaining friendships, one might say, 'As Samuel Johnson wisely noted, the great effect of friendship is beneficence.'
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.
In meeting again after a separation, acquaintances ask after our outward life, friends after our inner life.
I always preferred to hang out with the outcasts, 'cause they were cooler; they had better taste in music, for one thing, I guess because they had more time to develop one with the lack of social interaction they had!
There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.
You've got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.
What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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