He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.
Charles KingsleyRead
It is only the great hearted who can be true friends. The mean and cowardly, Can never know what true friendship means.
Interpretation
True friendship requires courage and a noble heart; only those with great character can understand its value.
This quote emphasizes the importance of having a noble and courageous heart to form deep and meaningful friendships. According to Kingsley, only those who are brave and generous can truly appreciate what friendship entails, while those who are cowardly or mean-hearted will never grasp the essence of true companionship.
In practice
Sharing this quote at a wedding toast to highlight the importance of true friendship.
He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.
Beauty is God's handwriting β a wayside sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank for it Him.
Take comfort, and recollect however little you and I may know, God knows; He knows Himself and you and me and all things; and His mercy is over all His works.
Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.
Do today's duty, fight to-day's temptation; and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them.
You must not talk about 'ain't and can't' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean.
You think I'm a fool?" demanded Harry. "No, I think you're like James," said Lupin, "who would have regarded it as the height of dishonor to mistrust his friends.
And then there are my friends, and they have their own lives. While they like to talk everything through, to analyze and hypothesize, what I really need, what I'm really looking for, is not something I can articulate. It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it.
Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy" to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.
... the friendship of worthless people has a bad effect (because they take part, unstable as they are, in worthless pursuits, and actually become bad through each other's influence). But the friendship of the good is good, and increases in goodness because of their association. They seem even to become better men by exercising their friendship and improving each other; for the traits that they admire in each other get transferred to themselves.
We live in a world of easy friendships - people here for you when it's easy, 'so-sorry-but-I-have-an-errand-to-do-now' when it's not.
All for one and one for all, united we stand divided we fall.
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