One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
Interpretation
True friendship is characterized by a deep understanding where unspoken thoughts and feelings are shared.
Clifton Fadiman's quote emphasizes that the essence of friendship is not about the quantity of conversations or topics discussed, but rather the comfort and familiarity between friends that allows them to communicate without words. It highlights the understanding that grows over time, suggesting that real friends can share a silence or mutual understanding of important matters without needing to articulate them.
In practice
During a heartfelt moment at a wedding toast.
To read in bed is to draw around us invisible, noiseless curtains. Then at last we are in a room of our own and are ready to burrow back, back to that private life of the imagination we all led as a child and to whose secret satisfactions so many of us have mislaid the key.
Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself.
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.
Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine, No friends at hand, so I poured alone; I raised my cup to invite the moon, Turned to my shadow, and we became three.
All we can do is to make the best of our friends, love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way what is bad.
Make no man your friend before inquiring how he has used his former friends; for you must expect him to treat you as he has treated them. Be slow to give your friendship, but when you have given it, strive to make it lasting; for it is as reprehensible to make many changes in one's associates as to have no friends at all. Neither test your friends to your own injury nor be willing to forego a test of your companions.
Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.
Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
We were not just competitors and colleagues, we were friends. We had a lot of opportunities to reflect on this in the last year. It was a competitive brotherhood.
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