Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.
Baltasar GracianRead
To find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing.
Interpretation
Having a single true friend is rare, and maintaining that friendship is a great blessing.
This quote emphasizes the value of genuine friendship, suggesting that it is a rare gift to find someone who truly understands and supports you throughout life. Furthermore, it highlights that sustaining such a relationship over time is not just fortunate, but a significant blessing that enriches oneβs life.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of friendship, citing this quote can underscore its rarity.
Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.
It is a novel kind of supremacy, the best that life can offer, to have as servants by skill those who by nature are our masters.
Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.
It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.
Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.
The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.
Go on, have a pasty," said Harry, who had never had anything to share before or, indeed, anyone to share it with. It was a nice feeling, sitting there with Ron, eating their way through all Harry's pasties, cakes, and candies (the sandwiches lay forgotten).
A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.
Friends come and go but I wouldn't have thought you'd be one of them
Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.
A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends.
Today I know this: when it comes time to take stock, the most painful wound is that of broken friendships; and there is nothing more foolish than to sacrifice a friendship to politics.
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