The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True friendship involves honesty, including pointing out a friend's faults with love.
This quote emphasizes that a vital aspect of friendship is the ability to communicate uncomfortable truths. It suggests that loving a friend means being willing to address their flaws, even when it's difficult, because true friendship is grounded in honesty and genuine concern for each other's well-being.
Themes
FriendshipHonestyTruthLoveCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
During a heartfelt speech at a friend's birthday party.
More from Henry Ward Beecher
All quotes →A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
No one can deal with the hearts of men unless he has the sympathy which is given by love.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
No man can tell if he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
Similar quotes
My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
Jonathan SwiftRead
Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Albert CamusRead
Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn, are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words: an affectionate quietness replaces the tensions, the unrelaxed chatter and chasing about that produce a friendship’s more showy, more, in the surface sense, dramatic moments.
Truman CapoteRead
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.
C. S. LewisRead
If I do not give a friend "The benefit of the doubt," but put the worst construction instead of the best on what is said or done, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
Amy CarmichaelRead
But some part of him realized, even as he fought to break free from Lupin, that Sirius had never kept him waiting before. . . . Sirius had risked everything, always, to see Harry, to help him. . . . If Sirius was not reappearing out of that archway when Harry was yelling for him as though his life depended on it, the only possible explanation was that he could not come back. . . . That he really was . . .
J. K. RowlingRead