When the strong box contains no more both friends and flatterers shun the door.
Interpretation
True friends are those who stay by your side regardless of your wealth or status.
This quote by Plutarch highlights the idea that many people are drawn to wealth and status rather than true friendship. When someone loses their riches, those who were only interested in them for their fortune may abandon them, while genuine friends remain steadfast, revealing the true nature of relationships based on sincerity rather than materialism.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of loyalty, one might reference this quote.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
Come back with your shield - or on it
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real
Did I miss?" you asked. "You didn't exactly miss," said Pooh, "But you missed the balloon." "I'm so sorry," you said, and you fired again, and this time you hit the balloon and the air came slowly out, and Winnie-the-Pooh floated down to the ground.
I definitely did look up to John. We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest.
Friendship embraces innumerable ends; turn where you will it is ever at your side; no barrier shuts it out; it is never untimely and never in the way.
This group had a kind of dark glamour within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty.
Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
There is something about building up a comradeship - that I still believe is the greatest of all feats - and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It's the intense effort, the giving of everything you've got. It's really a very pleasant sensation.
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