Our friends QUOTES

62 " We love Christmas presents but not Christ; Easter baskets but not crosses. We want to tell our friends with cancer that we will pray for them (we don’t) and our puddle-eyed children that their goldfish have gone to heaven (doubtful). When we lose our jobs we want to take comfort in the idea that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, but really, how can we? We have absolutely no idea what God has given us or what it might be for. We haven’t talked to Him in ages. "

― Heather Choate Davis , Elijah & the SAT: Reflections on a hairy, old, desert prophet and the benchmarking of our children's lives

64 " Finally, let me share a feeling of mine, I hope it will not be misinterpreted as pride. I am seventy four now. But still, if they give me a duty in the wooden hut where I used to stay when I was a mentor long years ago, I will gladly run there and try to fulfill that duty. Perhaps, some of our friends can see that task as a simple and trivial one. But I have not underestimated this duty and would never do so. Even today, some people may consider our having lessons with the small circle of young scholars here as a simple and trivial job. However, in my opinion, this is the most important occupation that can take human to the highest levels. "

― M. Fethullah Gülen , Mefkure Yolculuğu (Kırık Testi, #13)

66 " There is an uncharacteristic radicalism to Lewis’s further suggestion that if we can find “even one reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and reread it, who would notice, and object, if a single word were changed, then, however little we could see in it ourselves and however it was despised by our friends and colleagues, we should not dare to put it beyond the pale. "

― Laura Miller , The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia

68 " It's wisest always to be so clad that our friends need not ask us for our names. "

― James Fenimore Cooper , The Deerslayer (The Leatherstocking Tales, #1)

70 " Of all the misconceptions about love the most powerful and pervasive is the belief that " falling in love" is love or at least one of the manifestations of love. It is a potent misconception, because falling in love is subjectively experienced in a very powerful fashion as an experience of love. When a person falls in love what he or she certainly feels is " I love him" or " I love her." But two problems are immediately apparent. The first is that the experience of falling in love is specifically a sex-linked erotic experience. We do not fall in love with our children even though we may love them very deeply. We do not fall in love with our friends of the same sex-unless we are homosexually oriented-even though we may care for them greatly. We fall in love only when we are consciously or unconsciously sexually motivated. The second problem is that the experience of falling in love is invariably temporary. No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love if the relationship continues long enough. This is not to say that we invariably cease loving the person with whom we fell in love. But it is to say that the feeling of ecstatic lovingness that characterizes the experience of falling in love always passes. The honeymoon always ends. The bloom of romance always fades. "

72 " So, Colonna, please demonstrate to our friends how it's possible to respect, or appear to respect, one fundamental principle of democratic journalism, which is separating fact from opinion. ...'

'Simple,' I said. 'Take the major British or American newspapers. If they report, say, a fire or a car accident, then obviously they can't indulge in saying what they think. And so they introduce into the piece, in quotation marks, the statements of a witness, a man in the street, someone who represents public opinion. Those statements, once put in quotes, become facts - in other words, it's a fact that that person expressed that opinion. But it might be assumed that the journalist has only quoted someone who thinks like him. So there will be two conflicting statements to show, as a fact, that there are varying opinions on a particular issue, and the newspaper is taking account of this irrefutable fact. The trick lies in quoting first a trivial opinion and then another opinion that is more respectable, and more closely reflects the journalist's view. In this way, readers are under the impression that they are being informed about two facts, but they're persuaded to accept just one view as being more convincing. "

― Umberto Eco , Numero zero

74 " The more we love our friends the less we flatter them it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself. "

76 " We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them. "

78 " We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them. "