The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
Rita Mae Brown
(1944 - )
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
Life wounds all of us. At best there is sorrow enough to go round. Yet because the deepest wounds are those of the soul and hidden to mortal sight, we keep hurting each other day by day, inflicting wounds that time mercifully scars over. But the scars remain, ready at a touch to throb angrily and ache again with the old gnawing wild pain. You remember that day in school when the teacher laughed? You were only a little fellow, shy and silent, sitting in the shadow of the big boys, wistfully looking toward the day when you would shine as they did. That day you were sure your chance had come. You were sure that you had just what the teacher wanted on the tip of your tongue, and you jumped up and shouted it out loudly and eagerly, triumphantly - and you were very, very wrong. There followed a flash of astonishment, an instant of dreadful silence, and then the room rang with mirth. You heard only the teacher's laughter, and it drowned your heart. Many years have gone over head since that day, but the sight of a little lad trudging along to school brings it back, and the old pain stirs and beats against the scar. You cover it over, hush it to quiet once more with a smile. "I must have been funny. She couldn't help it." But you wish she had. And there was that time when your best friend failed you. When the loose-tongued gossips started the damaging story and he was pressed for a single word in your defense, he said, "Oh, he's all right. Of course, he's all right, but I don't want to get mixed up in this thing. Can't afford it. Have to think of my own name and my own family, you understand. Good fellow, but I have to keep out of this." You felt forsaken. For weeks and weeks you carried the pain in your heart. The story was bad enough but would right itself. The idea that he should fail you, that he had not, rushed to your side at the first hint of trouble was bad enough, was unbearable. He came back again after it was all over, but the sight of him renewed the ache in your breast and the throb of pain in your throat. The scar was thin, and the hurt beneath it quivered. We all bear scars. Life is a struggle, and hurts must come. But why the unnecessary ones? Why hurt the souls of little children? Why say things to them that they must remember with pain all their lives? Why say the smart, tart thing that goes straight to the heart of someone we love because we would relieve ourselves of the day's tension and throw off a grain of the soul's bitterness? Who are we to inflict wounds and suffering and scars on those about us? Staggering, blind mortals, groping our way from somewhere "here" to somewhere "there" conscious of little but the effort to stay "here" a little longer! It behooves us to travel softly, regardful of one another's happiness, particularly where our path crosses that of those dependent upon us for comfort or enters into the heart of little children.
Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don't say.
They say that diamonds are a girl's best friend, and a dog is a man's best friend. What does that tell us about which sex is smarter.
Think about best friends: What you do for them. What they do for you.
"Even though it will disappoint many of you, the evidence is that you have a very bright future." This is how I finished my presentation at American University, eliciting a few chuckles from the audience. On a more serious note, I asked the students to consider a radical proposition: Economic growth and technological progress are not enemies of the environment but are perhaps its best friends, since they allow us to reduce humanity's footprint on the natural world. High tech agriculture boosts farm productivity, which means a cheaper food supply and more land spared for nature. Better sewage treatment means that our rivers and streams can run freer of pollutants. Catalytic converters on cars and better filters on power-plant smokestacks have greatly reduced smog, smoke and soot in the air. But only rich societies can afford to pay for these. In the end, the best environmental program of all is the promotion of prosperity.
We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our worst enemies.
Have you not heard When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, His best friends hear no more of him?
Books are the best friends you can have; they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back.
Some of my best friedns are children. In fact, all of my best friends are children.
The waste basket is the writer's best friend.
I testify that our teacher, our shepherd, is Christ, our best friend, who clears up all our doubts. He heals our wounds and turns our pain into sweet experiences.
My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Best friend, my wellspring in the wilderness!
In the misfortune of our best friends, we find something which is not displeasing to us.
In the adversity of our best friends we always find something which is not wholly displeasing to us.
Our best friends and our worst enemies are our thoughts. A thought can do us more good than a doctor or a banker or a faithful friend. It can also do us more harm than a brick.
The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.
Good Advice If your best friend's feeling tearful, Try not to be too cheerful. Just let her fill your ear full Of sad tales by the score. And when she is through, She'll feel as good as new. Now you'll be feeling blue. But that's what friends are for!
Happiness is being married to your best friend.
Someone told me the delightful story of the crusader who put a chastity belt on his wife and gave the key to his best friend for safekeeping, in case of his death. He had ridden only a few miles away when his friend, riding hard, caught up with him, saying "You gave me the wrong key!"
Show me a person without prejudice of any kind on any subject and I'll show you someone who may be admirably virtuous but is surely no gardener. Prejudice against people is reprehensible, but a healthy set of prejudices is a gardener's best friend. Gardening is complicated, and prejudice simplifies it enormously.
The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.
