FRIENDS VERSUS ACQUAINTANCES

ON THE FRIENDSHIP CAFÉ

The Difference Between Friends and Acquaintances

What is the difference beteen a friend and an acquaintance? Let's look to the dictionary for guidance:

Typical Dictionary Definition of "friend" 
1. A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.
2. A person whom one knows; an acquaintance.
3. A person with whom one is allied in a struggle or cause; a comrade.
4. One who supports, sympathizes with, or patronizes a group, cause, or movement: friends of the clean air movement.

Typical Dictionary Definition of "acquaintance"
1. Knowledge of a person acquired by a relationship less intimate than friendship.
2. A person whom one knows.

As you can see, the dictionary is not much help.

There are differences, however, between friends and acquaintces. "When you are not being true to yourself," stated some wise person, "a mere acquaintance may agree with you, but a real friend will challenge you." This is just one of the many differences beween friends and acquaintances.

Here are some more:

One’s acquaintances may fill the world, but one’s true friends can be but few.
— Chinese proverb

A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself.
— James Boswell

Let your best be for your friend . . .
— Kahil Gibran

Drunks do not have friends, but accomplices.
— Mason Cooley

There are plenty of acquaintances in the world, but very few real friends.
— Chinese proverb 

Go through your phone book, call people and ask them to drive you to the airport. The ones who will drive you are your true friends. The rest aren't bad people; they're just acquaintances.
— Jay Leno

My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. She's now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia.
— Dame Edna Everage

If you have one true friend you have more than your share.
— Thomas Fuller

Don't pity the girl with one true friend. Envy her. Pity the girl with just a thousand acquaintances.
— Author Unknown

I may be wrong, but I have never found deserting friends conciliates enemies.
— Margot Asquith

Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
— Ambrose Bierce

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.
— François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-80), French writer, moralist

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
— Oprah Winfrey

The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend.
— Logan Pearsall Smith

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
— Richard Bach

   

COPYRIGHT © 2010 by Ernie J. Zelinski

 All Rights Reserved