TRUE FRIENDS

ON THE FRIENDSHIP CAFÉ 

One True Friend Is Worth More than 10,000 Superficial Ones

It should go without saying that there are many fun things to do with true friends whereas the number of fun things to do with acquaintances is limited.

There aren’t many things on this planet that are more precious that true friends. It was the Greek writer Euripides who said, “One loyal friend is worth 10,000 relatives.” Fortunately, we get to choose our friends as opposed to relatives, who are forced upon us.

When choosing new friends, however, much care should be taken. The key to optimizing happiness is to cultivate quality friendships with a few happy and interesting individuals. Quality is more important than quantity. In this regard, we can rephrase the above words of Euripides to “One true friend is worth more than 10,000 superficial ones.”

As in many areas of life, less can be more in the friendship game. Although it’s nice to have a lot of friends, too many will complicate your life. Succumbing to the temptation to have as many friends as possible will hinder your overall happiness, since it depletes your time, energy, money, and creativity — resources that can be better utilized in getting whatever else you want out of life.

What’s more, it’s unlikely that you will develop many real friends if you spread yourself too thin among too many individuals.

Being popular — if that is what you desire — will not contribute much to how many true friends you acquire in your lifetime. In the truest sense, friendship is based on relationships that are held together by trust, respect, and mutual admiration. If you feel the need to be one of the girls or boys just to be popular, it is best that you head back to junior high and play the superficial games that teenyboppers play. Clearly, you need to be more developed and mature to play the adult friendship game.

Never feel bad about being unpopular. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have friends. Socrates was unpopular. Freud was unpopular. Jesus was unpopular. Get the point? The point is that all of them still had friends.

It’s just as important to put popularity in its proper place when you are looking for a friend. The fact that a person is popular doesn’t mean that he or she will make a great friend. “A friend to all,” warned Aristotle, “is a friend to none.” Some individuals are not popular because they are different and don’t fit in with the “me-too” crowd, whose members tend to imitate each other and aren’t quite sure whom exactly they are trying to imitate.

Fact is, many genuine — but different — people are unpopular because peculiarity breeds contempt in our society. Yet it has been my experience that some of these unpopular people can make great friends.

I would rather hang around genuine, different individuals who offend a lot of people than trendy me-too people who all talk and look alike and don’t seem to offend anyone but me. My contention is that it is better to wind up with three or four true and genuine friends than twenty-five pseudo-friends who will not go out of their way to make time for you or will not help make you a better person.

True friends add to your happiness and seldom, if ever, subtract from it. As Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker concluded, “No person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended.” Try surrounding yourself with people who radiate warmth, kindness, and a fresh perspective on life in general. You are likely to wind up with at least one true friend.

In my view, a true friend is also someone with whom you can do something boring — and still enjoy it. Most important, a true friend should remind you of the person you would like to be. Perhaps you haven’t found “the real thing” in the way of friends. Thus the words of philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The only way to have a friend, is to be one.”

This brings up an important question: Just what kind of friend are you? Generate a list of the important qualities you would like in a friend. These are the same ones that you should develop and maintain if you want to attract quality friends into your life. In short, do the things that will make you the sort of person you yourself would really want to hang out with. 

COPYRIGHT © 2011 by Ernie J. Zelinski

  All Rights Reserved 

Note: This article is excerpted from the book 101 Really Important Things You Already Know But Keep Forgetting by Ernie J. Zelinski

Friendship Quotes and Sayings about Real Friends and the Value of True Friendship 

Here are some funny friendship quotes and friendship proverbs about the value of true friendship. 

A true friend is one who likes you despite your achievements.
- Author Unknown

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.
- Dave Tyson Gentry

True friends are like diamonds, precious and rare. False friends are like leaves, found everywhere.
- Author Unknown

Friends are those rare people who ask how you are and then wait for the answer. 
- Unknown Wise Person

Silences make the real conversations between [true] friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.
- Margaret Lee Runbeck

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
- George Santayana

Some friends play at friendship but a true friend sticks closer than one’s nearest kin.
- Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 18:24.

A [true] friend is the only person you will let into the house when you are turning out drawers.
- Pam Brown

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

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
- Walter Winchell

A [true] friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.
- Donna Roberts

A real friend helps us think our best thoughts, do our noblest deeds, be our finest selves.
- Unknown Wise Person

True friendship is self-love at second hand.
- William Hazlitt

If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.
- Charles Bukowski

Real friends require honesty, openness, and even vulnerability. They also require attention and simple acts of kindness.
- Mary Pipher

True friends are those whom you could show your true self when youare with them.
- Unknown Wise Person 

A true friend is somebody who you call at 3 a.m. and say "I'm in a prison in Mexico" and he replies "No worries, I'll be there in seconds."
- Unknown Wise Person

Some friends play at friendship, but a true friend sticks closer than one's nearest kin.
- The Bible, Proverbs 18:24

Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.
- Sicilian Proverb

A friend will joyfully sing with you when you are on the mountain top, and silently walk beside you through the valley.
- Unknown Wise Person

A true friend will see you through when others see that you are through.
- Laurence J. Peter

A real friend is someone who would feel loss if you jumped on a train, or in front of one.
- Author Unknown

Friends are the ones you gave a thousand chances to but who never needed one.
- Author Unknown

A good friend is someone who will help you when you are down, and if they can't, will lay down and listen.
- Unknown Wise Person

True friends are the people who are there for you unconditionally. They are the people who never question you and support you no matter what the circumstances are. They are the people worth living for.
- Unknown Wise Person

Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.
- Plautus

A friendship that can be ended didn't ever start.
- Mellin de Saint-Gelais

True and strong friendship must be treasured and protected.
- Jose B. Cabajar

True friendship is when two friends can walk in opposite directions, yet remain side by side
- Author Unknown

A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeabley.
- William Penn

A true friend will strengthen you with his prayers, bless you with his love, and encourage you with his hope.
- Author Unknown

 See This Great Article:

  How to Make a True Friend Worth More Than 14.6 Cents 

COPYRIGHT © 2011 by Ernie J. Zelinski
  All Rights Reserved