friendship on Self-Reliance

If you are looking for a story that illustrates humanity's deep-seeded need for relationships, you could do far worse than the 2000 film, Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks. The protagonist, Chuck No...

Prayer of Adoration Loving God—Father Son and Holy Spirit— we come today as thirsty people to You who are the Spring of Living Water. We come as hungry people to You who are the Bread of Heaven. We ...

Any social science study will tell you relationships are key to happiness and well-being. But there’s more. Friendship isn’t just an elective in the course of life, it’s required. In my line of work I...

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that ...

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .

The best mirror is an old friend.

Who cannot relate in the digital age to the irony of being overconnected and lonely all at once? Yet Chief Justice John Roberts, speaking at his son’s middle school graduation, exhorted the young grad...

Read any study on human satisfaction and you will see the paramount role of relationships with others. And yet, so many of us readily exchange friendship and community for success and achievement, onl...

Ralph Waldo Emerson describes a true friend as a person with whom I can think aloud. This absence of the need to put on a façade is an essential and foundational aspect of all genuine friendships. He ...

Context matters. According to the Terman Study, which followed one thousand study participants from childhood until their death, the people we surround ourselves with are who we become. We see those a...

Today friendship has fallen on hard times. Few men have good friends, much less deep friendships. Individualism, autonomy, privatization, and isolation are culturally cachet, but deep, devoted, vulner...

In each of my friends, there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity.

The missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer wrote in his memoir, “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should...

We would do well to keep in mind that Solomon’s words on the necessity of friendship were written toward the end of his life, well after he scaled his own Mount Significance. His accomplishments were ...

Our current cultural moment makes rich, life-giving friendships like the one David and Jonathan shared a challenge. We are connected like never before, yet isolated and lonely like never before. MIT p...

“There’s nothing simpler than avoiding people you don’t like. Avoiding one’s friends, that’s the real test.”

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their po...

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.

Several months ago, I visited Akagera National Park in Rwanda. From the safety of our Land Rover, our safari guide pointed to a lone gazelle grazing on the savanna and asked, “Do you know what that is...

It’s been said home is the place where they have to let you in. While it’s a reach to say I’m friends with each of my family members, our relationships thrive because we share a mutual, understood res...

When I engaged with twenty-somethings, for example, who were just entering the adult years, I found them preoccupied with clarifying their identity. What kind of a man or woman am I becoming, they w...

For in order that man may do well, whether in the works of the active life, or in those of the contemplative life, he needs the fellowship of friends.

Some years ago, a British newspaper invited readers to submit their best definitions of friendship and friends. Thousands of suggestions flooded in. Some of the best included: One who multiplies our j...

Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives, and remembering what one receives

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spiri...

Have people in your life that will chase you and come after you with love when you are struggling or not at your best.

Everything significant starts with relationship. At the end of the day, your faith, your family, your work, and your leadership are all based on who you relate to and how you relate. Your life is moti...

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

I can’t help but recall here a scene from The West Wing. White House chief of staff Leo McGarry reaches out to his deputy, Josh Lyman, who is struggling with PTSD. Leo tells him a parable: This guy’...