Quotes & Sayings About Dependent Friends

I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world, and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. — C.S. Lewis

Sometimes we read Scripture about rejoicing or trusting and think, "Easy to say, but you're not facing what I am." But few people have faced conditions as dire as Habakkuk, with the impending destruction of his nation, family and friends, and way of life. His statement "I will be happy because of the God who delivers me" demonstrates that delighting in God isn't dependent on favorable circumstances. Happiness in God involves an act of will toward the God who's there, and who loves us, even in hunger, war and prison cells. — Randy Alcorn

President's brilliant theory of vending his wares direct to the people - was perhaps the only one who had suspicions. He had once written a brilliant criticism to some inquirer, in which he had said that no enterprise of such magnitude as the Northern Pacific had ever before been entirely dependent upon one house, or rather upon one man, and that he did not like it. I am not sure that the lands through which the road runs are so unparalleled in climate, soil, timber, minerals, etc., as Mr. Cooke and his friends would have us believe. Neither do I think that the road — Theodore Dreiser

Mentors have their own strengths and weaknesses. The good ones allow you to develop your own style and then to leave them when the time is right. Such types can remain lifelong friends and allies. But often the opposite will occur. They grow dependent on your services and want to keep you indentured. They envy your youth and unconsciously hinder you, or become overcritical. You must be aware of this as it develops. Your goal is to get as much out of them as possible, but at a certain point you may pay a price if you stay too long and let them subvert your confidence. Your submitting to their authority is by no means unconditional, and in fact your goal all along is eventually to find your way to independence, having internalized and adapted their wisdom. — Robert Greene

Here it is. You assume that I am rich; I am not. I shall have nothing once I have emptied my purse. You perhaps suppose that I am a man of high birth, and I am of a rank either lower than your own or equal to it. I have no talent which can earn money, no employment, no reason to be sure that I shall have anything to eat a few months hence. I have neither relatives nor friends nor rightful claims nor any settled plan. In short, all that I have is youth, health, courage, a modicum of intelligence, a sense of honor and of decency, with a little reading and the bare beginnings of a career in literature. My great treasure is that I am my own master, that I am not dependent upon anyone, and that I am not afraid of misfortunes. My nature tends toward extravagance. Such is the man I am. Now answer me, my beautiful Teresa. — Giacomo Casanova

Comfort foods they may have been, but helpful foods they most definitely were not. By merging my identity with certain foods and thinking of them as old friends, I found myself in the food equivalent of a co-dependent, destructive relationship. I was allowing food to have the power of defining me as a person. And those foods had defined me, all right; they'd defined me as fat, miserable, out of breath, lacking in energy and self-worth, and looking terrible in sweat pants. If I was going to insist on relating to food as a friend, then clearly I needed new friends. — Jane Olson

A 2001 study of adolescent school shooters, prompted in part by the massacre at Columbine High School, resulted in two interesting findings. The first is that 25 percent of the thirty-four teenage shooters they looked at participated in pairs. This is different from adult rampage killers, who most often act alone. Dr. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and expert on targeted violence and threat assessment, authored the study. He told me that these deadly dyads mean it's absolutely critical for parents to pay attention to the dynamics between kids and their friends. The second finding from his study: typically, one of the two kids was a psychopath, and the other one suggestible, dependent, and depressed. — Sue Klebold

I don't have a dime left. I am dependent on my friends for food and a small old-age pension. — Bela Lugosi

Call me Ram. It's what my friends all call me."

"In that case, I'm Tashi." She paused. "But that's not what my friends call me back home."

"What do they call you?"

"The Princess Taoshira, Fourth Crown Princess of the Blue Crescent Islands and dependent territories. We're very formal, you know."

Ramil smiled. "I've noticed. And I also think, Princess Taoshira of the rest of it, that you are making a joke."

Tashi nodded, her face wrinkling into an answering smile. "But you can call me Tashi. — Julia Golding

I think these days when there is so little to believe in - when the old loyalties - God, country, and the hope of Heaven - aren't very real, we are more dependent than we should be on our friends. The only thing left to believe in - someone who seems beautiful. — William Carlos Williams

One should think in terms of whether one is loving or not. The question of the object of love does not arise. With your wife, you love your wife; with your children, you love your children; with your servants, you love your servants; with your friends, you love your friends; with the trees, you love the trees; with the ocean, you love the ocean. You are love. Love is not dependent on the object, but is a radiation of your subjectivity - a radiation of your soul. And the vaster the radiation, the greater is your soul. — Rajneesh

Hope is not dependent on peace in the land, justice in the world, and success in the business. Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God's guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness. No one can truly say with certainty where he or she will be ten or twenty years from now. You do not know if you will be free or in captivity, if you will be honored or despised, if you will have many friends or few, if you will be liked or rejected. But when you hold lightly these dreams and fears, you can be open to receive every day as a new day and to live your life as a unique expression of God's love for humankind. There is an old expression that says, "As long as there is life there is hope." As Christians we also say, "As long as there is hope there is life. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failure and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Why did I stay? My self-esteem was ruined for a very long time. I was socially isolated from my family and friends. I kept everything that was going on in my marriage a secret. I feared for my safety if I left him. I was financially dependent on my spouse. I am an educated woman who was working towards a master's degree when I met him. He persuaded me to stop school after the birth of our first son. Eventually, he trapped me in his web of lies. I believe I suffered from Stockholm syndrome for many years. It isn't easy to leave. Unless you have lived in an abusive relationship, a typical person wouldn't understand. It seems perfectly logical to an outsider that it would be easy to leave an abusive relationship. It truly isn't and walking away is terrifying for a victim. No one deserves to live his or her life as a prisoner. Love shouldn't hurt and abuse is not love. - Mary Laumbach-Perez — Bree Bonchay

Poor black families were "immersed in a domestic web of a large number of kin and friends whom they [could] count on," wrote the anthropologist Carol Stack in All Our Kin. Those entwined in such a web swapped goods and services on a daily basis. This did little to lift families out of poverty, but it was enough to keep them afloat. But large-scale social transformations - the crack epidemic, the rise of the black middle class, and the prison boom among them - had frayed the family safety net in poor communities. So had state policies like Aid to Families with Dependent Children that sought to limit "kin dependence" by giving mothers who lived alone or with unrelated roommates a larger stipend than those who lived with relatives. — Matthew Desmond

In mature years I have always been gregarious, a lover of my kind, dependent upon the company of friends for the very pulse of moral life. To be marooned, to be shut up in a solitary cell, to inhabit a lighthouse, or to camp alone in a forest, these have always seemed to me afflictions too heavy to be borne, even in imagination. A state in which conversation exists not, is for me an air too empty of oxygen for my lungs to breathe it. — Edmund Gosse

See, I am very dependent ... on beauty and peace of the world ... on loyalty of friends ... on love in families ... on happiness and health of children. And I do not want to be free as long as I have it all ... — Galina Nelson

Old friends die on you, and they're irreplaceable. You become dependent. — Lionel Blue

Try to understand how they feel - put yourselves in their place. Imagine you are in a foreign country with no money, possessions or friends. You cannot speak the language; the culture is completely different to your normal environment; isolated and helpless. You would be dependent on someone supporting you. Think of that when you next meet someone who is autistic... — Michael Braccia

Yet they sense that something is wrong. They can't quite put their finger on the problem. As time passes, they grow more and more dependent on each other; they are getting older; any opportunities to make a new life are vanishing fast. They try to keep busy doing reading or embroidery, watching television, seeing friends, but there is always the conversation over supper or after supper. He is easily irritated, she is more silent than usual. They can see that they are growing further and further apart, but cannot understand why. They reach the conclusion that this is what marriage is like, but won't talk to their friends about it; they are the image of the happy couple who support each other and share the same interests. She takes a lover, so does he, but it's never anything serious, of course. What is important, necessary, essential, is to act as if nothing is happening, because it's too late to change. — Paulo Coelho

The evil, Sir, is enormous; the inevitable suffering incalculable. Do not stain the fair fame of the country ... Nations of dependent Indians, against their will, under color of law, are driven from their homes into the wilderness. You cannot explain it; you cannot reason it away ... Our friends will view this measure with sorrow, and our enemies alone with joy. And we ourselves, Sir, when the interests and passions of the day are past, shall look back upon it, I fear, with self-reproach, and a regret as bitter as unavailing. — Edward Everett

Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, "Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more." Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own? — Ralph Waldo Emerson