Quotes & Sayings About Friends Past And Present

You're funny.' Phoebe passed me the last chocolate cupcake. 'And I always thought your friends were laughing over their own farts.'
'Ninety percent of Eastwood's male population laughs over their own farts. Present company excluded, naturally. — Robyn Schneider

Paradoxically, admitting your own powerlessness can free you from the need to fix everything and allow us to be truly present to the other person, and to listen. A cartoon in The New Yorker had one woman saying testily to her friend, 'There's no point in our being friends if you won't let me fix you. — James Martin

Harriet, to hide her excitement, had turned to the bookshelves in the corner between the windows and the fireplace. The books, untidily arranged, some standing, some piled on their sides, with newspapers and magazines wedged among them, confused her. There were no sets and a great many were paper-backed. She saw friends - Mr. Dickens was present - and nodding acquaintances - Laurence Sterne, for instance, and Theodore Dreiser - but they were among strangers: Henry Miller, Norman Douglas, Saki, Ronald Firbank, strangers all. — Jack Iams

A photo frame with many pictures is the best present ever for a long trip. I can almost feel all those moments.. — W.

There is something tenderly appropriate in the serene death of the old ... When the duties of life have all been nobly done; when the sun touches the horion; when the purple twilight falls upon the past, the present, and the future; when memory, with dim eyes, can scarcely spell the blurred and faded records of the vanished days-then, surrounded by kindred and by friends, death comes like a strain of music. The day has been long, the road weary, and the traveler gladly stops at the welcome inn. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I was willing to make us into a proper family; I was willing to put the time into it. I've sent your brother to fetch your mother, despite needing him elsewhere, in a bid to make you happy. But I don't have time to play with you any more. Your friends are not the only ones who understand you're replaceable. You're alive only because I permit it, and I am fast running out of patience with you. So tomorrow evening, you will present yourself in the Great Hall an hour after sunset. You will wear something very pretty, and your best smile. And we will dine together, companionably.You will not try to stab me. You will not spit at me, or slap me. You will behave with decorum. In short, sweetling, you will make yourself special to me, or I will remove you from my game board. I need your brother, and I need the philtresmith. But I don't need you. Bear that in mind. — Melinda Salisbury

You are a success when you have made friends with your past, are focused on the present, and are optimistic about your future — Zig Ziglar

The historical truth is a fiction. OK, I did whatever I could to find out what happened from
surviving friends, family and media, but that is simply a skeleton upon which the story is draped.
This is the unmasking of the myth, and, as Jean Cocteau put it: "Man seeks to escape himself
in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw
into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort."
I wanted to go beyond a recreation of the past to discover meaning in the degradation of my
addiction experience. The past is another country and not my prime interest. It's more what
the past can tell us about how we deal with the present moment.
- William Pryor — William Pryor

If you're worried that you won't know someone in a few years, you should start living in the present and enjoy the people who are around you now and when the time comes for both of you to part ways... remember that it was a privilege and honor to be part of their life's - even if it was for such a short time. — Tiffany Walker

They weren't ashamed of their bodily functions and they didn't lie to themselves or others. They had no patience for small talk or false pretenses. They would laugh when they wanted to like there was no tomorrow, and cry their eyes out when they felt like it. Basically, I had finally found my people. HOW I LOST MY VIRGINITY I always fantasized about losing my virginity the way I think most girls envision their weddings: being surrounded by my friends and family, with a clergyman present. — Amy Schumer

Time held no meaning as my mind darted in and out of memories. Past and present collided to create a full-sensory collage out of my life: playing hide-n-seek with my best friends Luke - who always cheated by walking through walls when he was about to be caught - and Lucy; Mr. Caldrin critiquing my sketches and offering ideas to make them more realistic; targets changing faces, blending into the same person, their thoughts rippling through my mind like waves. Through it all, a demon stalked me from the shadows of my memories, never quite showing its face, but crouching, waiting.
And then I dreamed ... — Kimberly Kinrade

I love to design for women, it's really open and very free. I always think of my friends. I think of both fictitious characters, real people from the past and the present. I am not a woman, but I find women so beautiful and so fascinating. — Marc Jacobs

No, the point of this story is that there are only a select few friends, past or present, that I would go to such lengths to stand by. That's what school really taught me: the enduring nature of friendship. How special it is to grow up and share a history with someone. As I've gotten older, friendships rooted in childhood feel even richer and more irreplaceable. — Connor Franta

Hot damn! Hunter was finally paying off with the hot guy friends. I knew this day would come, it was inevitable, but I was still overwhelmed with gratitude - Ev would be getting an extra nice Christmas present this year. — Genna Rulon

What I do is I take action because I value the position I have, the career I have, the life I live, the people I interact with, my fanbase, my friends, however you want to say that. I value those relationships and I use the opportunities they present to me. — Mike Vallely

Anyone who is portraying Israel as a friend is a servant of Israel.
I warn some sides against turning enemies into friends and friends into enemies.
Some in the Arab world try to present "Israel" as a friend and Iran as a foe.
Yet such conspiracies will fail. "Israel" has not been helping because of its hostile and aggressive nature. The Arab world is realising day after day that Iran is a friend, which was highlighted in Iran's support to Gaza and Lebanon. — Hassan Nasrallah

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. — Herman Melville

About eight days ago I discovered that sulfur in burning, far from losing weight, on the contrary, gains it; it is the same with phosphorus; this increase of weight arises from a prodigious quantity of air that is fixed during combustion and combines with the vapors. This discovery, which I have established by experiments, that I regard as decisive, has led me to think that what is observed in the combustion of sulfur and phosphorus may well take place in the case of all substances that gain in weight by combustion and calcination; and I am persuaded that the increase in weight of metallic calyxes is due to the same cause ... This discovery seems to me one of the most interesting that has been made since Stahl and since it is difficult not to disclose something inadvertently in conversation with friends that could lead to the truth I have thought it necessary to make the present deposit to the Secretary of the Academy to await the time I make my experiments public. — Antoine Lavoisier

Virtual Reality is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures. — Mark Zuckerberg

It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity. — Alexis De Tocqueville

I wish the trees would go into leaf that I might find out what they are. In their present undress I cannot recognise them. It's true that I doubt if I should know my best friends
men or women
with their clothes off. — Laura Lafargue

Janey was planning a short engagement, she'd simpered, and so, of course, the inevitable collection for the wedding present would soon follow. Of all the compulsory financial contributions, that is the one that irks me most. Two people wander around John Lewis picking out lovely items for themselves, and then they make other people pay for them. It's bare-faced effrontery. They choose things like plates, bowls and cutlery-I mean, what are they doing at the moment: shoveling food from packets into their mouths with their bare hands? I simply fail to see how the act of legally formalizing a human relationship necessitates friends, family and coworkers upgrading the contents of their kitchen for them. — Gail Honeyman

And while she works on herself, moving ahead in her career, expanding her mind through books and art, and keeping her life fulfilled with hobbies, family, and good friends, she's waiting, waiting for that man who will remain poised, sharp, and attentive in the face of her past hurts, present insecurities, and future dreams. And that's what the Shit Test is meant to find - the man who is smart and sharp enough to make her insecurities feel like they're inconsequential or baseless; the man who will protect her - not necessarily from the outside world - she's a tough chick and can do that on her own - but from herself. — Olyvia Apple

Chasing your tale? Sometimes we relive past accomplishments, failures and or past relationships to the point of exhaustion. When we do this, I liken it to a dog chasing its tail, just spinning round and round and going nowhere fast. Constantly chasing our own tales has the same effect on us. It leaves us in a state of dizzying immobility. When we wrap our arms so firmly around our past we leave little room to embrace our present future and that, my friends, is a sad tale to tell. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

I was seriously considering giving both Ellie and Braden a lump of coal for their Christmas present this year as a thank-you for turning Joss into a normal person who annoyed her friends with her terrible matchmaking skills. — Samantha Young

Living in the past is always a bad idea; yet, on some level I believe the ones we love, even though not part of our present, are the very definition of who we are, the driving force of what we aspire to be, and at the end of the day, the past we must look to in order to improve who we will become. After all, we do not learn from what has not happened, but what has been, and what we will choose to keep or leave behind. Friendship, true friendship is never blind, but it holds the value of forgiveness - separating what we may or may have not done within the realm of mistakes....seeking the outcome of making us into better people. — Tony C. Skye

I mean when the book first came out it was not a bestseller, but it got good reviews and at that point I was done writing about Andy, done talking about Andy ... but now, I kind of love it. All these smart, attractive young people think I'm cool! So here I am a guy in his sixties with all of these interesting friends in their twenties. It's very stimulating and keeps me very much in the present. — Bob Colacello

In fact, this is a world without future. In this world, time is a line that terminates at the present, both in reality and in the mind. In this world, no person can imagine the future. Imagining the future is no more possible than seeing colors beyond violet: the senses cannot conceive what may lie past the visible end of the spectrum. In a world without future, each parting of friends is death. In a world without future, each loneliness is final. In a world without future, each laugh is the last laugh. In a world without a future, beyond the present lies nothingness, and people cling to the present as if hanging from a cliff. — Alan Lightman

Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and far from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Ionia. — Samuel Johnson

And I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. [ ... ] Sometimes, too, I dream of the indecipherable language of tin (a confused memory, perhaps, of its plaintive "cry"). But my favorite dream is of going to the opera (I am Hafnium), sharing a box at the Met with the other heavy transition metals my old and valued friends Tantalum, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, and Tungsten. — Oliver Sacks

Perhaps, from an innate desire of justification, sorrow always exaggerates itself. Memory is quite one of Job's friends; and the past is ever ready to throw its added darkness on the present. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The greatest friends and companions in times of horrible sadness are the ones who don't attempt to fix or quantify your experience, but rather are simply present and willing to share only as little or as much of your life as you invite them into." Well — September Vaudrey

I regularly frequent St. George';s, Hanover Square, during the genteel marriage season; and though I have never seen the bridegroom's male friends give way to tears, or the beadles and officiating clergy in any way affected, yet it is not at all uncommon to see women who are not in the least concerned in the operations going on
old ladies who are long past marrying, stout middle-aged females with plenty of sons and daughters, let alone pretty young creatures in pink bonnets, who are on their promotion, and may naturally taken an interest in the ceremony
I say it is quite common to see the women present piping, sobbing, sniffling; hiding their little faces in their little useless pocket-handkerchiefs; and heaving, old and young, with emotion. — William Makepeace Thackeray

They waited awhile before lighting the candles; the gloom allowed the past to slip cozily into the present. But the memories were of a time that was gone and didn't overshadow the present. But the memories were vivid, and they made the freinds feel both young and old ... When Chrsitanne finally lit the candles and they saw one another clearly again, she was happy to see in the old faces of the others the young faces they had come across in their memories. we store our youth wihtin us, we can go back to it and find ourselves in it, but it is past
melancholy filled their hearsts, and sympahty, for one another and for themsleves. — The Weekend

Friends, family, school, work, love, hate, past, present, future, success, disappointment ... everything has its place on the scale. And without the lows, even those deep, dark, heartbreak-style lows, you can never appreciate how truly amazing the highs can be. — Love Maia

Extended discourse, whether in the form of novels or expository treatises, presents the mind with a category of stimuli that can guide thinking though a long, complex, and coherent line of reasoning. Books structure ideas almost uniquely: The vocabulary and thought forms that are commonplace in book-length texts are rare in daily conversations. Books present a much wider range of vocabulary, concepts, and inferences than can be found in our daily banter with friends and family members. — Michael E. Martinez

Not long after coming to Detroit, I heard of a museum of machinery in Dearborn which had been set up by Henry Ford but which, at that time, had not acquired its present popularity. The well-to-do people of fashionable Grosse Pointe and the Detroit workers as well ignored Greenfield Village, as this museum area was called. Almost nobody had any use for it, and I found out about it only through hearing people laugh at "old man Ford" for "wasting" millions on his "pile of scrap iron." These gibes excited my curiosity, and I asked my friends how I could arrange a visit and what was the earliest time I might go.
"Any time you like," they answered, not troubling to conceal their disdain. — Diego Rivera

Now in the light of past and present events the bitter truth must be spoken. We feared too little and we hoped too much. We underestimated the bestiality of the enemy; we overestimtaed the humanity, the wisdom, the sense of justice of our friends. — Chaim Weizmann

I despise shows that present friendship where you're always there for each other and really strong because I don't know anyone like that. I mean, I've got great friends, but I can go months without seeing them because I think, 'I just can't deal with having to give you anything.' — Sharon Horgan

We're busy being busy. Distraction is a dangerously deceptive saboteur of our goals, because we are not present to how much time we lose. We're distracted by things like being in meetings or on conference calls, or we get on Facebook related to business and the updates of friends captivate our attention and an hour goes by before we wake up. — Rory Vaden

A free society depends upon a high degree of mutual trust. The public will not give that trust to officials who are not seen to be impartially dedicated to the general public interest, nor will they give trust to those high in government who violate the rule of law they ask citizens to obey at the expense of self-interest, or to those who present government as the place where one feathers his own nest, [or] exchanges favors with friends and former associates. — Archibald Cox

I used to live in New York, and I know a number of people who have friends who work at galleries. I spent time hanging out with them, going to openings. It was a good way to do research, to hang out and to look at the art that was present. — Jesse Kellerman

Life in New Orleans is all about making the present--this moment, right now--as pleasant as possible. So New Orleanians, by and large, aren't tortured by the frenzy to achieve, acquire, and manage the unmanageable future. Their days are built around the things that other Americans have pushed out of their lives by incessant work: art, music, elaborate cooking, and--most of all--plenty of relaxed time with family and friends. Their jobs are really just the things they do to earn a little money; they're not the organiing principle of life. While this isn't a worldview particularly conducive to getting things done, getting things done isn't the most important thing in New Orleans. Living life is. Once you've tasted that, and especially if it's how you grew up, life everywhere else feels thin indeed. — Dan Baum

I cannot step into any day without help. I have a fantastically engaged husband who is very present for his children and our family life. We've got a brilliant nanny, other help from parents-in-law, godparents, friends. Also, I've had incredible women around me in the business. — Tamsin Greig

The little girl's sense of secrecy that developed at prepuberty only grows in importance. She closes herself up in fierce solitude: she refuses to reveal to those around her the hidden self that she considers to be her real self and that is in fact an imaginary character: she plays at being a dancer like Tolstoy's Natasha, or a saint like Marie Leneru, or simply the singular wonder that is herself. There is still an enormous difference between this heroine and the objective face that her parents and friends recognise in her. She is also convinced that she is misunderstood: her relationship with herself becomes even more passionate: she becomes intoxicated with her isolation, feels different, superior, exceptional: she promises that the future will take revenge on the mediocrity of her present life. From this narrow and petty existence she escapes by dreams. — Simone De Beauvoir

For people who have something in the present it is easier to forget the past, although you never wholly do so. When winter comes, spring is a vague memory, something looked back at with nostalgia, but winter is the here and now and requires all your energies. If spring were to vanish and there were nothing, an abyss, if that were even possible to imagine, then you would live with memories of spring for ever and ever or else become a part of the abyss itself. The same can sometimes be said for love, but not always. There are some loves that live on for years, inexplicably, although the lovers are parted and there is no hope that they may ever reunite except as polite and distant friends. — Rona Jaffe

Thou art seeking Christ, close not those eyes, turn not away thy face from Calvary's streaming tree: now that Satan hinders thee, it is because the night is almost over, and the day-star begins to shine. Brethren, ye who are most molested, most sorrowfully tried, most borne down, yours is the brighter hope: be now courageous; play the man for God, for Christ, for your own soul, and yet the day shall come when you with your Master shall ride triumphant through the streets of the New Jerusalem, sin, death, and hell, captive at your chariot wheels, and you with your Lord crowned as victor, having overcome through the blood of the Lamb. May God bless dear friends now present. I do not know to whom this sermon may be most suitable, but I believe it is sent especially to certain tried saints. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A big group of daily friends or a white painted house with bills and mirrors, are not a necessity to me - but an intelligent conversation while sharing another coffee, is. — Charlotte Eriksson

You're my past, my present, and my future. You're my life, Anna. I love you. — Samantha Chase

I cannot imagine a spiritual pain deeper than dying with the thought that during my sojourn on earth, I had rarely, if ever, shown up as my true self. And I cannot imagine a spiritual comfort deeper than dying with the knowledge that I had spent my brief time on this planet doing the best I could to be present as myself to my family, my friends, my community, and my world. — Parker J. Palmer

Because we cannot conceive that as we grow up our own minds will become so enlarged and elevated that we ourselves shall then regard as trifling those objects and pursuits we now so fondly cherish, and that, though our companions will no longer join us in those childish pastimes, they will drink with us at other fountains of delight, and mingle their souls with ours in higher aims and nobler occupations beyond our present comprehension, but not less deeply relished or less truly good for that, while yet both we and they remain essentially the same individuals as before. — Anne Bronte

If they came sorrowing, and wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the present, then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses of intimate acquaintances, not friends — Elizabeth Gaskell

Just across from Bismarck stood Fort Lincoln where friends and relatives of Custer's dead cavalrymen still lived, and these emigrating Sioux could perceive such bitterness in the air that one Indian on the leading boat displayed a white flag. Yet, in accordance with the laws of human behavior, the farther downstream they traveled the less hostility they encountered, and when the tiny armada reached Standing Rock near the present border of South Dakota these Indians were welcomed as celebrities. Men, women and children crowded aboard the General Sherman to shake hands with Sitting Bull. Judson Elliot Walker, who was just then finishing a book on Custer's campaigns, had to stand on a chair to catch a glimpse of the medicine man and reports that he was wearing "green wire goggles." No details are provided, so green wire goggles must have been a familiar sight in those days. Sitting Bull mobbed by fans while wearing green wire goggles. It sounds like Hollywood. — Evan S. Connell

Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc'd true friends, and beat down baffling foes;
That we must feign a bliss
Of doubtful future date,
And, while we dream on this,
Lose all our present state,
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose? — Matthew Arnold

You are in front of your brother, but your mind is on many other things, so you don't really see your brother. Maybe he is having some trouble, but you don't see it, not even when you share the same room. But mindfulness brings you there, to the present, and then you see. Train yourself all day long to bring your mind to your body and to be present with your food, your friends, your work, everything, because the more you concentrate, the deeper you will see. — Chan Khong

I am slow to listen to criminations among friends, and never expose their quarrels on either side ... allow bygones to be bygones, and look to the present & future only. — Abraham Lincoln

The loneliness of the arab is a terrible thing; it is all consuming. It is already present like a little shadow under the heart when he lays his head on his mother's lap; it threatens to swallow him whole when he leaves his own country, even though he marries and travels and talks to friends twenty-four hours a day. That is the way Sirine suspects that Arabs feel everything - larger than life, feelings walking in the sky. — Diana Abu-Jaber

There was a time when only specialized Christian missionaries needed to be able to defend the gospel of Jesus Christ against the attacks of Islam. Today every Christian has an opportunity and obligation to present the gospel effectively and in Christian love to the Muslims who have permeated our Western society. When your neighbor, your mechanic, your favorite basketball player, your employer or employee, or even your children's friends could very well be Muslims, the need for proper understanding and an effective Christian witness is abundantly clear. — Josh McDowell

Joel Waldfogel is one of the smartest and funniest economists on the planet. I think of him every time I start to unwrap a present. Buy Scroogenomics for your friends and family. It makes the perfect Christmas gift. — Ian Ayres

My friend, let us enjoy the present and give no thought to the evils of the future. — Alexandre Dumas

When you live in the present moment, time stands still. Accept your circumstances and live them. If there is an experience ahead of you, have it! But if worries stand in your way, put them off until tomorrow. Give yourself a day off from worry. You deserve it. Some people live with a low-grade anxiety tugging at their spirit all day long. They go to sleep with it, wake up with it, carry it around at home, in town, to church, and with friends. Here's a remedy: Take the present moment and find something to laugh at. People who laugh, last. — Barbara Johnson

When one person comes into contact with another, it is not simply coming together of person rather it is the first and the most important phase of coming together of humanity whether it is you and me or you and us or we and you friends. Unless it is engulfed by love and humanity the two qualifies which everybody professes or the eternal qualities essential for creating heaven in this very earth, which however, seems to be the most lacking in the present day traumatic situation of unhappiness, sorrows, woeful conditions, jealousies, hasted, abhorrence and so on, it will be simply wastage of the precious humanity. — Nutan Bajracharya

In times of hardship and pain, we may feel abandoned by our friends, by our families, and by our Creator. But if we believe that God has left us, even for a moment, we are mistaken. God never abandons us, not even when the raindrops are falling in buckets. Through every storm of life, He is ever-present, offering us His grace, His love, and His mercies. — Laura Story

When our friends are present we ought to treat them well; and when they are absent, to speak of them well. — Epictetus

I got £25. My friends all gave me £5. It was a very thoughtful present. — Robert Pattinson

The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and most servile preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence. Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where all things are out of their natural connections, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true? — Alexis De Tocqueville

It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man
that question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times
whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays
I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!' But having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his fancy! — Thomas Hardy

We have a long distance to travel,' said the Angel of Death to our friend Gil, as soon as they had left the Villa. 'I will order my chariot.' And he struck the ground with his foot.
A hollow rumbling, like that which precedes an earthquake, sounded under the ground. Presently there rose round the two friends an ash-colored cloud of vapor, in the midst of which appeared a species of ivory chariot, resembling the chariots we see in the bas-reliefs of antiquity.
A brief glance would have sufficed (we will not disguise the fact from out readers) to show that the chariot was not made of ivory, but solely and simply of human bones polished and joined together with exquisite skill, but retaining still their natural form.
The Angel of Death gave his hand to Gil and they ascended the chariot, which rose into the air like the balloons of the present day, but with the difference that it was propelled by the will of its occupants. ("The Friend of Death") — Pedro Antonio De Alarcon

this is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal — J.K. Rowling

I travel 250 days a year. There are chef friends who I only see every couple of years. By conventional standards I'm a bad friend. I'm not there to remember your birthday or to offer you words of support through Twitter. I'm not up on what you're doing in New York because I'm not in New York. I'm not what people call in parenting circles "present." — Anthony Bourdain