“Sometimes I feel I know strangers
Better than I know my friends
Why must a beginning
Be the means to an end?The stones from my enemies
These wounds will mend
But I cannot survive
The roses from my friends.”

— Ben Harper

Roses From my Friends
Song lyrics, The Will to Live (1997)

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Ben Harper 29

singer-songwriter and musician 1969

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Variation: Defend me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies myself The quote has been attributed to Voltaire, who was using it after Villars. Quoted in Connie Robertson, Dictionary of Quotations, 1998
Source: The 48 Laws of Power