
“why do our enemies shape us more than our friends?”
Source: The Dark Side of Love
Islamic Science, the Scholar and Ethics http://www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=570, Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation.
Context: The doctor's aim is to do good, even to our enemies, so much more to our friends, and my profession forbids us to do harm to our kindred, as it is instituted for the benefit and welfare of the human race, and God imposed on physicians the oath not to compose mortiferous remedies.
“why do our enemies shape us more than our friends?”
Source: The Dark Side of Love
As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 23, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations http://archive.org/details/dictionaryquota02harbgoog (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 320
“…one enemy can do more hurt, than ten friends can do good.”
Journal to Stella (30 June, 1711)
L'Opinion de ces Demoiselles, "Nos amis, nos ennemis" [Our friends, our enemies]. Expression used by the French during the truce after the capture of Sebastopol, referring to the Russians. Recorded in the London Times of that date. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 221.
Attributed to Cosimo de' Medici, Duke of Florence, in Apothegms by Francis Bacon, (1624) No. 206