Source: It (1986), Ch. 16 : Eddie's Bad Break, §8
Context: Maybe, he thought, there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends — maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.
“A visitor is a friend, he brings news, good or bad, which is bread to the hungry minds in lonely places. A real friend who comes to the house is a heavenly messenger, who brings the panis angelorum.”
Source: Out of Africa
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Karen Blixen 67
Danish writer 1885–1962Related quotes
“Nobody likes the man who brings bad news.”
Source: Antigone, Line 277; cf. "Don’t shoot the messenger."
“My best friend is one who brings out the best in me”
Actually due to Harris Weinstock: "My best friend is the man who can bring out of me my best, and your best friend is the one who tends to bring out the best in you" (May 1914) Attributed to Henry Ford as early as 1948.
Misattributed
“I have good news and bad news for you, my friend.”
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 152
Context: "What can I do to see Reality as it is?"
The master smiled and said, "I have good news and bad news for you, my friend."
"What's the bad news?"
"There's nothing you can do to see — it is a gift."
"And what's the good news?"
"There's nothing you can do to see — it is a gift."
“It is a good thing
To escape from death, but it is not great pleasure
To bring death to a friend.”
Source: Antigone, Line 437
"Portions for Foxes"
Song lyrics, More Adventurous (2004)
“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
Domestic Life
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)
Letter to Thomas Cooper (3 November 1822), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, p. 272
1820s