Encountering 'difficult' people

Every conflict encountered with another person
is an opportunity to finish unresolved issues within.

We receive the same message repeatedly until
we are able to recognize it.

Thoughts on Friendship: A Moment's Reflection

Been doing some fall cleaning...ridding of the old to make way for the new.

As I've purged, I have been reminded of friends now gone.
Some departed from the earth, some gently slid away, some chosen
to take their business elsewhere. All for reasons bold and good, if not
understood.

It got me in a mood regarding friendship, and poetry. Less flowery than
many friendship poems, and a bit well-worn from the years, this is where
I stand now.

Enjoy.

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"I don't meddle with what my friends believe or reject,
any more than I ask whether they are rich or poor;
I love them."

- James Russell Lowell

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"Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too
tedious to wait till all were agreed."

- James Russell Lowell

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"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in
philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."

- Thomas Jefferson

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"There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship...One is truth.
A friend is a person with whom I can be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.
...The other element of friendship is tenderness...The only way to have a friend
 is to be one."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"Love is a choice--not simply or necessarily a rational choice, but rather a
willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile."

- Carter Heyward

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"We are the weakest of spendthrifts if we let one friend drop off through
inattention, or let one push away another, or if we hold aloof from one for
petty jealousy or heedless roughness. Would you throw away a diamond
because it pricked you? One good friend is not to be weighed against all
the jewels of the earth."

 - Will Carleton

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"Friendship is an education. It draws the friend out of himself and all that is
selfish and ignoble in him and leads him to life's higher levels of altruism and
sacrifice. many a man has been saved from a life of frivolity and emptiness to
a career of noble service by finding at a critical hour the right kind of friend."

- G.D. Prentice