Make sure the path for your own feet to walk to eternal life, and take as many with you as you can. Take them as they are, understand them as they are, and deal with them as they are; look at them as God looks at them.

Friendship in a marriage is so important. It blows away the chaff and takes the kernel, rejoices in the uniqueness of the other, listens patiently, gives generously, forgives freely. Friendship will motivate one to cross the room one day and say, “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean that.” It will not pretend perfection nor demand it. It will not insist that both respond exactly the same in every thought and feeling, but it will bring to the union honesty, integrity. There will be repentance and forgiveness in every marriage—every good marriage—and respect and trust.

And all these and other elements we are not able to mention eloquently declare that such a union doesn’t just happen.

So the need becomes clear for careful, thoughtful preparation, selection, and courtship. No one should be unwise enough to count on an across-the-crowded-room romanticized live-happily- ever-after marriage made without proper thoughtfulness, preparation, and prayer. Marriage is an everyday and every-way relationship in which honesty and character and shared convictions and objectives and views about finances and family and life-style are more important than moonlight and music and an attractive profile.

Married people should be best friends; no relationship on earth needs friendship as much as marriage.

I have in my possession a letter written by a young widowed immigrant in the early days of the Church. It was written in 1848 in Honeycreek, Missouri, to her husband’s mother and sister in England. He had died on the sailing vessel en route, leaving her and the two boys to make their way west with the Saints, heartsick and alone. She wrote the letter that changed my life a little. Maybe it will yours.

She began, “Dear Mother and dear Hannah, your dearly beloved son and my best friend has gone the way of all the earth. Dearer to me in life than life itself, he’s gone. Oh Mother, Mother, what am I to do?”

And then she told of her love for this, her best friend, and that she would rear these two boys in the kingdom and in his image and in the admonition of the Lord.

A tear came as I asked myself if that letter could have been written at my house.

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.

As I reflect on my short life, I have come to realize that the friends you can count on, you can count on one hand with fingers left over.

If we want to hep our children or other people change their behavior, we begin by improving the quality of our relationships with them. And we introduce new ideas before we introduce new expectations and controls. In other words, we help them see the world differently. When a person's paradigm changes, everything else changes with it.

Get to know your neighbors. Learn about their families, their work, their views. Get together with them, if they are willing, and do so without being pushy and without any ulterior motives. Friendship should never be offered as a means to an end; it can and should be an end unto itself.

“Jesus also said that we ought to be friendly with each other. He said, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” (john 13:34). Because the creator recognized love & friendship as one of our needs, he gave us a natural, instinctive desire to try to satisfy it. That is, everyone hungers for appreciation. We have a natural need to be loved, and everyone wants to feel that his own life is worthwhile. One of the most devastating of all human emotions is the sense of being alone, of being unloved, and of being unimportant. The feeling of not being wanted, of not being worthy, of not being important is causing far too much distress in our civilization and among our church membership.
We need each other. This means that we should bring everyone into full church membership and into full church fellowship & activity. The fact that the Lord has told us to do it is an indication that he thinks we can do it if we will. We might inquire of ourselves why we don’t.”

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship.