“The mockery of friends is affectionate, and inoculates against foolishness.”
“...if one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not in fact his friends. How else would one learn to avoid saying those things that would elicit laughter from strangers? The mockery of friends is affectionate, and inoculates against foolishness.”
“Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox. ”
“Welcome to Level 2. Or, as it is sometimes affectionately referred to by the Friends: God's Little Joke.”
“I think they worried that my grandfather would infect me with some incurable dreaminess from which I’d never recover – that these fantasies were somehow inoculating me against more practical ambitions”
“We must always look after our friends, even when they are foolish. Especially when they are foolish.”