Close friendships often have a greater effect on health than a spouse or a family member. They will shape your life, sustain it and make it better.
What Are Friends For? A Longer Life
Researchers are only now starting to pay attention to the importance of friendship and social networks in overall health. A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. A large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk for obesity among people whose friends gained weight. And last year, Harvard researchers reported that strong social ties could promote brain health as we age.
“In general, the role of friendship in our lives isn’t terribly well appreciated,” said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. “There is just scads of stuff on families and marriage, but very little on friendship. It baffles me. Friendship has a bigger impact on our psychological well-being than family relationships.”
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.
- Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) British lexiographer.
My friends are my estate.
- Emily Dickinson