To most Americans, a dog is a potential mate. To some Chinese, a dog is potential meat.

Loneliness tortures many if not most of the elderly more intensely and more frequently than it torments many if not most of us who will never be or have not yet been pushed or pulled into old age.

Some of our friends are our friends only because we used to be friends.

In some rare cases, a friendship between two people benefits both of them, and what’s more, in some rarer cases, it benefits both of them equally.