Great Associates Companions Help

The best way of knowing a man is to know what company he keeps.: A thief associates with a thief and a saint with a saint. Righteousness can have no fellowship with unrighteousness. Light can have no connection with darkness and a believer, with an infidel. Fire and water have a natural affinity to their own kind and a natural aversion for each other. Water is attracted by water and two drops merging together will readily become one, but when fire and water meet together they destroy each other. Tigers and deer, serpents and mongooses, lambs and wolves, lions and whales never voluntarily associate with each other. Light and darkness can never unite. Men of similar tastes and habits unite with each other and become friends.

Therefore a man’s character, opinions, tastes and temper may be fairly changed by the company he lives in. Birds of the same feather flock together. If a policeman is to detect a thief or a felon where will he search for him?

He will, no doubt, search for him among the hunts of wickedness since the police knows that a thief can be nowhere but among thieves. A man is never so happy as when he finds himself in the company of those who are what he is.

One should exercise great care in the choice of one’s companions. Our happiness or misery depends upon this choice. If a good man mixes with those who are bad and wicked, he is sure to lose his character, whereas if a bad man comes in contact with the good and the virtuous, he will soon be one of them. It should, therefore, be the earnest endeavour of everyone to secure a good company since it is only there that character can be preserved and improved. It is the company on which the structure of a man’s career is built.

Naymee’s father took him to task yesterday for keeping bad company. At first it hurt him too much. But his father told him that bad company is the root of failure in life. He informed him that the best way of knowing a man is to know what company he keeps. A man’s character, opinions, tastes and temper may be fairly changed by the company he lives in. So, everybody should exercise great care in the choice of companions. Rabi got the point and decided to avoid bad company.