Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.

Hear now the voice of Doris Lessing, a seeker of truth and teller of human stories, who declared: “Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.” These words pierce through illusion and speak directly to the core of human relationships. For they remind us that perfection is a mirage, and those who chase it will find only loneliness and disappointment. True trust and true love are not built upon fantasies, but upon the honest recognition of human weakness.

To trust a friend without faults is to trust a mask, not a man. For every soul bears its cracks, every heart its shadows. The friend who appears without flaw is no friend at all, but a pretender, hiding their true self behind a polished facade. Lessing’s wisdom teaches us that the only friendships worth keeping are those where faults are known and accepted, where honesty triumphs over appearances, and where loyalty is stronger than perfection. As the ancients would say: better the comrade whose scars you see, than the one who hides his wounds until they strike you unawares.

Likewise, to love a woman, but not an angel, is to love what is real. The woman of flesh and blood, with her strengths and weaknesses, her laughter and her flaws, is the one who can walk beside you in the journey of life. But to expect an angel is to demand the impossible, to impose divinity upon humanity. Such love is not love at all, but idolatry, and it collapses under the weight of false expectation. Lessing’s teaching is not cynical, but liberating: to love fully is to embrace imperfection, and to find beauty not in flawlessness, but in truth.

History shows us the wisdom of this. Consider the life of Abraham Lincoln, who surrounded himself not with flatterers or perfect companions, but with men who often disagreed with him, who carried their own failings and tempers. This “team of rivals” became his strength, for he trusted them not because they were faultless, but because their honesty and passion were real. Had he sought only faultless friends, he would have been left alone, bereft of the counsel that carried