is a friend indeed? This is one of those phrases that Resistentialists seldom use, except after a few brandies when we start to ponder questions such as: “Why do people use phrases like this one?”, and “What the hell do phrases like this actually mean, anyway?”
In short, it may be true to say that we complicate, and sometimes overcomplicate, the banal through grim terror – in that if we can accomplish the dissecting of every known cliche, it liberates in respect of those (rare) moments where we may accidentally use them in an unselfconscious manner. Because if our interlocutors can’t be sure that we are being sincere – given our prior analysis of the cliche – they are forced to interpret us as being ironic, and that’s just the way we like it. With all that out the way, the phrase seems to originate in the Latin “Amicu certus in re incerta cernitur”, from Ennuis, translated as “A sure friend is known when in difficulty”. But this is the first of two, possibly three, interpretations.