Time & Perspective Quote by Joseph Parry

Time and change are the two quiet assassins of most relationships, and Joseph Parry names them with a composer’s instinct for what actually breaks a bond: not drama, but drift. “Stood the test” borrows the language of craft and endurance, as if friendship is a structure that must bear load, weather, and vibration. The line isn’t romantic about loyalty in the abstract; it’s practical about stress. People move, marry, lose faith, gain status, fall ill, get famous, get forgotten. What survives that isn’t just “nice,” it’s rare.

Parry’s phrasing carries a distinctly Victorian moral temperature - steadiness as virtue - but it’s also an immigrant-era, industrial-age realism. In the late 19th century, Wales was being reshaped by urbanization and global migration, and Parry himself rose from humble origins into national cultural prominence. In that world, “change” isn’t a self-help slogan; it’s the churn of class mobility, new institutions, new politics, new cities. The subtext: friendship is one of the few human technologies that can remain legible when everything else gets rewritten.

There’s a gentle hierarchy embedded in “surely best,” too. He’s ranking friendships not by intensity, usefulness, or proximity, but by durability across versions of you. It’s a quiet rebuke to fair-weather intimacy - the kind that thrives on sameness and snaps at growth. For a composer, it also hints at harmony: the best friendships aren’t frozen; they modulate without falling apart.