There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell! — The Hobbit

My Take – Thorin knew he was dying as he said this, and he finally realized that Bilbo’s love of life’s pleasures did not make him soft or sentimental. Instead, they made him full of life. Thorin’s greed for the treasure under the mountain had made him blind to reason and friendship. He violently rejected Bilbo when the hobbit tried to bring peace between the dwarves and others who were making claims on the treasure. What he did not realize was that Bilbo’s love of life made him fight all the harder to protect and preserve it, even to the point of losing the dwarves as friends and companions. Only at the end did Thorin realize that Bilbo had always been a true friend to him.

In my life, it has sometimes been hard to look at a friend and tell him the things he needs instead of what he wants. It comes back to the ‘hard right versus easy wrong’ argument. It’s better to lose a friend, possibly permanently, than to be less than honest with them or to not do the right thing in order to spare them. If they can eventually see that you willingly risked their approval in order to be a good friend, they may value the friendship even more.