Friendship needs no words — it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

The line contrasts loneliness (painful isolation) with solitude (a chosen, potentially fruitful aloneness). Hammarskjöld suggests that genuine friendship does not depend on constant conversation or explanation; its reassurance can be wordless—an abiding presence, loyalty, or mutual understanding that changes the emotional quality of being alone. In that sense, friendship “delivers” a person from loneliness not by eliminating solitude, but by transforming it: one can be physically alone yet not existentially abandoned. The aphoristic form also fits a spiritual-ethical view of human relations, where communion is measured less by talk than by trust, attentiveness, and inner freedom.