--_Shakespeare_.
* * * * *
Let the honor of thy friend be as dear unto thee as thy own.
--_The Talmud_.
* * * * *
Life to be rich and fertile must be reinforced with friendship. It is
the sap that preserves from blight and withering; it is the sunshine
that beckons on the blossoming and fruitage; it is the starlight dew
that perfumes life with sweetness and besprinkles it with splendor; it
is the music-tide that sweeps the soul, scattering treasures; it is the
victorious and blessed leader of integrity's forlorn hope; it is the
potent alchemy that transmutes failure into success; it is the hidden
manna that nourishes when all other sustenance fails; it is the voice
that speaks to hopes all dead, "Because I live, ye shall live also." For
the loftiest friendships have no commercial element in them: they are
founded on disinterestedness and sacrifices. They neither expect nor
desire a return for gift or service. Amid the tireless breaking of the
billows on the shores of experience, there is no surer anchorage than a
friendship that "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all
things."
--_Cooper_.
* * * * *
It is one of the wretchednesses of the great that they have no approved
friends. Kings are the most solitary beings on earth.
--_Channing_.
* * * * *
Many kinds of fruit grow upon the tree of life, but none so sweet as
friendship.
--_Larcom_.
* * * * *
My treasures are my friends.
--_Constantius_.
* * * * *
Life should be fortified by many friendships.
--_Smith_.
* * * * *
Love begins with love; and there is no passing from firm friendship to
even feeble love.
--_La Bruyere_.
* * * * *
Live not without a friend; the Alpine rock must own
Its mossy grace or else be nothing but a stone.
--_Story_.
* * * * *
Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin
its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand
years.
--_Emerson_.
* * * * *
Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold,
Brow may wrinkle, hair grows grey:
True friendship never knows decay.
--_Anon_.
* * * * *
Oh, the comfort--the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a
person--having neither to weigh thought nor measure words, but pouring
them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain
that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth
keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
--_Muloch_.
* * * * *
O matchless wisdom; those seem to take the sun out of the world who
remove friendship from the pleasures of life: than which we have
received nothing better or more pleasant from the gods.
--_Cicero_.
* * * * *
Not on the store of sprightly wine,
Nor plenty of delicious meats,
Though generous Nature did design
To court us with perpetual treats;
'Tis not on these we for content depend,
So much as on the shadow of a friend.
--_Menander_.
* * * * *
Since human affairs are frail and fleeting, some persons must ever be
sought for whom we may love, and by whom we may be loved; for when
affection and kind feeling are done away with, all cheerfulness likewise
is banished from existence.
--_Cicero_.
* * * * *
Lying on lower levels is but a trivial offence compared with civility
and compliments on the level of friendship.
--_Thoreau_.
* * * * *
My friend, with you to live alone,
Were how much better than to own
A crown, a sceptre and a throne!
--_Tennyson_.
* * * * *
Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can
never taste.
--_La Bruyere_.
* * * * *
Sweet words will multiply a man's friends; and a fair-speaking tongue
will multiply courtesies. Let those that are at peace with thee be many;
but thy counsellors one of a thousand. If thou wouldest get thee a
friend, get him by proving, and be not in haste to trust him. For there
is a friend that is so for his own occasion, and he will not continue in
the day of thy affliction. And there is a friend that turneth to enmity;
and he will discover strife to thy reproach. And there is a friend that
is a companion at the table, and he will not continue in the day of thy
affliction; and in thy prosperity he will be as thyself, and will be
bold over thy servants; if thou shalt be brought low, he will be against
thee, and he will hide himself from thy face.
--_Bible_.
* * * * *
The first thing you should procure, after faith, is a good friend.
--_Arabic_.
* * * * *
Such a friendship, that through it we love places and seasons; for as
bright bodies emit rays at a distance, and flowers drop their sweet
leaves on the ground around them, so friends impart favor even to the
places where they dwell. With friends even poverty is pleasant. Words
cannot express the joy which a friend imparts; they only can know who
have experienced. A friend is dearer than the light of heaven, for it
would be better for us that the sun were extinguished than that we
should be without friends.
--_S. Chrysostom_.
* * * * *
Strange as it may sound, we are sometimes rather disposed to choose our
friends from the unworthy than the worthy; for though it is difficult to
love those whom we do not esteem, it is a greater difficulty to love
those whom we esteem much more than ourselves. A perfect friendship
requires equality, even in virtue.
--_Smith_.
* * * * *
Sincerity, truth, faithfulness, come into the very essence of
friendship.
--_Channing_.
* * * * *
Somehow or other, friendship entwines itself with the life of all men,
nor does it suffer any mode of spending our life to be independent of
itself.
--_Cicero_.
* * * * *
Small service is true service while it lasts,
Of humblest friends, bright creature, scorn not one;
The daisy by the shadow that it casts
Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.
--_Wordsworth_.
* * * * *
Some friendships are made by nature, some by contract, some by interest,
and some by souls.
--_Taylor_.
* * * * *
They who dare to ask anything of a friend, by their very request seem to
imply that they would do anything for the sake of a friend.
--_Cicero_.
* * * * *
To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling
than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity
in social life.
--_Ellis_.
* * * * *
There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth and
that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend
and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self;
and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the
liberty of a friend.
--_Bacon_.
* * * * *
The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws
of nature and of morals.
--_Emerson_.
* * * * *
To he only an admirer is not to be a friend of a human being. Human
nature wants something more, and our perceptions are diseased when we
dress up a human being in the attributes of divinity. He is our friend
who loves more than admires us, and would aid us in our great work.
--_Channing_.
* * * * *
True, active, productive friendship consists in keeping equal pace in
life, in the approval of my aims by my friend, while I approve his, and
thus moving forward together steadily, however much our way of thought
and life may vary.
--_Goethe_.
* * * * *
The man, that comforts a desponding friend
With words alone, does nothing. He's a friend
Indeed, who proves himself a friend in need.
--_Plautus_.
* * * * *
The making of friends, who are real friends, is the best token we have
of a man's success in life.
--_Hale_.
* * * * *
Truthfulness, frankness, disinterestedness, and faithfulness are the
qualities absolutely essential to friendship, and these must be crowned
by a sympathy that enters into all the joys, the sorrows and the
interests of the friend; that delights in all his upward progress, and
when he stumbles or falls, stretches out the helping hand, and is tender
and patient even when it condemns.
--_Ware_.
* * * * *
The expensiveness of friendship does not lie in what one does for one's
friends, but in what, out of regard for them, one leaves undone.
--_Ibsen_.
* * * * *
There are three friendships which are advantageous, and three which are
injurious. Friendship with the upright; friendship with the sincere;
and friendship with the man of observation: these are advantageous.
Friendship with the man of specious airs; friendship with the
insinuatingly soft; and friendship with the glib-tongued: these are
injurious.
--_Confucius_.
* * * * *
The tree withereth
Which stands in the courtyard
Without shelter of bark or of leaf.
So is a man
Destitute of friends.
Why should he live on?
--_The Hava-mal_.
* * * * *
There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship, and
indeed, friendship itself is but a part of virtue.
--_Pope_.
* * * * *
The mind never unbends itself so agreeably as in the conversation of a
well-chosen friend. There is indeed no blessing of life that is any way
comparable to the enjoyment of a discreet and virtuous friend. It eases
and unloads the mind, clears and improves the understanding, engenders
thoughts and knowledge, animates virtue and good resolutions, soothes
and allays the passions, and finds employment for most of the vacant
hours of life.
--_Addison_.
* * * * *
The best way to represent to life the manifold use of friendship is to
cast and see how many things there are which a man cannot do himself;
and then it will appear that it was a sparing speech of the ancients to
say "that a friend is another himself."
--_Bacon_.
* * * * *
The conversation of a friend brightens the eyes.
--_Persian Proverb_.
* * * * *
Those who want friends to open themselves unto, are cannibals of their
own hearts. But one thing is most admirable, which is, that this
communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects;
for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth grief in halfs. For there is no man
that imparteth his joys to his friends, but he joyeth the more; and no
man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.
--_Bacon_.
* * * * *
There is no better medicine for grief than the advice of a good and
honored friend. He who, in his sufferings, excites and tries to soothe
his mind by wine, though he may have pleasure for a moment, has a double
portion of pain afterwards.
--_Euripides_.
* * * * *
Time draweth wrinkles in a fair face, but addeth fresh colors to a fast
friend.
--_Lyle_.
* * * * *
The good man has the same relation to his friend as he has to himself.
--_Aristotle_.
* * * * *
There is in friendship something of all relations and something above
them all. It is the golden thread that ties the hearts of all the world.
--_Evelyn_.
* * * * *
To God be humble, and to thy friend be kind.
--_Dunbar_.
* * * * *
The perfection of loving-kindness is to efface ourselves so thoroughly
that those we benefit shall not think themselves inferior to him who
benefits them.
--_Balzac_.
* * * * *
The purest and most lasting human friendships are permeated with an
element of reverence.
--_Phelps_.
* * * * *
There are gold-bright suns in worlds above,
And blazing gems in worlds below,
Our world has Love and only Love,
For living warmth and jewel glow;
God's love is sunlight to the good,
And Woman's pure as diamond sheen,
And Friendships's mystic brotherhood
In twilight beauty lies between.
--_Milne_.
* * * * *
The friendship which arises from contraries is horrible and coarse, and
has often no tie of communion; but that which arises from likeness is
gentle, and has a tie of communion, which lasts through life.
--_Plato_.
* * * * *
To live with one's enemies as if they might one day be our friends, and
to live with our friends as though they might one day become our
enemies, is neither natural to hatred nor consistent with friendship.
Such a maxim is not moral, but politic.
--_La Bruyere_.
* * * * *
To take the companionship of life from life, what else is it than to
take away the means of absent friends conversing together?
--_Cicero_.
* * * * *
The love of friendship is the most perfect form of loving.
--_Cardinal Manning_.
* * * * *
The highest compact we can make with our fellow is, Let there be truth
between us two forevermore. It is sublime to feel and say of another, I
need never meet, or speak, or write to him; we need not reinforce
ourselves or send tokens of remembrance, I rely on him as on myself; if
he did thus or thus I know it was right.
--_Emerson_.
* * * * *
True friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.
--_Plato_.
* * * * *
There is a magic in the memory of schoolboy friendships; it softens the
heart, and even affects the nervous system of those who have no hearts.
--_Disraeli_.
* * * * *
Think it not friendship which ever seeks itself, but that which gives
itself for others.
--_Marshall_.
* * * * *
The vital air of friendship is composed of confidences.
--_Roux_.
* * * * *
When Socrates was building himself a house at Athens, being asked by one
that observed the littleness of the design why a man so eminent would
not have an abode more suitable to his dignity, he replied that he
should think himself sufficiently accommodated if he could see that
narrow habitation filled with real friends.
--_Johnson_.
* * * * *
While friendship embraces very many and great advantages, she
undoubtedly surpasses all in this, that she shines with a brilliant hope
over the future, and never suffers the spirit to be weakened or to sink.
Besides, he who looks on a true friend, looks, as it were, upon a kind
of image of himself; wherefore, friends, though absent, are still
present; though in poverty, they are rich; though weak, yet in the
enjoyment of health; and, what is still more difficult to assert, though
dead, they are alive; so entirely does the honor, the memory, the regret
of friends attend them.
--_Cicero_.
* * * * *
Thine own friend and thy father's friend, forsake not.
--_Solomon_.
* * * * *
While I keep my senses I shall prefer nothing to a pleasant friend.
--_Horace_.
* * * * *
What a great blessing is a friend, with a breast so trusty that thou
mayest safely bury all thy secrets in it, whose conscience thou mayest
fear less than thine own, who can relieve thy cares by his conversation,
thy doubts by his counsels, thy sadness by his good humor, and whose
very look gives comfort to thee!
--_Seneca_.
* * * * *
What can be more delightful than to have one to whom you can speak on
all subjects just as to yourself? Where would be the great enjoyment in
prosperity if you had not one to rejoice in it equally with yourself?
And adversity would indeed be difficult to endure without some one who
would bear it even with greater regret than yourself.
--_Cicero_.
* * * * *
With one friend I would count myself rich.
--_Nusbaum_.
* * * * *
What is bestowed on our friends is beyond the reach of fortune; the
riches that thou hast given away are the only riches that thou really
possessest.
--_Martial_.
* * * * *
Well chosen friendship, the most noble
Of virtues, all our joys makes double
And into halves divides our trouble.
--_Denham_.
* * * * *
We are most of us very lonely in this world; you who have any who love
you, cling to them and thank God.
--_Thackeray_.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since canceled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
--_Shakespeare_.
* * * * *
You shall perceive how you
Mistake my fortunes; I am wealthy in my friends.
--_Shakespeare_.
* * * * *
You must, therefore, love me myself, and not my circumstances, if we are
to be real friends.
--_Cicero_.
* * * * *
With conscious pride I view the band
Of faithful friends that round me stand,
With pride exult that I alone
Can join these scattered gems in one;
For they're a wreath of pearls, and I
The silken cord on which they lie.
'Tis mine their inmost souls to see,
Unlocked is every heart to me,
To me they cling, on me they rest,
And I've a place in every breast.
For they're a wreath of pearls, and I
The silken cord on which they lie.
--_From the Arabic_.
* * * * *
What room can there be for friendship, or who can be a friend to any one
whom he does not love for his own sake? And what is loving, from which
verb (amo) the very name of friendship (amicitia) is derived, but
wishing a certain person to enjoy the greatest possible good fortune,
even if none of it accrues to one's self?
--_Cicero_.
* * * * *
What makes us so changeable in our friendships is the difficulty we have
in discerning the qualities of the heart, and the ease with which we
discern those of the mind.
--_La Rochefoucauld_.
* * * * *
Worldly friendship is profuse in honeyed words, passionate endearments,
commendations of beauty, while true friendship speaks a simple honest
language.
--_De Sales_.
* * * * *
You cannot find a man who fully loves any living thing, that, dolt and
dullard though he be, is not in some spot lovable himself. He gets
something from his friends if he had nothing at all before.
--_Brooks_.
* * * * *
We can live without a brother, but not without a friend.
--_German Proverb_.
* * * * *
Whatever is founded on mere carnal love, vanity or frivolity, on such
attractions as are purely external, a sweet voice, personal beauty,
superficial cleverness or outward show, is unworthy to be called
friendship.
--_De Sales_.
* * * * *
You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your
griefs to your friend.
--_Shakespeare_.
* * * * *
When a man cannot fitly play his own part, if he have not a friend he
may quit the stage.
--_Bacon_.
* * * * *
We want one or two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace, to
wear out life with; persons by whom we can measure ourselves, and who
shall hold us fast to good sense and virtue.
--_Emerson_.
* * * * *
A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and
talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. In a great town
friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the
most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go farther and
affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude, to want
true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness. Whosoever in
the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he
taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.
--_Francis Bacon_.
* * * * *
And thou, my friend, whose gentle love
Yet thrills my bosom's chords,
How much thy friendship was above
Description's power of words.
--_Lord Byron_.
* * * * *
As friendship must be founded on mutual
esteem, it cannot long exist among
the vicious.
--_Horace Smith_.
* * * * *
A friend is worth all the hazards we can run.
--_Edward Young_.
* * * * *
A true friend is forever a friend.
--_George MacDonald_.
* * * * *
A benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his
friends in countenance.
--_Benjamin Franklin_.
* * * * *
A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that
actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.
--_Washington_.
* * * * *
A faithful friend is better than gold--a medicine for misery, an only
possession.
--_Burton_.
* * * * *
Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of
God's best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of
going out of one's self and seeing and appreciating whatever is noble
and loving in another.
--_Hughes_.
* * * * *
Cultivate the friendships of thy youth; it is only in that generous time
they are formed.
--_Thackeray_.
* * * * *
Companions I have enough, friends few.
--_Pope_.
* * * * *
Friendship is steady and peaceful; not much jealousy, and no
heartburnings. It strengthens with time, and survives the smallpox and
a wooden leg. It doubles our joys, divides our griefs, and warms our
lives with a steady flame.
--_Reade_.
* * * * *
Friendship above all ties doth bind the heart,
And Faith is Friendship in its noblest part.
--_Earl of Orrey_.
* * * * *
Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven,
The noble mind's delight and pride,
To men and angels only given,
To all the lower world denied.
--_Samuel Johnson_.
* * * * *
Friendship is a plant which cannot be forced. True friendship is no
gourd, springing up in a night and withering in a day.
--_Charlotte Bronte_.
* * * * *
Friendship always benefits, while love sometimes injures.
--_Seneca_.
* * * * *
Friendship heightens all our affections. We, receive all the ardor of
our friend in addition to our own. The communication of minds gives to
each the fervor of each.
--_Channing_.
* * * * *
Fate, which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the
evil, has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the
good.
--_Plato_.
* * * * *
False friendship turns to evil desires, upbraidings, slander, deceit,
sorrow, confusion and jealousies; but pure friendship is always the
same, modest, courteous and loving, knowing no change save an
increasingly pure and perfect union.
--_De Sales_.
* * * * *
Friendship is love with understanding.
--_Proverb_.
* * * * *
Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives, and remembering what
one receives.
--_Dumas_.
* * * * *
Friendship is said to be a plant of tedious growth, its roots composed
of tender fibers, nice in their taste, cautious in spreading.
--_Vanbrough_.
* * * * *
Friendship springs from nature rather than from need.
--_Cicero_.
* * * * *
Friendship, a dear balm--
Whose coming is as light and music are
'Mid dissonance and gloom:--a star
Which moves not 'mid the moving heavens alone;
A smile among dark frowns: a beloved light:
A solitude, a refuge, a delight.
--_P. B. Shelley_.
* * * * *
Friendship is the greatest bond in the world.
--_Jeremy Taylor_.
Friendship is love without wings.
--_Byron_.
For as yellow gold is tried by fire, so do moments of adversity prove
the strength of friendship. While fortune is friendly and smiles with
serene countenance, crowds surround the rich; but when heaven's thunder
rolls, they vanish, nor has he one who knows him, though lately
encircled by troops of boon companions.
--_Ovid_.
Our best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship;
and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and
interested motives if they can.
--_C. C. Colton_.
* * * * *
For to have the same predilections and the same aversions, that and that
alone is the surest bond of friendship.
--_Sallust_.
False friends, like insects in a summer's day,
Bask in the sunshine, but avoid the shower;
Uncertain visitants, they flee away
E'en when misfortune's cloud begins to lower.
Into life's bitter cup true friendship drops
Balsamic sweets to overpower the gall;
True friends, like ivy and the wall it props,
Both stand together, or together fall.
--_Anonymous_.
He who cannot feel friendship is alike incapable of love. Let a woman
beware of the man who owns that he loves no one but herself.
--_Talleyrand_.
* * * * *
How were friendship possible? In mutual devotedness to the Good and
True: otherwise impossible; except as armed neutrality or hollow
commercial league. A man, be the heavens ever praised, is sufficient for
himself; yet were ten men, united in love, capable of being and doing
what ten thousand singly would fail. Infinite is the help man can yield
to man!
--_Carlyle_.
He that hath gained a friend, hath given hostages to fortune.
--_Shakespeare_.
How often in thy journeyings hast thou made thee instant friends,
Found, to be loved a little while, and lost, to meet no more;
Friends of happy reminiscences, although so transient in their converse,
Liberal, cheerful, and sincere, a crowd of kindly traits.
--_Tupper_.
* * * * *
Heaven forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,
Bids each on other for assistance call,
Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.
--_Pope_.
In friendship we find nothing false or insincere; everything is
straightforward, and springs from the heart.
--_Cicero_.
Keep well thine tongue and keep thy friend.
--_Chaucer_.
Thy friend will come to thee unsought,
With nothing can his love be bought,
His soul thine own will know at sight,
With him thy heart can speak outright.
Greet him nobly, love him well,
Show him where your best thoughts dwell,
Trust him greatly and for aye;
A true friend comes but once your way.
* * * * *
If you would keep your friend, approach him with a telescope, never with
the microscope.
--_Anon_.
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend of his
faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go
to him and stab him with words; but so to love a man that you cannot
hear to see the stain of sin upon him, and to speak painful truth
through loving words--that is friendship. But few have such friends. Our
enemies usually teach us what we are, at the point of the sword.
--_Beecher_.
My friend is not perfect--no more I--and so we suit each other
admirably.
--_Pope_.