--Sir Thomas Browne
The most certain fortress against evil is that of friendship.
--Cicero
Charity itself commands us, where we know no ill, to think well of all;
but friendship, that always goes a pitch higher, gives a man a peculiar
right and claim to the good opinion of his friend.
--Robert South
Therefore example take by me,
For friendship parts in poverty.
--English Ballad
A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
--Young
Beware, lest thy Friend learn at last to tolerate one frailty of thine,
and so an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love.
--Henry D. Thoreau
Nothing is more dangerous than an imprudent friend; better to have to
deal with a prudent enemy.
--La Fontaine
I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and
worldly alliances.
--Emerson
Old friends are the great blessings of one’s latter years. Half a word
conveys one’s meaning. They have memory of the same events, and have
the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that grow upon me,
for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow old friends? My age
forbids that. Still less can they grow companions. Is it friendship to
explain half one says? One must relate the history of one’s memory and
ideas; and what is that to the young but old stories?
--Horace Walpole
What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor
among rogues.
--Henry D. Thoreau
The friendships of the world are oft
Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure;
Ours has severest virtue for its basis,
And such a friendship ends not but with life.
--Addison
There are jilts in friendship as well as in love, and by the behavior
of some men in both, one would almost imagine that they industriously
sought to gain the affections of others with a view only of making the
parties miserable.
--Henry Fielding
Friendship is evanescent in every man’s experience, and remembered like
heat lightning in past summers.
--Henry D. Thoreau
Give, and you may keep your friend if you lose your money; lend, and
the chances are that you lose your friend if ever you get back your
money.
--Bulwer-Lytton