FRIENDSHIP
Addison, Joseph
Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joy, and dividing our grief.
The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure.
Aristotle
In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge.—The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
Bacon, Francis
Those friends are weak and worthless, that will not use the privilege of friendship in admonishing their friends with freedom and confidence, as well of their errors as of their danger.
Barton, Bruce
I made courtiers; I never pretended to make friends, said Napoleon. . . . On a rocky little island he fretted away the last years of his life—alone.
Beecher, Henry Ward
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults.—So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.
Bourne, Randolph S.
Friendships are fragile things, and require as much care in handling as any other fragile and precious thing.
Bovee, Christian Nestell
False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.
Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.
Bruyere, Jean de la
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George
One of the surest evidences of friendship that one can display to another, is telling him gently of a fault.—If any other can excel it, it is listening to such a disclosure with gratitude, and amending the error.
Burton, Richard E.
False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports.
The attachments of mere mirth are but the shadows of that true friendship of which the sincere affections of the heart are the substance.
Channing, William Ellery
He is our friend who loves more than admires us, and would aid us in ous great work.
Friends should not be chosen to flatter.—The quality we prize is that rectitude which will shrink from no truth.—Intimacies which increase vanity destroy friendship.
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope
Real friendship is a slow grower, and never thrives unless engrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.
Chilo
Be more prompt to go to a friend in adversity than in prosperity.
Clarendon, Edward Hyde
Friendship hath the skill and observation of the best physician, the diligence and vigilance of the best nurse, and the tenderness and patience of the best mother.
Because discretion is always predominant in true friendship, it works and prevails least upon fools. Wicked men are often reformed by it, weak men seldom.
Colton, Caleb C.
The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity; as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.
Confucius
There are three friendships which are advantageous: friendship with the upright, with the sincere, and with the man of much observation.—Friendship with the man of specious airs, with the insinuatingly soft, and with the glib-tongued, these are injurious.
Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.
Crowell, Robert
The light of friendship is like the light of phosphorus, seen plainest when all around is dark.
Cyrus The Great
All men have their frailties; and whoever looks for a friend without imperfections, will never find what he seeks.
We love ourselves notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our roof tight and our clothing sufficient, but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all—friends?
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Euripides
Life has no blessing like a prudent friend.
Feltham, Owen
No man can expect to find a friend without faults, nor can he propose himself to be so to another.—Every man will have something to do for his friend, and something to bear with in him.—Only the sober man can do the first; and for the latter, patience is requisite.—It is better for a man to depend on himself than to be annoyed with either a madman or a fool.
Foss, Sam Walter
Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.
Fuller, Thomas
Let friendship creep gently to a height; if it rushes to it, it may soon run itself out of breath.
It is best to live as friends with those in time with whom we would be to all eternity.
Make not thy friends too cheap to thee, nor thyself to thy friend.
Purchase not friends by gifts; when thou ceasest to give, such will cease to love.
Make not a bosom friend of a melancholy soul: he'll be sure to aggravate thy adversity, and lessen thy prosperity. He goes always heavy loaded; and thou must bear half. He's never in a good humor; and may easily get into a bad one, and fall out with thee.
No one can lay himself under obligation to do a wrong thing. Pericles, when one of his friends asked his services in an unjust cause, excused himself, saying, "lama friend only as far as the altar.
Greville, Lord
What an argument in favor of social connections is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasure we have more.
Grieg, Edward
It is great to have friends when, one is young, but indeed it is still more so when you are getting old. When we are young, friends are, like everything else, a matter of course. In the old days we know what it means to have them.
Hall, Robert
A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity. He who has made the acquisition of a judicious and sympathizing friend, may be said to have doubled his mental resources.
Herder, Johann Gottfried von
Friendship with the evil is like the shadow in the morning, decreasing every hour; but friendship with the good is like the evening shadows, increasing till the sun of life sets.
Holliday, Robert Cortes
No one should ever go a journey with any other than him with whom one walks arm in arm, in the evening, the twilight, and agrees that if either should have a son he shall be named after the other.
Home, Henry
The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.
Johnson, Samuel
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he passes through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.
Lafontaine, Jean de
Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which strengthens with the setting sun of life.
Nothing more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable.
Lavater, John Caspar
He that hath no friend, and no enemy, is one of the vulgar; and without talents, powers, or energy.
Be not the fourth friend of him who had three before and lost them.
Melmoth, William
The most powerful and the most lasting friendships are usually those of the early season of our lives, when we are most susceptible of warm and affectionate impressions. The connections into which we enter in any after-period decrease in strength as our passions abate in heat; and there is not, I believe, a single instance of a vigorous friendship that ever struck root in a bosom chilled by years.
Mitchell, Silas Weir
He alone has lost the art to live who cannot win new friends.
Plato
The love of man to woman is a thing common and of course, and at first partakes more of instinct and passion than of choice; but true friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.
Prentice, George D.
A friend that you have to buy won't be worth what you pay for him, no matter what that may be.
Quarles, Francis
That friendship will not continue to the end which is begun for an end.
Raleigh, Sir Walter
There is nothing more becoming any wise man, than to make choice of friends, for by them thou shalt be judged what thou art: let them therefore be wise and virtuous, and none of those that follow thee for gain; but make election rather of thy betters than thy inferiors, shunning always such as are poor and needy; for if thou givest twenty gifts, and refuse to do the like but once, all that thou hast done will be lost, and such men will become thy mortal enemies.
Thou mayest be sure that he that will in private tell thee of thy faults, is thy friend, for he adventures thy dislike, and doth hazard thy hatred; there are few men that can endure it; every man for the most part delighting in self-praise, which is one of the most universal follies that bewitcheth mankind.
If thy friends be of better quality than thyself, thou mayest be sure of two things; the first, they will be more careful to keep thy counsel, because they have more to lose than thou hast; the second, they will esteem thee for thyself, and not for that which thou dost possess.
Richter, Jean Paul
We learn our virtues from the friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us.—We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.
Savage, Richard
You'll find the friendship of the world mere outward show!—'Tis like the harlot's tears, the statesman's promise, or the false patriot's zeal, full of fair seeming, but delusion all.
Secker, Thomas
That is a choice friend who conceals our faults from the view of others, and discovers them to our own.
Selden, John
Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were the easiest for his feet.
Shakespeare, William
The friends thou hast and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.
The amity that wisdom knits not. folly may easily untie.
Sidney, Sir Philip
Be careful to make friendship the child and not the father of virtue, for many are rather good friends than good men; so, although they do not like the evil their friend does, yet they like him who does the evil; and though no counselors of the offence, they yet protect the offender.
There is nothing so great that I fear to do it for my friend; nothing so small that I will disdain to do it for him.
Take heed how you place your good will upon any other ground than proof of virtue.—Neither length of acquaintance, mutual secrecies, nor height of benefits can bind a vicious heart; no man being good to others who is not good in himself.
Smith, Sydney
Life is to be fortified by many friendships.—To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
Socrates
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. It is well worth while to learn how to win the heart of a man the right way. Force is of no use to make or preserve a friend, who is an animal that is never caught nor tamed but by kindness and pleasure. Excite them by your civilities, and show them that you desire nothing more than their satisfaction; oblige with all your soul that friend who has made you a present of his own.
South, Robert
A true friend is the gift of God, and he only who made hearts can unite them.
Southey, Robert
The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired.
Tate, Nahum
Friendship is the privilege of private men; for wretched greatness knows no blessing so substantial.
Taylor, Jeremy
By friendship you mean the greatest love, the greatest usefulness, the most open communication, the noblest sufferings, the severest truth, the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds of which brave men and women are capable.
He that doth a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together.
Trapp, Joseph
Friendship must be accompanied with virtue, and always lodged in great and generous minds.
Van Dyke, Henry
The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride; the threshold high enough to turn deceit aside; the door-band strong enough from robbers to defend: this door will open at a touch to welcome every friend.
Washington, George
Friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appelation.
Young, Edward
Heaven gives us friends, to bless the present scene; resumes them to prepare us for the next.
Poor is the friendless master of a world; a world in purchase of a friend is gain.
