PREFACE.

There is something in the very name of FRIEND that quickens the pulse and warms the heart. The most beautiful relationship in human intercourse is friendship, and it is at once the easiest and most difficult of attainment. In friendship’s name much is endured, much attempted and many sacrifices are made, and the greatest happiness is gained. Friends may come and go with the passing years, but the sweet memory of friendship’s happy hour remains.

[1]

Deliberate long before thou consecrate a friend; and when thy impartial judgment concludes him worthy of thy bosom, receive him joyfully and entertain him wisely; impart thy secrets boldly, and mingle thy thought with his; he is thy very self; and use him so. If thou firmly believe him faithful, thou makest him so.

—Quarles.

In the hours of distress and misery, the eyes of every mortal turn to friendship. In the hour of gladness and conviviality, what is your want? It is friendship. When the heart overflows with gratitude, or with any other sweet and sacred sentiment, what is the word to which it would give utterance? A Friend.

—Landor.

A man’s best female friend is a wife of good sense and good heart, whom he loves, and who loves him. If he have that, he need not seek elsewhere. But supposing the man be without such a helpmate, female friendship he must have, or his intellect will be without a garden, and there will be many an unheeded gap even in its strongest fence.

—Lytton.

[2]

After friendship it is confidence; before friendship it is judgment.

—Seneca.

A friend is a person before whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.

—Emerson.

A faithful friend is the true image of the Deity.

—Napoleon.

A friend cannot be known in prosperity, and an enemy cannot be hidden in adversity.

True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come without invitation.

A friend may be often found and lost, but an old friend can never be found, and nature has provided that he cannot be easily lost.

—Jonson.

[3]

A friend is he who sets his heart upon us, is happy with us, and delights in us; and does for us what we want, is willing and fully engaged to do all he can for us, on whom we can rely in all cases.

—Channing.

A friendship will be young after the lapse of half a century; a passion is old at the end of three months.

Although a friend may remain faithful in misfortune, yet none but the very best and loftiest will remain faithful to us after our errors and our sins.

—Farrar.

Friendship is the greatest bond in the world.

—Taylor.

[4]

A man should not repudiate the friendship of a woman because it may lead to harm; he should cherish the friendship and beware of the harm.

—Alger.

A man’s reputation is what his friends say about him. His character is what his enemies say about him.

—Unknown.

A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends, and that the most liberal profession of good will is very far from being the surest mark of it.

—Washington.

A woman, if she really be your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor, repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing, for a woman friend desires to be proud of you. At the same time her constitutional timidity makes her more cautious than your male friend. She therefore seldom counsels you to do an imprudent thing.

—Lytton.

[5]

A true test of friendship: to sit or walk with a friend for an hour in perfect silence without wearying of one another’s company.

—Mulock.

Always leave my friend something more to be desired of me. Be useful to my friend, as far as he permits, and no further. Be much occupied with my own affairs, and little, very little, with those of my friend. Leave my friend always at liberty to think and act for himself, especially in matters of little importance.

—Gold Dust.

[6]

As people grow older friends and associates of youth are apt to be more appreciated, and old relations are oftentimes resumed that have been suffered to languish for many years.

These links with the past form a chain that, next to the ties of blood, forms one of the strongest relations of social life.

Although pessimists declare that friendship is a myth and what are called intimates are people who consort together for amusement or self-interest, the very fact that there is this feeling of especial kindness for old time associates proves that there is such a thing as sentiment independent of worldly considerations.

—Unknown.

Every friend is to the other a sun and a sunflower also. He attracts and follows.

—Richter.

[7]

Friendship is an allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppressions, the sanctuary to our calamities, the counsellor of our doubts, the charity of our minds, the emission of our thoughts, the exercise and improvement of what we meditate.

—Taylor.

Beware lest thy friend learn to tolerate one frailty of thine, and so an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love.

—Thoreau.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

—Franklin.

[8]

It is not becoming to turn from friends in adversity, but then it is for those who have basked in the sunshine of their prosperity to adhere to them. No one was ever so foolish as to select the unfortunate for their friends.

—Lucanus.

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which concern yourself; his counsel may then be useful, where your own self-love might impair your judgment.

—Seneca.

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

—Stowe.

[9]

[10]

Dear to me is a friend, yet I can also make use of an enemy; the friend shows me what I can do, the foe teaches me what I should.

—Schiller.

Don’t flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.

—Holmes.

Everything that is mine, even to my life, I may give to one I love; but the secret of my friend is not mine to give.

—Sidney.

[11]

Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship never.

Friendship is love without its flowers or veil.

[12]

Friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.

—Bacon.

Friendship is to be valued for what there is in it, not what can be gotten out of it. When two people appreciate each other because each has found the other convenient to have around, they are not friends, they are simply acquaintances with a business understanding. To seek friendship for its utility is as futile as to seek the end of a rainbow for its bag of gold. A true friend is always useful in the highest sense; but we should beware of thinking of our friends as brother members of a mutual benefit association, with its periodical demands and threats of suspension for non-payment of dues.

[13]

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it we value more when it is regained; but that which has been lost until it is forgotten will be found at last with little gladness, and with still less if a substitute has supplied the place.

—Jonson.

Far from the eyes, far from the heart, say the vulgar. Believe nothing of it; if it was so, the farther you were distant from me the cooler my love for you would be; whilst on the contrary the less I can enjoy your presence, the more the desire of that pleasure burns in the soul of your friend.

—St. Anselm.

Female friendship, indeed, is to a man the bulwark, sweetener, ornament, of his existence. To his mental culture it is invaluable; without it all his knowledge of books will never give him knowledge of the world.

—Montaigne.

Friendship is rarer than love and more enduring.

—Taylor.

[14]

Friends require to be advised and reproved, and such treatment, when it is kindly, should be taken in a friendly spirit.

—Cicero.

Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of each other.

—Addison.

Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon earth, it is for fellowship’s sake that ye do them.

—Morris.

[15]

He that hath no friend and no enemy is one of the vulgar, and without talents, power, or energy.

—Lavater.

Happy the man whose life is spent in friendship’s calm security.

—Aeschylus.

[16]

Hand grasps hand, eye lights eye, in good Friendship. And great hearts expand and grow one in the sense of this world’s life.

—Browning.

How few are there born with souls capable of friendship. Then how much fewer must there be capable of love, for love includes friendship and much more besides!

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has an enemy will meet him everywhere.

I could not live without the love of my friends.

—Keats.

[17]

I awake this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

—Emerson.

I have always laid it down as a maxim, and found it justified by experience, that a man and woman make far better friendships than can exist between two of the same sex; but with this condition, that they never have made, or are to make, love with each other.

—Byron.

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.

—Jonson.

[18]

I loved my friend for his gentleness, his candor, his good repute, his freedom even from my own livelier manner, his calm and reasonable kindness. It was not particular talent that attracted me to him, or anything striking whatsoever. I should say in one word, it was his goodness.

—Hunt.

I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my God. I love my friend before myself, and yet methinks I do not love him enough; some few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all. When I am from him I am dead till I be with him; when I am with him I am not satisfied, but would be still nearer him.

—Browne.

In all holiest and most unselfish love, friendship is the purest element of the affection. No love in any relation of life can be at its best if the element of friendship is lacking. And no love can transcend, in its possibilities of noble and ennobling exaltation, a love that is pure friendship.

[19]

A true friendship is as wise as it is tender.

—Thoreau.

I think when people have forgotten that each other exists it is as though they had never met. They are perhaps something more distant still than strangers, for to strangers friendship in the future is possible; but those who have been separated by oblivion on the one hand and by contempt on the other are parted as surely and eternally as though death had divided them.

—Ouida.

If words came as ready as ideas, and ideas as feelings, I could say ten hundred kind things. You know not my supreme happiness at having one on earth whom I can call friend.

—Lamb.

If it were expediency that cemented friendships, expediency when changed would dissolve them, but because one’s nature can never change, therefore true friendships are eternal.

—Cicero.

[20]

If I could choose a young man’s companions, some should be weaker than himself, that he might learn patience and charity; many should be as nearly as possible his equals, that he might have the full freedom of his friendship; but most should be stronger than he was, that he might forever be thinking humbly of himself and tempted to higher things.

—Brooks.

In friendship there is nothing pretended, nothing feigned; whatever there is in it is both genuine and spontaneous.

—Cicero.

It is only the great-hearted who can be true friends; the mean and cowardly can never know what true friendship is.

—Kingsley.

[21]

It is easy to say how we love new friends and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibres that knit us to the old.

—Eliot.

[22]

Just as in Love’s records there are many cases of one-sided passion, so in friendship you frequently see one person who makes all the professions or demonstrations, while the other person is either passive or actually bored.

—Unknown.

Let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations.

—Emerson.

Let us learn to be content with what we have. Let us get rid of our false estimates, set up all the higher ideals—a quiet home; vines of our own planting; a few books full of the inspiration of genius; a few friends worthy of being loved and able to love us in turn; a hundred innocent pleasures that bring no pain or sorrow; a devotion to the right that will never swerve; a simple religion empty of all bigotry; full of trust and hope and love; and to such a philosophy this world will give up all the empty joy it has.

—Swing.

[23]

Love and keep him for thy friend, who, when all go away, will not forsake thee, nor suffer thee to perish at the last.

—Kempis.

Men only become friends by a community of pleasures. He who cannot be softened into gaiety, cannot be easily melted into kindness.

—Johnson.

[24]

New friends can never take the same place in our lives as the old. The former may be better liked for the time, their society may even have more attractions, but in a way they are strangers. If through change of circumstances they go out of our lives, they go out of it altogether. These latter-day friendships have no root, as it were. Their growth is as Jonah’s gourd—overshadowing, perhaps, and expansive, but all on the surface; whereas an old friend remains an old friend forever. Although separated for an indefinite period and not seen for years, if a chance happening brings old comrades together they resume the old relations in the most natural manner, and take up the former lines as easily as if there had been no break or interruption of the intermediate intercourse of auld lang syne.

—Unknown.

[25]

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.

—Southey.

After a certain age a new friend is a wonder. There is the age of blossoms and sweet budding green, the age of generous summer, the autumn when the leaves drop, and then winter shivering and bare.

—Thackeray.

Nothing is more common than the name of friend, nothing more rare than true friendship.

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.

[26]

Of all felicities, the most charming is that of a firm and gentle friendship. It sweetens all our cares, dispels our sorrows, and counsels us in all extremities. Nay, if there were no other comfort in it than the bare exercise of so generous a virtue, even for that single reason a man would not be without it; it is a sovereign antidote against all calamities—even against the fear of death itself.

—Seneca.

Of what shall a man be proud if he is not proud of his friends?

—Stevenson.

The only reward of virtue is virtue. The only way to have a friend is to be one.

—Emerson.

[27]

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 vigorous friendship that ever struck root in a bosom chilled by years.

The tide of friendship does not rise high on the banks of perfection. Amiable weaknesses and shortcomings are the food of love. It is from the roughness and imperfect breaks in a man that you are able to lay hold of him. My friend is not perfect—no more am I—and so we suit each other admirably.

—Smith.

[28]

Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is not necessary to write a letter to a friend, and, forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words.

—Emerson.

Only he who is unwilling to love without being loved is likely to feel that there is no such thing as friendship in the world.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

—Eliot.

Silence is the ambrosial night in the intercourse of friends, in which their sincerity is recruited and takes deeper root. The language of friends is not words, but meanings. It is an intelligence above language.

—Thoreau.

[29]

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.

—Lord Clarendon.

So long as we love, we serve. So long as we are loved by others I would almost say we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

—Stevenson.

Two people who are friends make themselves responsible for each other. If I had a friend, and he went to the bad, and I met him in rags and poverty and disgrace, and if it ruined me to own him and help him, I should have to do it. If two men are really friends, nothing can come between them.

—Murray.

[30]

Some people keep a friend as children have a toy bank, into which they drop little coins now and again; and some day they draw out the whole of their savings at once.

—Unknown.

Some seem to make a man a friend, or try to do so, because he lives near, because he is in the same business, travels on the same line of railway, or for some other trivial reason. There cannot be a greater mistake.

—Avebury.

Take heed of thy friends. A faithful friend is a strong defence; and he that hath found such a one hath found a treasure. Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend, and his excellency is invaluable.

—Proverbs.

There is no surer bond of friendship than an identity and community of ideas and tastes. What sweetness is left in life if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun.

—Cicero.

[31]

The only true and firm friendship is that between man and woman, because it is the only one free from all possible competition.

—Comte.

The place where two friends met is sacred to them all through their friendship, all the more sacred as their friendship deepens and grows old.

—Brooks.

The making of friends who are real friends is the best token we have of a man’s success in life.

—Hale.

The years have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons—none wiser than this: to spend in all things else, but of old friends to be most miserly.

—Lowell.

[32]

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow upon him. If he knows I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?

—Lavater.

Take envy out of a character and it leaves great possibilities for friendship.

[33]

There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.

—Lytton.