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Copyright, 1909, by
HOWARD E. ALTEMUS.
When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,—no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.
Old friends are the only ones whose hold is upon our inmost being; others but half replace them.
True friends appear less mov’d than counterfeit.
It is sublime to feel and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him; we need not reënforce ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance; I rely on him as on myself; if he did thus and thus, I know it was right.
A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no other law but kindness.
Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat or violence or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after. The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious stones never.
Friendship’s the wine of life.
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
Common friendships will admit of division; one may love the beauty of this, the good humor of that person, the liberality of a third, the paternal affection of a fourth, the fraternal love of a fifth, and so on. But this friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
Friendship is a sheltering tree.
We love everything on our own account; we even follow our own taste and inclination when we prefer our friends to ourselves; and yet it is this preference that alone constitutes true and perfect friendship.
Friendships begin with liking or gratitude.
In friendship I early was taught to believe.
Love and friendship exclude one another.
Friendship is a severe sentiment, solidly seated, since it rests upon all that is highest in us, the purely intellectual part of us. What happiness to be able to say all that one feels to someone who comprehends one to the very end and not only up to a certain point, to someone who completes one’s thought with the same word that was on one’s lips, someone the reply of whom starts from one a torrent of conceptions, a flood of ideas!
Judge before friendship, then confide till death.
Have no friend not equal to yourself.
Separate thyself from thine enemies, and take heed of thy friends. A faithful friend is a strong defence; and he that hath found such an one hath found a treasure. Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend, and his excellency is invaluable. A faithful friend is the medicine of life; and they that fear the Lord shall find him.
Thou may’st 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.
Once let friendship be given that is born of God, nor time nor circumstance can change it to a lessening; it must be mutual growth, increasing trust, widening faith, enduring patience, forgiving love, unselfish ambition, and an affection built before the Throne, which will bear the test of time and trial.
Friendship is a field which one sows.
A man that is fit to make a friend of must have conduct to manage the engagement, and resolution to maintain it. He must use freedom without roughness, and oblige without design. Cowardice will betray friendship, and covetousness will starve it. Folly will be nauseous, passion is apt to ruffle, and pride will fly out into contumely and neglect.
Some look to friendship for absolute exemption from criticism, and for a mutual admiration without limit or conditions. Others mistake it for the right of excessive criticism, in season and out of season.
Of what use is the friendliest disposition even, if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant duties and relations?
What is loving—that verb (amare) wherefrom the very name of friendship (amicitia) is derived—but wishing one to enjoy the best possible good fortune, even if none of it accrues to one’s self?
Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of men. It will make a man honest; it will make him a hero; it will make him a saint. It is the state of the just dealing with the just, the magnanimous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere, man with man.
The admirer is never stupid in the eyes of the admired.
One of the surest evidences of friendship that one individual 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.
We never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.
If thou wouldst get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him; for some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in the day of thy trouble. And there is a friend who, being turned to enmity and strife, will discover thy reproach. Again, some friend is a companion at the table, and will not continue in the day of thine affliction.
Friendship is a pact where one balances faults and qualities. One can judge a friend, take account of what is good, neglect what is evil, and appreciate exactly his value, in abandoning one’s self to an intimate, profound and charming sympathy.
We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies,—neighbors are kind enough for that,—but to do the like office to our spirits. For this few are rich enough, however well disposed they may be.
Friendship closes its eye, rather than see the moon eclipst; while malice denies that it is ever at the full.
Son, if the lintels of thy house are lofty, and thy friend be sick, say not: What shall I send to him? Go thou rather on foot, and see him with thy eyes; for that is better for him than a thousand talents of gold or Silver.
We must love our friends as true amateurs love paintings: they have their eyes perpetually fixed upon the fine qualities, and see no others.
Nothing is so difficult as to help a Friend in matters which do not require the aid of Friendship, but only a cheap and trivial service, if your Friendship wants the basis of a thorough practical acquaintance.
There is nothing more becoming any wise man, than to make choice of friends, for by them thou shalt be judged as 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.
True friendship is like sound health: the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
A woman’s friendship borders more closely on love than man’s. Men affect each other in the reflection of noble or friendly acts; whilst women ask fewer proofs and more signs and expressions of attachment.
Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.
A true friend to a man is a friend to all his friends.
Half a word from your friend says more to you than many phrases, for you are accustomed to think with him. You comprehend all the sentiments which animate him, and he knows it. You are two intelligences which add to and complement each other.
Friendship is first, Friendship last. But it is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we begin to keep them company.
In friendship we see the faults which may be prejudicial to our friends. In love we see no faults, but those by which we ourselves suffer.
Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us except the very thing we wish them to do. There is one thing in particular they are always disposed to give us, and which we are as unwilling to take, namely, advice.
There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship, and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.
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 of tongue: these are injurious.
My friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.
Go, humble thyself, and make sure thy friend.
Veritable friends enjoy, in moral order, the perfection of scent that dogs do; they thus divine the chagrins of their comrades; they see the causes and concern themselves with them.
I have loved my friends, as I do virtue, my soul, my God.
The most certain fortress against evil is that of friendship.
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.
A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
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.
Nothing is more dangerous than an imprudent friend; better to have to deal with a prudent enemy.
I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.
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?
What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.
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.
Friendship is evanescent in every man’s experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers.
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.
I would that I were worthy to be any man’s Friend.
There is nothing sweeter than a warm friendship, but continual emotion embitters.
Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also. He attracts and follows.
Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.
One must shed his blood to serve his friends and to avenge himself upon his enemies; otherwise he is not worthy of the name of man.
Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result.
Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
Mutual comprehension makes for friendship, and militates against love; for love—like modern society papers—must have a “puzzle column” for those that take it in.
Whatever the number of a man’s friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few.
The friendship of a great man is a gift of the gods.
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.
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
No man has been able to discover how to give a friendly counsel to any woman, not even to his wife.
In friendships, some are worthy, and some are necessary.
You do not know how great is the value of friendship, if you do not understand how much you give to him to whom you give a friend.
Faint heart never won true Friend. O my Friend, may it come to pass, once, that when you are my Friend I may be yours.
Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.
Friends are companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.
Have friends: It is the second existence. Every friend is good and wise for his friend, and among them all gets well managed.
When our friends are present, we ought to treat them well; and when they are absent, to speak of them well.
To Friendship every burden’s light.
A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
Friendship is immeasurably better than kindness.
The friendship that I have conceived will not be impaired by absence, but it may be no unpleasing circumstance to brighten the chain by a renewal of the covenant.
True friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.
Purchase not friends with gifts; when thou ceasest to give, such will cease to love.
Everything is well, provided one reaches the end of the day, that one sups and that one sleeps. The rest is “vanity of vanities,” as says “the other.” But friendship is a veritable thing.
No friend’s a friend till he shall prove a friend.
We hate some persons because we do not know them, and we will not know them because we hate them. The friendships that succeed to such aversions are usually firm, for those qualities must be sterling that could not only gain our hearts, but conquer our prejudices.
The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.
Let your friends be the friends of your deliberate choice.
Do not have evil-doers for friends; do not have low people for friends; have virtuous people for thy friends; have for thy friends the best of men.
A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
What room can there be for friendship, or who can be a friend to anyone whom he does not love for that one’s own sake?
Make no friendship with an angry man that is given to anger, and with a furious man thou shalt not go.
Friends should be weighed, not told; who boasts to have won a multitude of friends has never had one.
Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
Friendship is like rivers, and the strand of seas, and the air, common to all the world; but tyrants, and evil customs, wars, and want of love, have made them proper and peculiar.
I hate where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.
He who is a friend to everybody is nobody’s friend.
A friend is he who sets his heart upon us, is happy with us, and delights in us, 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.
Friendship is Love, without either flowers or veil.
We call friendship the love of the Dark Ages.
Pure friendship is what none can attain to the taste of save those who are well-born.
Friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation.
I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.
No word is oftener on the lips of man than Friendship, and indeed no thought is more familiar to their aspirations.
Friendships are the purer and the more ardent, the nearer they come to the presence of God, the Sun not only of righteousness but of love.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
He will find himself in a great mistake who either seeks a friend in a palace, or tries him at a feast.
That friendship will not continue to the end that is begun for an end.
Let friendship creep gently to a height; if it rush to it, it may soon run itself out of breath.
Friendship must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify both.
Real friendship is a slow grower and never thrives unless engrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.
Friendship builds itself up: it is a sentiment which walks circumspectly.
The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.
I do not wish to see my friends as I run; I want to enjoy them in long draughts.
For affection, or the faintest imitation of it, a man should be obliged to his very dog. But for the gross assistance of patronage or purse, let him pause before accepting them from anyone.
Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not.
The only good friends are old friends.
Whosoever formeth an intimacy with the enemies of his friends, does so to injure the latter. O wise man! wash your hands of that friend who associates with your enemies.
To thrust aside a virtuous friend, I consider as bad as to thrust away one’s own life, which one loves best.
Friendship is one soul in two bodies.
He removes the greatest ornament of friendship who takes away from it respect.
Friendship is no respecter of sex; and perhaps it is more rare between the sexes, than between two of the same sex.
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.
I always avoid contention, but if it shall happen, I had rather lose my money than my friend.
There are three faithful friends—an old wife, an old dog and ready money.
No discovery of defect in a character essentially good can so dampen friendship as the suspicion that something is kept back.
Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship, since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge enters.
The dearest thing in nature is not comparable to the dearest thing of friendship.
There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.
The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him.
Friendship new is neither strong or pure.
A friendship that makes the least noise is often the most useful; for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one.
A faithful friend is a true image of the Deity.
The place where two friends first met is sacred to them all through their friendship, all the more sacred as their friendship deepens and grows old.
Stay is a charming word in a friend’s vocabulary.
We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east-winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether.
A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly.
Friendship is the marriage of the soul.
Some friendships are made by nature, some by contract, some by interest and some by souls.
Friendship consists properly in mutual offices, and a generous strife in alternate acts of kindness.
Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest to his feet.
True friends are the whole world to one another; and he that is a friend to himself is also a friend to mankind.
There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.
Friendship is too pure a pleasure for a mind cankered with ambition, or the lust of power and grandeur.
The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.
Between friends, frequent reproofs make the friendship distant.
We must accept or refuse one another as we are. I could tame a hyena more easily than my Friend. He is a material which no tool of mine will work.
A true and noble friendship shrinks not at the greatest of trials.
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.
Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all the world is agreed.
Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals.
The man who has no enemies deserves to have no friends.
He that will lose his friend for a jest, deserves to die a beggar by the bargain.
No friendship is so cordial or so delicious as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense and immovable as that of woman for woman.
Faith and friendship are seldom truly tried, but in extremes.
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.
I can never think of promoting my convenience at the expense of a friend’s interest and inclination.
We lose some friends for whose loss we regret more than we grieve; and others whose departure causes us grief, but not regret.
Friendship is a word the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.
You, who forget your own friends, meanly to follow after those of a higher degree, are a snob.
Friendship is a plant that loves the sun, thrives ill under clouds.
To have the same desires and the same aversions is assuredly a firm bond of friendship.
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Friendship heightens all our affections. We receive all the ardor of our friends in addition to our own. The communication of minds gives to each the fervor of each.
Friendship! Sir, there can be no such thing without an equality!
Friendship admits of difference of character, as love does that of sex.
Something like home, that is not home, is to be desired; it is to be found in the house of a friend.
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Take the advice of a faithful friend, and submit thy inventions to his censure.
When men are friends, there is no need of justice; but when they are just, they still need friendship.
There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself; we cannot force it any more than love.
In friendship, your heart is like a bell struck every time your friend is in trouble.
Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspected as it does religion.
The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.
Sincerity, truth, faithfulness, come into the very essence of friendship.
The services which cement friendship are reciprocal services. A feeling of dependence is scarcely compatible with friendship.
It is better to break off a thousand friendships than to endure the sight of a single enemy.
Nature and religion are the bands of friendship, excellency and usefulness are its great endearments.
Obvious printer errors corrected silently.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.