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THE BOOK OF
FRIENDSHIP

A LITTLE MANUAL OF
COMRADESHIP

By
REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN

PHILADELPHIA
HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY

Copyright, 1909, by
HOWARD E. ALTEMUS.

THE BOOK OF
FRIENDSHIP

THE BOOK OF
FRIENDSHIP

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.

—Emerson.

So, if I live or die to serve my friend,
’Tis for my love,—’tis for my friend alone,
And not for any rate that friendship bears
In heaven or on earth.

—George Eliot

Old friends are the only ones whose hold is upon our inmost being; others but half replace them.

—Voltaire

True friends appear less mov’d than counterfeit.

—Horace

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.

—Emerson

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.

—Henry D. Thoreau

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.

—Landor

Friendship’s the wine of life.

—Young

Give me the avow’d, the erect, the manly foe;
Bold I can meet—perhaps may turn his blow;
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save, save, oh! save me from the candid friend.

—George Canning

How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.

—Henry D. Thoreau

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.

—Montaigne

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

—Coleridge

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.

—La Rochefoucauld

Friendships begin with liking or gratitude.

—George Eliot

In friendship I early was taught to believe.

—Byron

In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow
Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,
Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee,
That there’s no living with thee, or without thee.

—Addison

Friendship of itself a holy tie,
Is made more sacred by adversity.

—Dryden

Love and friendship exclude one another.

—La Bruyère

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!

—Pierre Loti

The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves by thumps upon your back
How he esteems your merit,
Is such a friend that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed
To pardon or to bear it.

—Cowper

Judge before friendship, then confide till death.

—Young

Have no friend not equal to yourself.

—Confucius

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.

—The Book of Ecclesiasticus

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.

—Sir Walter Raleigh

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.

—Allan Throckmorton

Friendship is a field which one sows.

—Restif de la Brétonne

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.

—Jeremy Collier

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.

—John Morley

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?

—Henry D. Thoreau

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?

—Cicero

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.

—Henry D. Thoreau

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.

—Henry D. Thoreau

The admirer is never stupid in the eyes of the admired.

—Helvetius

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.

—Bulwer-Lytton

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.

—Henry D. Thoreau

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.

—The Book of Ecclesiasticus

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.

—Guy de Maupassant

Everyone can have a friend
Who himself knows how to be a friend.

—Old Saying

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.

—Henry D. Thoreau

Friendship closes its eye, rather than see the moon eclipst; while malice denies that it is ever at the full.

—J. C. and A. W. Hare

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.

—Arabian Legend

We must love our friends as true amateurs love paintings: they have their eyes perpetually fixed upon the fine qualities, and see no others.

—Mme. d’Epinay

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.

—Henry D. Thoreau

Great souls by instinct to each other turn,
Demand alliance, and in friendship burn.

—Addison

Fast as the rolling seasons bring
The hour of fate to those we love,
Each pearl that leaves the broken string
Is set in Friendship’s crown above.
As narrower grows the earthly chain,
The circle widens in the sky;
These are our treasures that remain,
But those are stars that beam on high.

—O. W. Holmes

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.

—Sir Walter Raleigh

True friendship is like sound health: the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.

—C. C. Colton

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.

—Coleridge

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

—Franklin

A true friend to a man is a friend to all his friends.

—Wycherley

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.

—Pierre Loti

Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul!
Sweet’ner of life! and solder of society!

—Robert Blair

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.

—Henry D. Thoreau

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.

—La Bruyère

Come back! ye friendships long departed!
That like o’erflowing streamlets started,
And now are dwindled one by one,
To stony channels in the sun!
Come back, ye friends whose lives are ended,
Come back, with all that light attended,
Which seemed to darken and decay
When ye arose and went away.

—Longfellow

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.

—Hazlitt

There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship, and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.

—Pope

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.

—Confucius

A generous friendship no cold medium knows,
Burns with one love, with one resentment glows;
One should our interests and our passions be,
My friend must hate the man that injures me.

—Homer (Pope’s Tr.)

My friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.

—Henry D. Thoreau

Go, humble thyself, and make sure thy friend.

—The Book of Proverbs

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.

—Balzac

I have loved my friends, as I do virtue, my soul, my God.

—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

I would that I were worthy to be any man’s Friend.

—Henry D. Thoreau

There is nothing sweeter than a warm friendship, but continual emotion embitters.

—Joseph Reinach

Dear is my friend—but from my foe, as from
My friend, comes good; the first what I can do
Shows, and the second what I should.

—Schiller

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

—Jean Paul Richter

Kindred weaknesses induce friendships as often as kindred virtues.

—C. N. Bovee

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.

—Voltaire

Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result.

—Henry D. Thoreau

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

—Addison

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.

—Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

Whatever the number of a man’s friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few.

—Bulwer-Lytton

The friendship of a great man is a gift of the gods.

—Voltaire

Ah! were I sever’d from thy side,
Where were thy friend, and who my guide?
Years have not seen, Time shall not see
The hour that tears my soul from thee.

—Byron

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.

—C. N. Bovee

I have friends in Spirit land,—
Not shadows in a shadowy band,
Not others but themselves are they;
And still I think of them the same
As when the Master’s summons came.

—Whittier

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.

—Sydney Smith

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min’?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o’ auld lang syne?

—Burns

No man has been able to discover how to give a friendly counsel to any woman, not even to his wife.

—Balzac

In friendships, some are worthy, and some are necessary.

—Jeremy Taylor

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.

—Seneca

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.

—Henry D. Thoreau

Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.

—La Fontaine

Ceremony was but devis’d at first
To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,
Recanting goodness, sorry ere ’tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none.

—Shakespeare

Friends are companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.

—Pythagoras

Have friends: It is the second existence. Every friend is good and wise for his friend, and among them all gets well managed.

—Balthasar Gracian

When our friends are present, we ought to treat them well; and when they are absent, to speak of them well.

—Epictetus

To Friendship every burden’s light.

—John Gay

All are friends in heaven, all faithful friends,
And many friendships in the days of Time
Begun, are lasting here, and growing still.

—Robert Pollok

A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.

—Henry D. Thoreau

Friendship is immeasurably better than kindness.

—Cicero

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.

—George Washington

True friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.

—Plato

Purchase not friends with gifts; when thou ceasest to give, such will cease to love.

—Thomas Fuller

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.

—Voltaire

Ah, how good it feels;
The hand of an old friend!

—Longfellow

No friend’s a friend till he shall prove a friend.

—Beaumont and Fletcher

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.

—Colton

The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.

—Shakespeare

O friendship, equal-poised control,
O heart with kindliest motion warm,
O sacred essence, other form,
O solemn ghost, O crowned soul!

—Tennyson

Who friendship with a knave hath made
Is judg’d a partner in the trade.

—John Gay

Let your friends be the friends of your deliberate choice.

—Balthasar Gracian

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.

—The Dhammapada

A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

—The Book of Proverbs

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?

—Cicero

Make no friendship with an angry man that is given to anger, and with a furious man thou shalt not go.

—The Book of Proverbs

What ill-starr’d rage
Divides a friendship long confirm’d by age?

—Pope

Friends should be weighed, not told; who boasts to have won a multitude of friends has never had one.

—Coleridge

Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.

—Emerson

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.

—Jeremy Taylor

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.

—Emerson

He who is a friend to everybody is nobody’s friend.

—Spanish Proverb

For tho’ the faults were thick as dust
Vacant chambers, I could trust
Your kindness.

—Tennyson

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.

—Channing

Friendship is Love, without either flowers or veil.

—J. C. and A. W. Hare

We call friendship the love of the Dark Ages.

—Mme. de Stael

Pure friendship is what none can attain to the taste of save those who are well-born.

—La Bruyère

Friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation.

—Washington

I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.

—Montaigne

No word is oftener on the lips of man than Friendship, and indeed no thought is more familiar to their aspirations.

—Henry D. Thoreau

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.

—Landor

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

—Emerson

He will find himself in a great mistake who either seeks a friend in a palace, or tries him at a feast.

—Seneca

Friendship—our friendship—is like the beautiful shadows of evening,
Spreading and growing till life and its light pass away.

—Michael Vitkovics

That friendship will not continue to the end that is begun for an end.

—Francis Quarles

Let friendship creep gently to a height; if it rush to it, it may soon run itself out of breath.

—Thomas Fuller

Friendship must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify both.

—Emerson

True friendship’s laws are by this rule express’d:
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

—Homer (Pope’s Tr.)

Real friendship is a slow grower and never thrives unless engrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.

—Lord Chesterfield

Friendship builds itself up: it is a sentiment which walks circumspectly.

—Henry Murger

The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.

—Emerson

You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the friendship between us,
Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily broken.

—Longfellow

Friendship, like love, is but a name,
Unless to one you stint the flame.

—John Gay

I do not wish to see my friends as I run; I want to enjoy them in long draughts.

—Comte de Bussy Rabutin

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.

—Carlyle

Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not.

—The Book of Proverbs

The only good friends are old friends.

—Voltaire

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.

—Saadi

To thrust aside a virtuous friend, I consider as bad as to thrust away one’s own life, which one loves best.

—Sophocles

Friendship is one soul in two bodies.

—Pythagoras

He removes the greatest ornament of friendship who takes away from it respect.

—Cicero

Friendship is no respecter of sex; and perhaps it is more rare between the sexes, than between two of the same sex.

—Henry D. Thoreau

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.

—Southey

As in the fire the yellow gold is tried,
So friendship’s faith can but be proved in time
Of dark adversity.

—Ovid

I always avoid contention, but if it shall happen, I had rather lose my money than my friend.

—Erasmus

There are three faithful friends—an old wife, an old dog and ready money.

—Franklin

No discovery of defect in a character essentially good can so dampen friendship as the suspicion that something is kept back.

—Channing

Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship, since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge enters.

—Hafiz

The dearest thing in nature is not comparable to the dearest thing of friendship.

—Jeremy Taylor

There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.

—Emerson

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him.

—Henry D. Thoreau

Friendship new is neither strong or pure.

—Young

Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love:
Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues.

—Shakespeare

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.

—Addison

A faithful friend is a true image of the Deity.

—Napoleon

O friend! O best of friends! Thy absence more
Than the impending night darkens the landscape o’er!

—Longfellow

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.

—Phillips Brooks

Stay is a charming word in a friend’s vocabulary.

—A. Bronson Alcott

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.

—Emerson

A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly.

—The Book of Proverbs

Friendship is the marriage of the soul.

—Voltaire

Some friendships are made by nature, some by contract, some by interest and some by souls.

—Jeremy Taylor

Friendship consists properly in mutual offices, and a generous strife in alternate acts of kindness.

—Robert South

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

—Shakespeare

Heaven gives us friends to bless the present scene;
Resumes them, to prepare us for the next.

—Young

Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest to his feet.

—John Selden

True friends are the whole world to one another; and he that is a friend to himself is also a friend to mankind.

—Seneca

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

—Bulwer-Lytton

Friendship is too pure a pleasure for a mind cankered with ambition, or the lust of power and grandeur.

—Junius

The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.

—Colton

Between friends, frequent reproofs make the friendship distant.

—Confucius

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.

—Henry D. Thoreau

A true and noble friendship shrinks not at the greatest of trials.

—Jeremy Taylor

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.

—The Earl of Clarendon

Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all the world is agreed.

—Cicero

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals.

—Goldsmith

O friendship, flavor of flowers! O lively sprite of life!
O sacred bond of blissful peace, the stalworth staunch of strife!

—Nicholas Grimald

The man who has no enemies deserves to have no friends.

—R. C. MacDonald

He that will lose his friend for a jest, deserves to die a beggar by the bargain.

—Thomas Fuller

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.

—Landor

Faith and friendship are seldom truly tried, but in extremes.

—Owen Felltham

To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.

—Dr. Johnson

I can never think of promoting my convenience at the expense of a friend’s interest and inclination.

—George Washington

We lose some friends for whose loss we regret more than we grieve; and others whose departure causes us grief, but not regret.

—La Rochefoucauld

Friendship is a word the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.

—Augustine Birrel

You, who forget your own friends, meanly to follow after those of a higher degree, are a snob.

—Thackeray

Friendship is a plant that loves the sun, thrives ill under clouds.

—A. Bronson Alcott

To have the same desires and the same aversions is assuredly a firm bond of friendship.

—Sallust

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

—Henry D. Thoreau

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 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.

—Channing

Friendship! Sir, there can be no such thing without an equality!

—Farquhar

Friendship admits of difference of character, as love does that of sex.

—Joseph Roux

Something like home, that is not home, is to be desired; it is to be found in the house of a friend.

—Sir William Temple

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

—Dr. Johnson

Take the advice of a faithful friend, and submit thy inventions to his censure.

—Thomas Fuller

When men are friends, there is no need of justice; but when they are just, they still need friendship.

—Aristotle

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself; we cannot force it any more than love.

—William Hazlitt

In friendship, your heart is like a bell struck every time your friend is in trouble.

—H. W. Beecher

Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspected as it does religion.

—Wycherley

The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.

—Lord Chesterfield

Sincerity, truth, faithfulness, come into the very essence of friendship.

—Channing

The services which cement friendship are reciprocal services. A feeling of dependence is scarcely compatible with friendship.

—William Smith

It is better to break off a thousand friendships than to endure the sight of a single enemy.

—Saadi

Nature and religion are the bands of friendship, excellency and usefulness are its great endearments.

—Jeremy Taylor

Transcriber’s Note:

Obvious printer errors corrected silently.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.