The Golden Link of Friendship Part 6

Friends.h.i.+p maketh a fair day in the affections, from storm and tempest; but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.

_Bacon_

He who will not to friends' advice attend; Must not complain when they him reprehend.

_Saadi_

There is no such flatterer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend.

_Bacon_

Let flattery, however, the bond-maid of vices, be far removed from friends.h.i.+p, since it is not only unworthy of a friend, but of a free man.

_Cicero_

How were friends.h.i.+p possible? In mutual devotedness to the Good and True: otherwise impossible, except as armed neutrality or hollow commercial league. A man, be the heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man.

_Carlyle_

A real friend is one who will tell you of your faults and follies in prosperity, and a.s.sist you with his hand and heart in adversity.

_Horace Smith_

There be three sorts of friends: the first is like a torch we meet in a dark street; the second is like a candle in a lanthorn that we overtake; the third is like a link that offers itself to the stumbling pa.s.senger. The met torch is the sweet-lipped friend, which lends us a flash of compliment for the time, but quickly leaves us to our former darkness. The over-taken lanthorn is the true friend, which, though it promise but a faint light, yet it goes along with us as far as it can to our journey's end. The offered link is the mercenary friend, which though it be ready enough to do us service, yet that service hath a servile relation to our bounty.

_Quarles_

That which is most beneficent is also most excellent; and therefore those friends.h.i.+ps must needs be most perfect where the friends can be most useful.

_Jeremy Taylor_

I would not live without the love of my friends.

_Keats_

Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friends.h.i.+p will discover and remedy, and which would remain forever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attractive to every misery.

_Samuel Johnson_

There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.

_Bacon_

Devotion of Friends.h.i.+p

Friends.h.i.+p? two bodies and one soul.

_Joseph Roux_

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_.

_George Eliot_

We still have slept together, Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together: And wheresoe'er we went like Juno's swans, Still we went coupled, and inseparable.

_Shakespeare_

Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles; have no friends not equal to yourself.

_Confucius_

Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes.

They were easiest for his feet.

_John Selden_

Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.

_Emerson_

A generous friends.h.i.+p no cold medium knows, Burns with one love, with one resentment glows, One should our interests and our pa.s.sions be, My friend must hate the man that injures me.

_Pope_

Keep thy friend under thy own life's key.

_Shakespeare_

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

_John_ xv. 13

The friends.h.i.+p of the pure-minded, whether in presence or absence, is not such that they will find fault with thee behind thy back, and die for thee in thy presence.

_Saadi_