Character and Conduct Part 36

"He that is thy friend indeed, He will help thee in thy need.

If thou sorrow, he will weep.

If thou wake, he cannot sleep.

Thus in every grief in heart He with thee doth bear a part."

SHAKESPEARE.

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 9

"To begin with, how can life be worth living, to use the words of Ennius, which lacks that repose which is to be found in the mutual good-will of a friend? What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear if there were not some one to feel them even more acutely than yourself."

CICERO.

"Comrades.h.i.+p is one of the finest facts, and one of the strongest forces in life."

HUGH BLACK.

"... All I can do is to urge on you to regard friends.h.i.+p as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity."

CICERO.

Friends.h.i.+p

August 10

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

Th.o.r.eAU.

"That he had 'a genius for friends.h.i.+p' goes without saying, for he was rich in the humility, the patience and the powers of trust, which such a genius implies. Yet his love had, too, the rarer and more strenuous temper which requires 'the common aspiration,' is jealous for a friend's growth, and has the nerve to criticise. It is the measure of what he felt friends.h.i.+p to be, that he has defined religion in the terms of it."

_Of Henry Drummond_, GEORGE ADAM SMITH.

"All men have their frailties, and whoever looks for a friend without imperfection will never find what he seeks. We love ourselves notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner."

CYRUS.

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 11

"... For instance, it often happens that friends need remonstrance and even reproof. When these are administered in a kindly spirit they ought to be taken in good part. But somehow or other there is truth in what my friend Terence says in his Andria: 'Compliance gets us friends, plain speaking hate.'

"Plain speaking is a cause of trouble, if the result of it is resentment, which is poison to friends.h.i.+p; but compliance is really the cause of much more trouble, because by indulging his faults it lets a friend plunge into headlong ruin. But the man who is most to blame is he who resents plain speaking and allows flattery to egg him on to his ruin.... If we remonstrate, it should be without bitterness; if we reprove, there should be no word of insult.... But if a man's ears are so closed to plain speaking that he cannot bear to hear the truth from a friend, we may give him up in despair. This remark of Cato's, as so many of his did, shews great acuteness: 'There are people who owe more to bitter enemies than to apparently pleasant friends: the former often speak the truth, the latter never.' Besides, it is a strange paradox that the recipients of advice should feel no annoyance where they ought to feel it, and yet feel so much where they ought not. They are not at all vexed at having committed a fault, but very angry at being reproved for it."

CICERO.

"Men of character like to hear of their faults; the other cla.s.s do not."

EMERSON.

"Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or rather, have made it desired."

_Amiel's Journal._

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 12

"The friends.h.i.+p of Jesus was not checked or foiled by the discovery of faults or blemishes in those whom He had taken into His life. Even in our ordinary human relations we do not know what we are engaging to do when we become the friend of another. 'For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health,' runs the marriage covenant. The covenant in all true friends.h.i.+p is the same. We pledge our friend faithfulness, with all that faithfulness includes. We know not what demands upon us this sacred compact may make in years to come.

Misfortune may befall our friend, and he may require our aid in many ways. Instead of being a help he may become a burden. But friends.h.i.+p must not fail, whatever its cost may be. When we become the friend of another, we do not know what faults and follies in him closer acquaintance may disclose to our eyes. But here, again, ideal friends.h.i.+p must not fail."

_Personal Friends.h.i.+ps of Jesus_, J. R. MILLER.

"For he that wrongs his friend Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about A silent court of justice in his breast, Himself the judge and jury, and himself The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned."

TENNYSON.

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 13

"Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces.

Consider not what they did, but what they intended."

Th.o.r.eAU.

"What makes us so changeable in our friends.h.i.+ps, is our difficulty to discern the qualities of the soul, and the ease with which we detect those of the intellect."

"Judge not thy friend until thou standest in his place."

RABBI HILLEL.

"Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together."

Friends.h.i.+p