From the Heart of
a Friend

Selected By
AMY ADDINGLEY

New York
THE PLATT & PECK CO.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And thou, my friend, whose gentle love

Yet thrills my bosom’s chords,

How much thy friendship was above

Description’s power of words!

—Byron.

As o’er the glacier’s frozen sheet

Breathes soft the Alpine rose,

So, through life’s desert springing sweet,

The flower of friendship grows.

—Holmes.

A faithful friend, best boon of Heaven,

Unto some favored mortal given;

Though still the same, yet varying still,

Our each successive wants to fill,

Whatever form his presence wears

That presence every form endears.

—Williams.

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.

I want a warm and faithful friend,

To cheer the adverse hour;

Who ne’er to flatter will descend,

Nor bend the knee to power.

A friend to chide me when I’m wrong,

My inmost soul to see;

And that my friendship prove as strong

To him as his to me.

—Adams.

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.

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.

Constant and solid, whom no storms can shake,

Nor death unfix, a right friend ought to be;

And if condemned to survive, doth make

No second choice, but grief and memory.

But friendship’s best fate is, when it can spend

A life, a fortune, all to serve a friend.

—Philips.

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

—Stowe.

Commend me to the friend that comes

When I am sad and lone,

And makes the anguish of my heart

The suffering of his own;

Who calmly shuns the glittering throng

At pleasure’s gay levee,

And comes to gild a sombre hour

And gives his heart to me.

Commend me to that generous heart

Which, like the pine on high,

Uplifts the same unvarying brow

To every change of sky;

Whose friendship does not fade away

When wintry tempests blow,

But like the winter’s icy crown,

Looks greener through the snow.

He flits not with the flitting stork

That seeks a southern sky,

But lingers where the wounded bird

Hath laid him down to die.

Oh, such a friend he is in truth,

Whate’er his lot may be,

A rainbow on the storm of life,

An anchor on its sea.

—Anon.

Choose your friend wisely,

Test your friend well,

True friends, like rarest gems,

Prove hard to tell.

Winter him, summer him,

Know your friend well.

—Unknown.

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.

Every One that flatters thee

Is no friend in misery.

Words are easy, like the wind;

Faithful friends are hard to find.

Every man will be thy friend

Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend.

—Shakespeare.

Friendship, peculiar boon of heaven,

The noble mind’s delight and pride,

To men and angels only given,

To all the lower world denied.

Thy gentle flows of guiltless joys

On fools and villains ne’er descend;

In vain for thee the tyrant sighs,

And hugs a flatterer for a friend.

Nor shall thine ardours cease to glow

When souls to peaceful climes remove;

What rais’d our virtue here below

Shall aid our happiness above.

—Jonson.

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

Friendship is love without its flowers or veil.

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.

Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;

Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O! the joys, that came down shower-like,

Of Friendship, Love and Liberty.

—Coleridge.

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.

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.

If you have a friend worth loving,

Love him. Yes, and let him know

That you love him, ere life’s evening

Tinge his brow with sunset glow;

Why should good words ne’er be said

Of a friend till he is dead?

—Unknown.

Has fortune frowned? Her frowns were vain;

For hearts like ours she could not chill!

Have friends proved false? Their love might wane,

But ours grew fonder, firmer still.

—Watts.

He who serves and seeks for gain,

And follows but for form,

Will pack when it begins to rain,

And leave thee in the storm.

—Shakespeare.

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.

Friend is a word of royal tone;

Friend is a poem all alone.

—From the Persian.

How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude,

But grant me still a friend in my retreat,

Whom I may whisper—solitude is sweet.

—Cowper.

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.

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

—Emerson.

I find no place that does not breathe

Some gracious memory of my friend.

—Tennyson.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Is it so small a thing

To have enjoyed the sun,

To have lived light in the spring,

To have loved, to have thought, to have done;

To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes?

—Arnold.

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

—Kingsley.

If any little love of mine

May make a life the sweeter,

If any little care of mine

May make a friend’s the fleeter,

If any lift of mine may ease

The burden of another,

God give me love and care and strength

To help my toiling brother.

It is the secret sympathy,

The silver link, the silver tie,

Which heart to heart, and mind to mind

In body and in soul can bind.

—Scott.

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.

My treasures are my friends.

If thought unlock her mysteries,

If friendship on me smile,

I walk in marble galleries,

I talk with kings the while.

—Emerson.

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.

Only a smile from a kindly face,

On the busy street that day,

Forgotten as soon as given, perhaps,

As the donor went her way.

But straight to my heart it went speeding,

To gild the clouds that were there,

And I found that of sunshine and life’s blue skies,

I also might take my share.

—MacDonald.

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.

Many there be who call themselves our friends;

Yet, ah, if heaven sends

One, only one, so mated to our soul,

To make our half a whole,

Rich beyond price we are.

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

—Johnson.

My careful breast was free again,

O friend, my bosom said;

Through thee alone the sky is arched,

Through thee the rose is red.

Me, too, thy nobleness has taught

To master my despair;

The fountains of my hidden life

Are through thy friendship fair.

—Emerson.

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.

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.

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.

Old books, old wine, old nankin blue—

All things, in short, to which belong

The charm, the grace that Time makes strong,

All these I prize but (entre nous)

Old friends are best.

—Dobson.

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

—Emerson.

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.

Old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air;

Love them for what they are; nor love them less,

Because to thee they are not what they were.

—Coleridge.

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.

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, 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.

—Eliot.

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.

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.

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 friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.

—Shakespeare.

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.

Of all the heavenly gifts that mortal men commend,

What trusty treasure in the world can countervail a friend?

Our health is soon decayed; goods, casual, light and vain;

Broke have we seen the force of power, and honor suffer stain.

In body’s lust man doth resemble but base brute;

True virtue gets and keeps a friend, good guide of our pursuit.

Whose hearty zeal with ours accords in every case;

No term of mine, no space of place, no storm can it deface.

—Nicholas Grimoald.

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.

There is no friend like the old friend who has shared our morning days,

No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.

Fame is the scentless sunflower with gaudy crown of gold;

But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.

—Holmes.

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

—Lytton.

There is, after all, something in those trifles that friends bestow upon each other which is an unfailing indication of the place the giver holds in the affections. I would believe that one who preserved a lock of hair, a simple flower or any trifle of my bestowing, loved me, though no show was made of it; while all the protestations in the world would not win my confidence in one who set no value on such little things.

Trifles they may be; but it is by such that character and disposition are oftenest revealed.

—Irving.

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

—Jonson.

There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth as having none above it to court or conform unto.

Every man alone is sincere. The other element of friendship is tenderness.

—Emerson.

Foolish he who for the world would change a faithful friend.

—Euripides.

He who wrongs his friend

Wrongs himself more and ever bears about

A silent court of justice in his breast.

—Tennyson.

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.

—Thoreau.

Thou mayest 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.

—Raleigh.

Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspired.

—Pope.

Thy lips are bland,

And bright the friendship of thine eye;

And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh,

I take the pressure of thine hand.

—Tennyson.

Thy friend will come to thee unsought,

With nothing can his love be bought,

His soul thine own will know at sight,

With him thy heart can speak outright.

Greet him nobly, love him well,

Show him where your best thoughts dwell,

Trust him greatly and for aye;

A true friend comes but once your way.

—Unknown.

Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.

—Thoreau.

To contract ties of friendship with any one, is to contract friendship with his virtue; there ought not to be any other motive in friendship.

—Confucius.

Thy voice is near me in my dreams;

In accents sweet and low,

Telling of happiness and love

In days long, long ago.

Word after word I think I hear,

Yet strange it seems to me

That, though I listen to thy voice,

Thy face I never see.

From night to night my weary heart

Lives on the treasured past,

And ev’ry day I fondly say,

He’ll come to me at last.

Yet still I weep, and watch and pray

As time rolls slowly on;

And yet I have no hope but thee,

Thou first, thou dearest one.

—Lindsay.

We ought to acquaint ourselves with the beautiful; we ought to contemplate it with rapture, and attempt to raise ourselves to its height. And in order to gain strength for that, we must keep ourselves thoroughly unselfish—we must not make it our own, but rather seek to communicate it; indeed, to make a sacrifice of it to those who are dear and precious to us.

—Goethe.

Tell me, gentle traveler, who hast wandered through the world, and seen the sweetest roses blow, and brightest gliding rivers, of all thine eyes have seen, which is the fairest land? “Child, shall I tell thee where nature is more blest and fair? It is where those we love abide. Though that space be small, ample is it above kingdoms; though it be a desert, through it runs the river of Paradise, and there are the enchanted bowers.”

—Unknown.

To friends and e’en to foes true kindness show;

No kindly heart unkindly deeds will do;

Harshness will alienate a bosom friend,

And kindness reconcile a deadly foe.

—Unknown.

We let our friends pass idly, like our time,

Till they are lost, and then we see our crime!

We think what worth in them might have been known,

What duties done, what kind affections shown.

Untimely knowledge! bought at heavy cost,

When what we might have better used, is lost.

Wanting to have a friend is altogether different from wanting to be a friend. The former is a mere natural human craving, the other is the life of Christ in the soul.

My friend peers in on me with merry

Wise face, and though the sky stay dim,

The very light of day, the very

Sun’s self comes in with him.

—A. C. Swinburne.

Walking here, in twilight, O my friends,

I hear your voices, softened by the distance,

And pause, and turn to listen, as each sends

His words of friendship, comfort, and assistance.

—Longfellow.

We can never replace a friend. When a man is fortunate enough to have several, he finds they are all different. No one has a double in friendship.

—Schiller.

“What is the secret of your life?” asked Mrs. Browning of Charles Kingsley; “tell me, that I may make mine beautiful too.” He replied, “I had a friend.”

What we usually call friends are only acquaintances and familiarities brought together through some particular occasion or use, by which some little intercourse exists between our souls; but in the friendship of which I speak they are so tightly joined together one to the other, in so universal a mixture, that it effaces all signs of the seam by which they were first joined.

—Montaigne.

We just shake hands at meeting

With many that come nigh;

We nod the head in greeting

To many that go by.

But welcome through the gateway

Our few old friends and true;

The hearts leap up and straightway

There’s open house for you,

Old friends,

There’s open house for you.

—Massey.

Whatever the number of a man’s friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few; but if he has only one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many.

—Lytton.

He who forsakes a friend is himself forsaken of the Gods.

—Klopstock.

There are many moments in friendship, as in love, when silence is beyond words. The faults of our friend may be clear to us, but it is well to seem to shut our eyes to them. Friendship is usually treated by the majority of mankind as a tough and everlasting thing which will survive all manner of bad treatment. But this is an exceedingly great and foolish error; it may die in an hour of a single unwise word; its condition of existence is that it should be dealt with delicately and tenderly, being as it is a sensitive plant and not a roadside thistle. We must not expect our friend to be above humanity.

—Ouida.

Come friend, my fire is burning bright,

A fire’s no longer out of place,

How clear it glows (there’s frost to-night)

It looks white winter in the face.

Be mine the tree that feeds the fire!

Be mine, the sun knows when to set!

Be mine, the months when friends desire

To turn in here from cold and wet!

—Constable.

’Tis as hard to be a good fellow, a good friend, and a lover of women, as ’tis to be a good fellow, and a good friend, and a lover of money.

—Wycherley.

Two people cannot strike hands together, unless with a feeling of disagreeable resolve, and not gain something; perhaps the most treasured influence of their lives.

—Unknown.

One friend of tried value is better than many of no account.

—Anacharsis.

And friendship’s rainbow-promise fair,

Of hope and faith-crowned ties,

Doth find too soon that everywhere

A touch of discord lies.

—Freiberger.

How often, when life’s summer day

Is waning, and its sun descends;

Wisdom drives laughing wit away,

And lovers shrivel into friends.

—Landor.

The comfort of having a friend may be taken away, but not that of having had one.

—Seneca.

I have heard you say,

That we shall see and know our friends in heaven.

—Shakespeare.

The youth of friendship is better than its old age.

—Hazlitt.

If the friendships of the good be interrupted, their minds admit of no long change; as when the stalks of a lotus are broken the filaments within them are more visibly cemented.

—Hitopadesa.

In life it is difficult to say who do you the most mischief—enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best.

—Lytton.

He who would enjoy many friends, and live happy in this world, should be deaf, dumb, and blind to the follies and vices of it.

—Edward Moore.

Some of the firmest friendships have been contracted between persons of different dispositions, the mind being often pleased with those perfections which are new to it, and which it does not find among its own accomplishments.

—Budgell.

Old friends are the great blessing of one’s later years. Half a word conveys one’s meaning. They have a memory of the same events, and have the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that may grow upon me, for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow old friends?

—Walpole.

True, it is most painful not to meet the kindness and affection you feel you have deserved, and have a right to expect from others; but it is a mistake to complain of it; for it is of no use; you cannot extort friendship with a cocked pistol.

—Smith.

The ruins of old friendships are a more melancholy spectacle to me than those of desolated palaces. They exhibit the heart that was once lighted up with joy all damp and deserted, and haunted by those birds of ill-omen that only nestle in ruins.

—Campbell.

Still, Love a summer sunrise shines,

So rich its clouds are hung,

So sweet its songs are sung.

And Friendship’s but broad, common day,

With light enough to show

Where fruit with brambles grow;

With warmth enough to feed

The grain of daily need.

—Unknown.

Never yet

Was noble man but made ignoble talk.

He makes no friend who never made a foe.

—Tennyson.

He that hath gained a friend hath given hostages to fortune.

—Shakespeare.

If your friend has got a heart,

There is something fine in him;

Cast away his darker part,—

Cling to what’s divine in him.

—Unknown.

There is naught so characteristic of man, nor which clothes him with such excellent dignity, as his capacity for loyalty and stable friendship.

—Dach.

The parting of friends united by sympathetic tastes, is always painful; and friends, unless their sympathy subsist, had much better never meet.

—Disraeli.

We were friends from the first moment. Sincere attachments usually begin at the beginning.

—Jefferson.

Friends are like melons; shall I tell you why?

To find one good you must a hundred try.

—Mermet.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp,

As friend remember’d not.

—Shakespeare.

A poet might sing you his sweetest of songs,

But this must the poet have known:

Of the heart whose love to you only belongs,

Whose strength would be spent to save you from wrongs,

Of a soul knit to yours with the mightiest thongs,

And sing them for you alone!

An artist might paint you a picture fair

That would equal the greatest known;

But the heart of a friend, to do and to dare,

To save you from sorrow, and trial, and care,

Is something an artist, paint he ever so rare,

Has never on canvas shown!

Ye who have scorned each other

Or injured friend or brother,

In this fast fading year;

Ye who, by word or deed,

Have made a kind heart bleed,

Come gather here.

Let sinned against, and sinning

Forget their strife’s beginning,

And join in friendship now;

Be links no longer broken,

Be sweet forgiveness spoken,

Under the Holly Bough.

Ye who have nourished sadness

Estranged from hope and gladness,

In this fast fading year;

Ye, with o’erburdened mind,

Made aliens from your kind,

Come gather here.

—Mackay.

A more glorious victory cannot be gained over another than this, that when the injury began on his part, the kindness should begin on ours.

—Tillotson.

Like alone acts upon him. Therefore, do not amend by reasoning, but by example; approach feeling by feeling; do not hope to excite love except by love. Be what you wish others to become. Let yourself and not your words preach.

—Amiel.

Why is my verse so barren of new pride?

So far from variation or quick change?

Why, with the time do I not glance aside

To new-found methods and to compounds strange?

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth and where they did proceed?

O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,

And you and love are still my argument:

So all my best is dressing old words new,

Spending again what is already spent;

For as the sun is daily new and old,

So is my love still telling what is told.

—Shakespeare.

How oft as we sat ’round the board,

My dear old friends and I,

We drew from Memory’s sweet, sad hoard,

Enough to make us sigh.

And merry wit was silenced there,

By some vague haunting thought,

Which seemed to fill the very air,

Around, unbid, unsought.

And so may this sweet, happy hour,

My dear new friends, I pray,

Be like some book-pressed fragile flower,

That Youth has lain away;

But when life’s book is widely spread,

This sweet but faded hour,

Will bring sad thoughts of moments fled,

As does the wilted flower.

I never did repent for doing good,

Nor shall not now; for in companions

That do converse and waste the time together,

Whose souls to bear an equal yoke of love,

There must be needs a like proportion

Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit.

—Shakespeare.

How say ye “We loved once,”

Blasphemers—Is your earth not cold enow,

Mourners, without that snow?

Ah, friends, and would ye wrong each other so?

And could ye say of some whose love is known,

Whose prayers have met your own,

Whose tears have fallen for you, whose smiles have shone

So long,—“We loved them ONCE”?

—E. B. Browning.

The strong necessity of time commands

Our services awhile; but my full heart

Remains in use with you.

—Shakespeare.

Self-denial, for the sake of self-denial, does no good; self-sacrifice for its own sake is no religious act at all.... Self-sacrifice, illuminated by love, is warmth and life, the blessedness and the only proper life of man.

—Robertson.

I think that good must come of good,

And ill of evil—surely unto all

In every place or time, seeing sweet fruit

Groweth from wholesome roots, or bitter things

From poison stocks: yea, seeing, too, how spite

Breeds hate—and kindness friends—or patience peace.

—Arnold.

Unfading joys thy lot should crown,

If lips like mine could call them down.

—Wilson.

Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.

—Ruth to Naomi.

But of your goodness pray to this give heed,

That friendship doth in friendship find its meed.

Let thy name

Dwell ever in my heart and on my lips,

Theme of my lyre and burden of my song.

—Ovid.

Some love the glow of outward show,

Some love mere wealth, and try to win it;

The house to me may lowly be,

If I but like the people in it.

What’s all the gold that glitters sold,

When linked to hard or haughty feeling?

Whate’er we’re told, the nobler gold

Is truth of heart and manly dealing.

Then let them seek, whose minds are weak,

Mere fashion’s smile, and try to win it;

The house to me may lowly be,

If I but like the people in it.

—Swain.

There is no such certain evidence of friendship as never to overlook the sins and failings of our brethren. Hast thou seen them at enmity? Reconcile them. Hast thou seen them set on unlawful gain? Check them. Hast thou seen them wronged? Stand up in their defense. It is not on them but on thyself thou art conferring the chief benefit. It is for this purpose that we are friends—that we may be of good service to one another. A man will listen in a different spirit to a friend. An indifferent person he will regard perhaps with suspicion, and so in like manner an instructor, but not so a true friend.

—St. Chrysostom.

Friendship, love and piety, ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence.

—Novalis.

I weigh my friend’s affection with mine own.

—Shakespeare.

As ships meet at sea,—a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away upon the deep,—so men meet in this world; and I think we should cross no man’s path without hailing him, and if he needs, give him supplies.

—Henry Ward Beecher.

Are we ever truly read, save by the one that loves us best? Love is blind, the phrase runs. Nay, I would rather say, love sees as God sees, and with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon.

—Ouida.

As earth pours freely to the sea

Her thousand streams of wealth untold

Glad that its very sands are gold.

So flows my silent life to thee.

The best conduct a man can adopt is that which gains him the esteem of others without depriving him of his own.

—Talmud.

And the finest fellow of all would be the one who could be glad to have lived because the world was chiefly miserable, and his life had come to help some one who needed it.

—Eliot.

Talk not of wasted affection,

Affection never was wasted;

If it enrich not the heart of another,

Its water returning

Back to their springs, like the rain,

Shall fill them full of refreshment;

That which the fountain sends forth

Returns again to the fountain.

—Longfellow.

Beyond all wealth, honour, or even health, is the attachment we form to noble souls; because to become one with the good, generous, and true, is to become in a measure good, generous, and true, ourselves.

—Arnold.