Part 59

Friendship

AUGUST 19

"Few things are more fatal to friendship than the stiffness which cannot take a step towards acknowledgment."

Life of F. W. Crossley, RENDEL HARRIS.

"Do not discharge in haste the arrow which can never return: it is easy to destroy happiness; most difficult to restore it."

HERDER.

"Discord harder is to end than to begin."

SPENSER.

"Think of this doctrine--that reasoning beings were created for one another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it."

MARCUS AURELIUS.

Friendship

AUGUST 20

"We should learn from Jesus that the essential quality in the heart of friendship is not the desire to have friends, but the desire to be a friend; not to get good and help from others, but to impart blessing to others. Many of the sighings for friendship which we have are merely selfish longings,--a desire for happiness, for pleasure, for the gratification of the heart, which friends would bring. If the desire were to be a friend, to do others good, to serve and to give help, it would be a far more Christlike longing, and would transform the life and character."

Personal Friendships of Jesus, J. R. MILLER.

"To love is better, nobler, more elevating, and more sure, than to be loved. To love is to have found that which lifts us above ourselves; which makes us capable of sacrifice; which unseals the forces of another world. He who is loved has gained the highest tribute of earth; he who loves has entered into the spirit of heaven. The love which comes to us must always be alloyed with the sad sense of our own unworthiness. The love which goes out from us is kept bright by the ideal to which it is directed."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

Friendship

AUGUST 21

"Friendships that have been renewed require more care than those that have never been broken off."

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

"Broken friendship may be soldered, but never made sound."

Spanish Proverb.

"A friend once won need never be lost, if we will be only trusty and true ourselves. Friends may part, not merely in body, but in spirit for a while. In the bustle of business and the accidents of life, they may lose sight of each other for years; and more, they may begin to differ in their success in life, in their opinions, in their habits, and there may be, for a time, coldness and estrangement between them, but not for ever if each will be trusty and true. For then they will be like two ships who set sail at morning from the same port, and ere night-fall lose sight of each other, and go each on its own course and at its own pace for many days, through many storms and seas, and yet meet again, and find themselves lying side by side in the same haven when their long voyage is past."

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

Friendship

AUGUST 22

"The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay or dislike, hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint and too numerous for removal. Those who are angry may be reconciled, those who have been injured may receive a recompense; but when the desire of pleasing, and willingness to be pleased, is silently diminished, the renovation of friendship is hopeless: as when the vital powers sink into languor, there is no longer any use for the physician."

The Idler.