"... There is such a disaster, so to speak, as having to break off friendship.... In such cases friendships should be allowed to die out gradually by an intermission of intercourse. They should, as I have been told that Cato used to say, rather be unstitched than torn in twain.... For there can be nothing more discreditable than to be at open war with a man with whom you have been intimate.... Our first object then should be to prevent a breach; our second to secure that if it does occur, our friendship should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent death."
CICERO.
Friendship
AUGUST 23
"Friends--those relations that one makes for one's self."
DESCHAMPS.
"Some one asked Kingsley what was the secret of his strong joyous life; and he answered, 'I had a friend.'"
"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.
"The best wish for us all is, that when we grow old, as we must do, the fast friends of our age may be those we have loved in our youth."
MASON.
Jealousy
AUGUST 24
"Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely love's contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved, it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its own triumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most passionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting, and vain ego, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The contrast is perfect."
Amiel's Journal.
"Jealousy is a secret avowal of inferiority."
MASSILLON.
Jealousy
AUGUST 25
"We are not jealous of what we give up, but of what is wrested from our unwilling hands. The first is always ours, the second never can be.
* * * * *
"Jealousy is not love, but it is the two-edged sword that parts true love from counterfeit. At its touch, the knowledge of what it is to love without reward, thrills heart and brain, sharp and clear, almost a vision of hell. Then if we are base, we die to love; but if we are noble, it is to ourselves we die.
* * * * *
"It is only what we surrender willingly that is ours always, as the wave never loses what it surrenders to the sea."
Turkish Bonds, MAY KENDALL.
Jealousy
AUGUST 26
"What state of mind can be so blest, As love that warms the gentle brest; Two souls in one; the same desire To grant the bliss, and to require? If in this heaven a hell we find, 'Tis all from thee, O Jealousie! Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind.
Character and Conduct · The Wunder Library — complete classics, free to read, with narration.