Part 10

* * * * *

Kindred passions and pursuits are the natural groundwork of friendship. Real friendship is of slow growth, and never thrives, unless ingrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.

--Chesterfield.

* * * * *

Let this, therefore, be established as a primary law concerning friendship, that we expect from our friends only what is honorable, and for our friends' sake do what is honorable; that we should not wait till we are asked; that zeal be ever ready, and reluctance far from us.

--Cicero.

* * * * *

Let Friendship's accents cheer our doubtful way, And Love's pure planet lend its guiding ray,-- Our tardy Art shall wear an angel's wings, And life shall lengthen with the joy it brings!

--Holmes.

* * * * *

I am not of that feather, to shake off my friend when most he needs me.

--Shakespeare.

* * * * *

Let the honor of thy friend be as dear unto thee as thy own.

--The Talmud.

* * * * *

Life to be rich and fertile must be reinforced with friendship. It is the sap that preserves from blight and withering; it is the sunshine that beckons on the blossoming and fruitage; it is the starlight dew that perfumes life with sweetness and besprinkles it with splendor; it is the music-tide that sweeps the soul, scattering treasures; it is the victorious and blessed leader of integrity's forlorn hope; it is the potent alchemy that transmutes failure into success; it is the hidden manna that nourishes when all other sustenance fails; it is the voice that speaks to hopes all dead, "Because I live, ye shall live also." For the loftiest friendships have no commercial element in them: they are founded on disinterestedness and sacrifices. They neither expect nor desire a return for gift or service. Amid the tireless breaking of the billows on the shores of experience, there is no surer anchorage than a friendship that "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things."

--Cooper.

* * * * *

It is one of the wretchednesses of the great that they have no approved friends. Kings are the most solitary beings on earth.

--Channing.

* * * * *

Many kinds of fruit grow upon the tree of life, but none so sweet as friendship.

--Larcom.

* * * * *

My treasures are my friends.

--Constantius.

* * * * *