Part 19

When a man cannot fitly play his own part, if he have not a friend he may quit the stage.

--Bacon.

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We want one or two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace, to wear out life with; persons by whom we can measure ourselves, and who shall hold us fast to good sense and virtue.

--Emerson.

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A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. In a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go farther and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude, to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness. Whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.

--Francis Bacon.

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And thou, my friend, whose gentle love Yet thrills my bosom's chords, How much thy friendship was above Description's power of words.

--Lord Byron.

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As friendship must be founded on mutual esteem, it cannot long exist among the vicious. --Horace Smith.

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A friend is worth all the hazards we can run.

--Edward Young.

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A true friend is forever a friend.

--George MacDonald.

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A benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.

--Benjamin Franklin.

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A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.

--Washington.

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A faithful friend is better than gold--a medicine for misery, an only possession.

--Burton.