Part 5

Favors, and especially pecuniary ones, are generally fatal to friendship; for our pride will ever prompt us to lower the value of the gift by diminishing that of the donor. Ingratitude is an effort to recover our own esteem by getting rid of our esteem for our benefactor, whom we look upon as a sort of tooth-drawer, that has cured us of one pain by inflicting another.

--Smith.

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Friendship throws a greater lustre on prosperity, while it lightens adversity by sharing in its griefs and anxieties.

--Cicero.

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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.

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Friendship! the precious gold of life By age refined, yet ever new; Tried in the crucible of time It always rings of service true.

Friendship! the beauteous soul of life Which gladdens youth and strengthens age; May it our hearts and lives entwine Together on life's fleeting page.

--Shaylor.

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Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which strengthens with the setting sun of life.

--La Fontaine.

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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.

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Few men are calculated for that close connection which we distinguish by the name of friendship, and we well know the difference between a friend and an acquaintance.

--Sterne.

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Friendship is the nearest thing we know to what religion is. God is love. And to make religion akin to friendship is simply to give it the highest expression conceivable by man.

--Drummond.

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Friendship is the great chain of human society.

--Howell.

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