Part 5

Half a word from your friend says more to you than many phrases, for you are accustomed to think with him. You comprehend all the sentiments which animate him, and he knows it. You are two intelligences which add to and complement each other.

--Pierre Loti

Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul! Sweet’ner of life! and solder of society!

--Robert Blair

Friendship is first, Friendship last. But it is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we begin to keep them company.

--Henry D. Thoreau

In friendship we see the faults which may be prejudicial to our friends. In love we see no faults, but those by which we ourselves suffer.

--La Bruyère

Come back! ye friendships long departed! That like o’erflowing streamlets started, And now are dwindled one by one, To stony channels in the sun! Come back, ye friends whose lives are ended, Come back, with all that light attended, Which seemed to darken and decay When ye arose and went away.

--Longfellow

Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us except the very thing we wish them to do. There is one thing in particular they are always disposed to give us, and which we are as unwilling to take, namely, advice.

--Hazlitt

There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship, and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.

--Pope

There are three friendships which are advantageous, and three which are injurious. Friendship with the upright; friendship with the sincere, and friendship with the man of observation: these are advantageous. Friendship with the man of specious airs; friendship with the insinuatingly soft, and friendship with the glib of tongue: these are injurious.

--Confucius

A generous friendship no cold medium knows, Burns with one love, with one resentment glows; One should our interests and our passions be, My friend must hate the man that injures me.

--Homer (Pope’s Tr.)

My friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.

--Henry D. Thoreau

Go, humble thyself, and make sure thy friend.

--The Book of Proverbs

Veritable friends enjoy, in moral order, the perfection of scent that dogs do; they thus divine the chagrins of their comrades; they see the causes and concern themselves with them.

--Balzac

I have loved my friends, as I do virtue, my soul, my God.

--Sir Thomas Browne

The most certain fortress against evil is that of friendship.

--Cicero