Part 6

Charity itself commands us, where we know no ill, to think well of all; but friendship, that always goes a pitch higher, gives a man a peculiar right and claim to the good opinion of his friend.

--Robert South

Therefore example take by me, For friendship parts in poverty.

--English Ballad

A friend is worth all hazards we can run.

--Young

Beware, lest thy Friend learn at last to tolerate one frailty of thine, and so an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love.

--Henry D. Thoreau

Nothing is more dangerous than an imprudent friend; better to have to deal with a prudent enemy.

--La Fontaine

I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.

--Emerson

Old friends are the great blessings of one’s latter years. Half a word conveys one’s meaning. They have memory of the same events, and have the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that grow upon me, for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow old friends? My age forbids that. Still less can they grow companions. Is it friendship to explain half one says? One must relate the history of one’s memory and ideas; and what is that to the young but old stories?

--Horace Walpole

What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.

--Henry D. Thoreau

The friendships of the world are oft Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure; Ours has severest virtue for its basis, And such a friendship ends not but with life.

--Addison

There are jilts in friendship as well as in love, and by the behavior of some men in both, one would almost imagine that they industriously sought to gain the affections of others with a view only of making the parties miserable.

--Henry Fielding

Friendship is evanescent in every man’s experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers.

--Henry D. Thoreau

Give, and you may keep your friend if you lose your money; lend, and the chances are that you lose your friend if ever you get back your money.

--Bulwer-Lytton

I would that I were worthy to be any man’s Friend.

--Henry D. Thoreau

There is nothing sweeter than a warm friendship, but continual emotion embitters.

--Joseph Reinach