C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Friends
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
A true friend is one soul in two bodies.
Oblige a friend.
Of friends, however humble, scorn not one.
Friends are ourselves.
Have no friends not equal to yourself.
The way to gain a friend is to be one.
Make friends of the wise.
Make friends of equals.
The greatest medicine is a true friend.
My friends! There are no friends!
A friend to everybody is a friend to nobody.
A true friend is forever a friend.
He who reckons ten friends has not one.
Men make the best friends.
The wretched have no friends.
Amongst true friends there is no fear of losing anything.
A friend must not be injured, even in jest.
It is a friendly heart that has plenty of friends.
Save, oh! save me from the candid friend.
A man dies as often as he loses his friends.
To lose a friend is the greatest of all losses.
A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
Friends are to incite one another to God’s works.
Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.
For his friend is another self.
A book is a friend that never deceives.
Virtuous men alone possess friends.
He who hath many friends, hath none.
Oh, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
To God, thy country, and thy friend be true.
Women, like princes, find few real friends.
Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.
Friend more divine than all divinities.
Kiss and be friends.
True friends have no solitary joy or sorrow.
A constant friend is a thing rare and hard to find.
No friend’s a friend till he shall prove a friend.
Have friends, not for the sake of receiving, but of giving.
Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not.
Keep thy friend under thy own life’s key.
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
Between friends, frequent reproofs make the friendship distant.
My joy in friends, those sacred people, is my consolation.
A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities.
I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God.
Where you have friends you should not go to inns.
I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified.
Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
The fallying out of faithful frends is the renuyng of love.
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes. They were easiest for his feet.
May I never sit on a tribunal where my friends shall not find more favor from me than strangers.
Friendship is the ideal; friends are the reality; reality always remains far apart from the ideal.
Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.
Two persons will not be friends long if they cannot forgive each other little failings.
It is good to have friends at court.
A friend should be like money, tried before being required, not found faulty in our need.
Know this, that he that is a friend of himself is a friend to all men.
Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions. They pass no criticisms.
He is a friend who, in dubious circumstances, aids in deeds when deeds are necessary.
The wound is for you, but the pain is for me.
For to cast away a virtuous friend, I call as bad as to cast away one’s own life, which one loves best.
When our friends are present we ought to treat them well; and when they are absent, to speak of them well.
Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.
Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise—a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.
Friends are rare, for the good reason that men are not common.
A friend that you have to buy won’t be worth what you pay for him, no matter what that may be.
There are three faithful friends—an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
He that will lose his friend for a jest deserves to die a beggar by the bargain.
He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.
It is better to make friends than adversaries of a conquered race.
Promises may get friends, but it is performance that must nurse and keep them.
Take the advice of a faithful friend, and submit thy inventions to his censure.
It is virtue which should determine us in the choice of our friends, without inquiring into their good or evil fortune.
There is nothing more friendly than a friend in need.
A faithful friend is the true image of the Deity.
Chance makes our parents, but choice makes our friends.
A friend loveth at all times; and a brother is born for adversity.
The ornaments of a home are the friends who frequent it.
No better relation than a prudent and faithful friend.
Those who want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.
From the loss of our friends teach us how to enjoy and improve those who remain.
The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.
Nothing shows one who his friends are like prosperity and ripe fruit.
A friend gives himself to his beloved, and the higher his excellence the richer the gift.
He who has ceased to enjoy his friend’s superiority has ceased to love him.
We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without, and they serve us in every thought we think.
Purchase no friends by gifts; when thou ceasest to give such will cease to love.
Summer friends vanish when the cask is drained to the dregs.
In prosperity it is very easy to find a friend; but in adversity it is the most difficult of all things.
There have been fewer friends on earth than kings.
Friends, those relations that one makes for one’s self.
Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also. He attracts and follows.
True friends appear less moved than counterfeit.
Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
We want our friend as a man of talent, less because he has talent than because he is our friend.
The genius of life is friendly to the noble, and, in the dark, brings them friends from far.
Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
Chide a friend in private and praise him in public.
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
Costly followers are not to be liked, lest while a man maketh his train longer, he make his wings shorter.
Friends are much better tried in bad fortune than in good.
There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.
Friends are the thermometers by which we may judge the temperature of our fortunes.
Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs.
The beloved friend does not fill one part of the soul, but, penetrating the whole, becomes connected with all feeling.
A faithful friend is better than gold—a medicine for misery, an only possession.
The loss of a friend is like that of a limb. Time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired.
False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.
Whatever the number of a man’s friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few.
Very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
He is happy that hath a true friend at his need; but he is more truly happy that hath no need of his friend.
Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other’s failings because they are his own.
We must love our friends as true amateurs love paintings: they have their eyes perpetually fixed on the fine parts, and see no others.
Friends should be weighed, not told; who boasts to have won a multitude of friends has never had one.
Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable.
We never know the true value of friends. While they live we are too sensitive of their faults: when we have lost them we only see their virtues.
Than dost conspire against thy friend, Iago, if thou but think’st him wronged, and mak’st his ear a stranger to thy thoughts.
Among real friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is superior.
Sometimes we lose friends for whose loss our regret is greater than our grief, and others for whom our grief is greater than our regret.
It is hard to dispraise those who are dispraised by others. He is little short of a hero who perseveres in thinking well of a friend who has become a butt for slander, and a byword.
“Necessarius,” the friend, the man who is necessary.***A deep word, an ingenious word, a touching word. When will it be French?
The man abandoned by his friends, one after another, without just cause, will acquire the reputation of being hard to please, changeable, ungrateful, unsociable.
Take heed of a speedy professing friend; love is never lasting which flames before it burns.
When we exaggerate the tenderness of our friends towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own merit.
One faithful friend is enough for a man’s self; ’tis much to meet with such an one, yet we can’t have too many for the sake of others.
He that doth a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together.
Real friends are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow. It were almost to be wished that all true and faithful friends should expire on the same day.
True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come without invitation.
Real friendship is a slow grower; and never thrives unless engrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.
It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.
They who dare to ask anything of a friend, by their very request seem to imply that they would do anything for the sake of that friend.
The place where two friends first met is sacred to them all through their friendship, all the more sacred as their friendship deepens and grows old.
As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book or a friend.
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.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.
When our friends die, in proportion as we loved them, we die with them—we go with them. We are not wholly of the earth.
Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.
For men may prove and use their friends, as the poet expresses it, usque ad aras, meaning that a friend should not be required to act contrary to the law of God.
The attempt to make one false impression on the mind of a friend respecting ourselves is of the nature of perfidy. Sincerity should be observed most scrupulously.
The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear, and not disgrace, his apotheosis of him.
Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.
Friends should not be chosen to flatter. The quality we should prize is that rectitude which will shrink from no truth. Intimacies which increase vanity destroy friendship.
I consider beyond all wealth, honor, or even health, is the attachment due to noble souls; because to become one with the good, generous, and true, is to be, in a manner, good, generous, and true yourself.
A true friend embraces our objects as his own. We feel another mind bent on the same end, enjoying it, ensuring it, reflecting it, and delighting in our devotion to it.
Wise were the kings who never chose a friend till with full cups they had unmasked his soul, and seen the bottom of his deepest thoughts.
The qualities of your friends will be those of your enemies; cold friends, cold enemies—half friends, half enemies—fervid enemies, warm friends.
A female friend, amiable, clever, and devoted, is a possession more valuable than parks and palaces; and without such a muse, few men can succeed in life, none be contented.
A true friend is distinguished in the crisis of hazard and necessity; when the gallantry of his aid may show the worth of his soul and the loyalty of his heart.
The lightsome countenance of a friend giveth such an inward decking to the house where it lodgeth, as proudest palaces have cause to envy the gilding.
To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life.
The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship; just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion.
No receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.
A friend is he who sets his heart upon us, is happy with us and delights in us; does for us what we want, is willing and fully engaged to do all he can for us, on whom we can rely in all cases.
A true friend will appear such in leaving us to act according to our intimate conviction,—will cherish this nobleness of sentiment, will never wish to substitute his power for our own.
Other blessings may be taken away, but if we have acquired a good friend by goodness, we have a blessing which improves in value when others fail. It is even heightened by sufferings.
The flatterer’s object is to please in everything he does; whereas the true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure, often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he deems it best.
We cannot enjoy a friend here. If we are to meet it is beyond the grave. How much of our soul a friend takes with him! We half die in him.
So also it is good not always to make a friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us; but, after testing them, to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our affection and likely to be serviceable to us.
Give thy friend counsel wisely and charitably, but leave him to his liberty whether he will follow thee or no; and be not angry if thy counsel be rejected, for advice is no empire, and he is not my friend that will be my judge whether I will or no.
At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.
Self-love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them; and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.
A friend whom you have been gaining during your whole life, you ought not to be displeased with in a moment. A stone is many years becoming a ruby; take care that you do not destroy it in an instant against another stone.
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?
Experience has taught me that the only friends we can call our own, who can have no change, are those over whom the grave has closed; the seal of death is the only seal of friendship.
When I choose my friend, I will not stay till I have received a kindness; but I will choose such a one that can do me many if I need them; but I mean such kindnesses which make me wiser, and which make me better.
This communicating of a man’s self to his friend works two contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves; for there is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend but he enjoyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.
It is better to decide between our enemies than our friends; for one of our friends will most likely become our enemy; but on the other hand, one of your enemies will probably become your friend.
Generally speaking, among sensible persons, it would seem that a rich man deems that friend a sincere one who does not want to borrow his money; while, among the less favored with fortune’s gifts, the sincere friend is generally esteemed to be the individual who is ready to lend it.
“Wal’r, my boy,” replied the captain; “in the proverbs of Solomon you will find the following words: ‘May we never want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him!’ When found, make a note of.”
Now when men either are unnatural or irreligious they will not be friends; when they are neither excellent nor useful, they are not worthy to be friends; when they are strangers or unknown, they cannot be friends actually and practically; but yet, as any man hath anything of the good, contrary to those evils, so he can have and must have his share of friendship.
A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends; and that the most liberal professions of good-will are very far from being the surest marks of it.
Let no man choose him for his friend whom it shall be possible for him ever after to hate; for though the society may justly be interrupted, yet love is an immortal thing, and I will never despise him whom I could once think worthy of my love.
It is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this scene also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.
If we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster.
Nobody who is afraid of laughing, and heartily too at his friend, can be said to have a true and thorough love for him; and, on the other hand, it would portray a sorry want of faith to distrust a friend because he laughs at you. Few men, I believe, are much worth loving in whom there is not something well worth laughing at.
Deliberate long before thou consecrate a friend, and when thy impartial justice concludes him worthy of thy bosom, receive him joyfully, and entertain him wisely; impart thy secrets boldly, and mingle thy thoughts with his: he is thy very self; and use him so; if thou firmly think him faithful, thou makest him so.
The sun is a hundred thousand leagues away, and the water-roses that open to the light of day are in the pool; the moon, friend of the night-blooming lotus, is two hundred thousand leagues distant. Friendship knows no separation that divides it in space.
We learn our virtues from the bosom friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real form from a friend. He is a mirror on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.
True friends are the whole world to one another; and he that is a friend to himself is also a friend to mankind. Even in my studies the greatest delight I take is of imparting it to others; for there is no relish to me in the possessing of anything without a partner.
Friends are discovered rather than made; there are people who are in their own nature friends, only they don’t know each other; but certain things, like poetry, music, and paintings are like the Freemason’s sign,—they reveal the initiated to each other.
The noblest part of a friend is an honest boldness in the notifying of errors. He that tells me of a fault, aiming at my good, I must think him wise and faithful—wise in spying that which I see not; faithful in a plain admonishment, not tainted with flattery.
We ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as we make use of some biting medicine that will save and preserve the life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful.
However we may flatter ourselves to the contrary, our friends think no higher of us than the world do. They see us with the jaundiced or distrustful eyes of others. They may know better, but their feelings are governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more shy of us (when under a cloud) than even strangers; for we involve them in a common disgrace, or compel them to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and disputes in our defence.
Make not a bosom friend of a melancholy soul; he’ll be sure to aggravate thy adversity and lessen thy prosperity. He goes always heavily loaded, and thou must bear half. He is never in a good humor, and may easily get into a bad one, and fall out with thee.
With regard to the choice of friends, there is little to say; for a friend is never chosen. A secret sympathy, the attraction of a thousand nameless qualities, a charm in the expression of the countenance, even in the voice or manner, a similarity of circumstances,—these are the things that begin attachment.
If thy friends be of better quality than thyself, thou mayest be sure of two things: the first, that they will be more careful to keep thy counsel, because they have more to lose than thou hast; the second, they will esteem thee for thyself, and not for that which thou dost possess.
Few of us have been so exceptionally unfortunate as not to find, in our own age, some experienced friend who has helped us by precious counsel, never to be forgotten. We cannot render it in kind, but perhaps in the fulness of time it may become our noblest duty to aid another as we have ourselves been aided, and to transmit to him an invaluable treasure, the tradition of the intellectual life.
Our friends should be our incentives to right, but not only our guiding, but our prophetic, stars. To love by right is much, to love by faith is more; both are the entire love, without which heart, mind, and soul cannot be alike satisfied. We love and ought to love one another, not merely for the absolute worth of each, but on account of a mutual fitness of temporary character.
Thou may’st be sure that he that will in private tell thee of thy faults, is thy friend, for he adventures thy dislike, and doth hazard thy hatred; for there are few men that can endure it, every man for the most part delighting in self-praise, which is one of the most universal follies that bewitcheth mankind.
No man can expect to find a friend without faults; nor can he propose himself to be so to another. Without reciprocal mildness and temperance there can be no continuance of friendship. Every man will have something to do for his friend, and something to bear with in him. The sober man only can do the first; and for the latter, patience is requisite. It is better for a man to depend on himself, than to be annoyed with either a madman or a fool.
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 may 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?