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 loyalty of his heart. Friendship is more than cattle; A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kind do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind. You may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but 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 shift or confession. Life is to be fortified by many friendships. Friendship is the cordial of life, the lentitive of our sorrows, the multiplier of our joys. Ennius Chaucer Francis Sydney Robert Ralph Waldo Emerson on Friendship" Aanius Old Proverb Paul Siegvolt Pope Francis Bacon on "Friend ship" Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. The scholar sits down to write, and all his years of meditation do not furnish him with one good thought or happy expression; but it is necessary to write a letter to a friend, and, forthwith, troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen words. How can life be worth living, if devoid Of the calm trust reposed by friend in friend? You cannot put water on fire to more uses than friendship serves. Association and familiar intercourse with our fellow-men induce toleration of, and liberty toward, the opinions, manners, conduct, and characters of others. By mutual confidence and mutual aid A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg, and a number of the like; but all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. For believe me, in this world which is ever slipping from under our feet, it is the prerogative of friendship to grow old with one's friends. We just shake hands at meeting With many that come nigh; To many that go by. But welcome through the gateway Old friends, Arthur Gerald We have been friends together How unspeakably the lengthening of memories in common endears Caroline George Eliot our old friends! A lifelong friendship cast thou not aside! Saadi A stone takes on; an instant is enough To spoil the jewel that the years defied. How much the best of a man's friend is Plautus his oldest friend. |