Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for the understanding, as the first is for the affections; for friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.
Nothing is so difficult as to help a friend in matters which do not require the aid of friendship, but only a cheap and trivial service, if your friendship wants the basis of a thorough practical acquaintance.
Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.
A main part of friendship is cheerfulness.
We were halves throughout, and to that degree that methinks by outliving him I defraud him of his part.
There is a time of life beyond which we cannot form a tie worth the name of friendship.
Suspicion is the bane of friendship.
Life has no pleasure nobler than that of friendship.
I want to grow a flower for every time someone tells me “F*** you.” Then I’ll go back to that person and pin the flower on their lapel in a gesture of friendship. And while they are looking down on it in astonishment, I’ll bunch up my knuckles and punch them in the face.
The forges of friendship, thought Angus, may be busy ones, but their dorrs are always open.
The fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, is not restrained only to such friends as are able to give counsel (they indeed are best), but even without that a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not.
Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.
The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.
Illud amiciti? sanctum ac venerabile nomen / Nunc tibi pro vili sub pedibusque jacet=--The sacred and venerable name of friendship is now despised and trodden under foot.
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; a mother's secret hope outlives them all!
Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.
Soupcon est d'amitie poison=--Suspicion is the poison of friendship.
Common distress is a great promoter both of friendship and speculation.
Let not the grass grow on the path of friendship.
Rien que s'entendre=--Nothing but good understanding.
Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree; Oh the joys that came down shower-like, Of friendship, love, and liberty, Ere I was old!
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.--_Byron._
Nur der Freundschaft Harmonie / Mildert die Beschwerden; / Ohne ihre Sympathie / Ist kein Gluck auf Erden=--Nothing but the harmony of friendship soothes our sorrows; without its sympathy there is no happiness on earth.
The ideal of friendship is to feel as one while remaining two.
Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things / Keep ourselves loyal to truth and the sacred professions of friendship.
He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.
To pity the unfortunate is not contrary to sensuality, rather is it easy to render this evidence of friendship, and to gain the reputation of a tender heart, without giving.
Thy friend put in thy bosom; wear his eyes / Still in thy heart, that he may see what's there. / If cause require, thou art his sacrifice.... / But love is lost; the way of friendship's gone.
Led by illusions romantic and subtle deceptions of fancy, / Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the semblance of friendship.
I love to watch to him while he sleeps. Besides everything else he is really my best friend now. It's a different kind of friendship...It makes me wish I could share every day with him.
It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when persons past forty before they were at all acquainted form together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of _old_ wood to _take_, there must be a wonderful congeniality between the trees.--_Whately._
What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art.
Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici; / Expertus metuit=--The cultivation of friendship with the great is pleasant to the inexperienced, but he who has experienced it dreads it.
Few men have the natural strength to honour a friend's success without envy. . . . I well know that mirror of friendship, shadow of a shade.
The light of friendship is like the light of phosphorus--seen plainest when all around is dark.
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention. -- Clifton Fadiman
17th Rule of Friendship: A friend will refrain from telling you he picked up the same amount of life insurance coverage you did for half the price when yours is noncancellable. -- Esquire, May 1977
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Acquaintance, n: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when the object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
18th Rule of Friendship: A friend will let you hold the ladder while he goes up on the roof to install your new aerial, which is the biggest son-of-a-bitch you ever saw. -- Esquire, May 1977
~Disappointment.~--Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the débris are friendship, glory, and love: the shores of existence are strewn with them.--_Mme. de Staël._
Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after.
Oh call it by some better name, For friendship sounds too cold.
A hedge between, keeps friendship green.
"Gaspard, Gaspard!" murmured the woman, from her seat on the stairs, "mind what you are saying!" Caderousse made no reply to these words, though evidently irritated and annoyed by the interruption, but, addressing the abbe, said, "Can a man be faithful to another whose wife he covets and desires for himself? But Dantes was so honorable and true in his own nature, that he believed everybody's professions of friendship. Poor Edmond, he was cruelly deceived; but it was fortunate that he never knew, or he might have found it more difficult, when on his deathbed, to pardon his enemies. And, whatever people may say," continued Caderousse, in his native language, which was not altogether devoid of rude poetry, "I cannot help being more frightened at the idea of the malediction of the dead than the hatred of the living."
A sudden thought strikes me,--let us swear an eternal friendship.
Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility.--_Sir J. Mackintosh._
So saying he fired their hearts, and on the van Of Troy at once they fell; loud shouted all The joyful Grecians, and the navy rang. Then, soon as Ilium's host the valiant son Saw of Menoetius and his charioteer In dazzling armor clad, all courage lost, Their closest ranks gave way, believing sure That, wrath renounced, and terms of friendship chosen, Achilles' self was there; thus thinking, each Look'd every way for refuge from his fate.
The hatred which is grafted on extinguished friendship must bring forth the most deadly fruits.
If friendship is to rob me of my eyes, if it is to darken the day, I will have none of it.
"Love is friendship set on fire."
If I speak to thee in friendship's name, Thou think'st I speak too coldly; If I mention love's devoted flame, Thou say'st I speak too boldly.
Plus in amicitia valet similitudo morum quam affinitas=--Similarity of manners conduces more to friendship than relationship.
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.
Our charity indeed should be universal, and extend to all mankind; but it is by no means convenient that our friendships and familiarities should do so too.
There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.
Vanity and coarse pride give gold; friendship and love give flowers.
Kindred weaknesses induce friendship as often as kindred virtues.
Parvum non parv? amiciti? pignus=--A slight pledge of no small friendship.
How can modern men today make Christ, the absent Christ, their most constant companion still? The answer is that Friendship is a spiritual thing. It is independent of Matter, or Space, or Time. That which I love in my friend is not that which I see. What influences me in my friend is not his body but his spirit. The Changed Life, p. 37.
These letters, too, were like a dream. We sometimes have strange, impossible dreams, contrary to all the laws of nature. When we awake we remember them and wonder at their strangeness. You remember, perhaps, that you were in full possession of your reason during this succession of fantastic images; even that you acted with extraordinary logic and cunning while surrounded by murderers who hid their intentions and made great demonstrations of friendship, while waiting for an opportunity to cut your throat. You remember how you escaped them by some ingenious stratagem; then you doubted if they were really deceived, or whether they were only pretending not to know your hiding-place; then you thought of another plan and hoodwinked them once again. You remember all this quite clearly, but how is it that your reason calmly accepted all the manifest absurdities and impossibilities that crowded into your dream? One of the murderers suddenly changed into a woman before your very eyes; then the woman was transformed into a hideous, cunning little dwarf; and you believed it, and accepted it all almost as a matter of course--while at the same time your intelligence seemed unusually keen, and accomplished miracles of cunning, sagacity, and logic! Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve? You smile at the extravagance of your dream, and yet you feel that this tissue of absurdity contained some real idea, something that belongs to your true life,--something that exists, and has always existed, in your heart. You search your dream for some prophecy that you were expecting. It has left a deep impression upon you, joyful or cruel, but what it means, or what has been predicted to you in it, you can neither understand nor remember.
A friendship will be young at the end of a century, a passion old at the end of three months.
"But it is not merely this affair," she continued, "on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?"
Faced with a divorce or separation, faced with the need to terminate a long-standing friendship, I must remind myself that sometimes the most loving involvement is a non-involvement.
Would he who had enjoyed the friendship of the King of England, the King of Poland, and the Queen of Sweden have thought he should come to want, and need a retreat or shelter in the world?
In religion as in friendship, they who profess most are ever the least sincere.
Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.
The world is full of inconstancy; its friendship ceases the moment there is no advantage to be expected from us.--BL. JOHN TAULER.
Love breaks in with lightning flash: friendship comes like dawning moonlight. Love will obtain and possess; friendship makes sacrifices but asks nothing.
Gold is tried in the fire, friendship in need.
A generous friendship no cold medium knows, Burns with one love, with one resentment glows.
Love is strongest in pursuit, friendship in possession.
And where are they not set? Riches and poverty, sickness and strength, prosperity and adversity, friendship and loneliness, the work and the want of it--each has its snare, wherein not only are the unwary caught, but the wise and the watchful sometimes fall a prey. Little things, mere threads, hardly worth guarding against--yet they are strong enough to hold us and hinder us, and may be the beginning of our destruction.--_Mark Guy Pearse._
Nothing is more binding than the friendship of companions-in-arms.
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
A peculiar smile passed over Dantes' lips; he squeezed Jacopo's hand warmly, but nothing could shake his determination to remain--and remain alone. The smugglers left with Edmond what he had requested and set sail, but not without turning about several times, and each time making signs of a cordial farewell, to which Edmond replied with his hand only, as if he could not move the rest of his body. Then, when they had disappeared, he said with a smile,--"'Tis strange that it should be among such men that we find proofs of friendship and devotion." Then he dragged himself cautiously to the top of a rock, from which he had a full view of the sea, and thence he saw the tartan complete her preparations for sailing, weigh anchor, and, balancing herself as gracefully as a water-fowl ere it takes to the wing, set sail. At the end of an hour she was completely out of sight; at least, it was impossible for the wounded man to see her any longer from the spot where he was. Then Dantes rose more agile and light than the kid among the myrtles and shrubs of these wild rocks, took his gun in one hand, his pickaxe in the other, and hastened towards the rock on which the marks he had noted terminated. "And now," he exclaimed, remembering the tale of the Arabian fisherman, which Faria had related to him, "now, open sesame!"
I do not believe that friendship today can flower out — can come out — of political life. I do believe that if there is something like a political life-to-be — to remain for us, in this world of technology — then it begins with friendship.
Ceremony was but devised at first / To set a gloss on faint deeds ... / But where there is true friendship, there needs none.
Love and religion are both stronger than friendship.
En amour comme en amitie, un tiers souvent nous embarrasse=--A third person is often an annoyance to us in love as in friendship.
"There is an anecdote precisely on our subject, or rather a legend, not an anecdote. You reproach me with unbelief, you see, you say, yet you don't believe. But, my dear fellow, I am not the only one like that. We are all in a muddle over there now and all through your science. Once there used to be atoms, five senses, four elements, and then everything hung together somehow. There were atoms in the ancient world even, but since we've learned that you've discovered the chemical molecule and protoplasm and the devil knows what, we had to lower our crest. There's a regular muddle, and, above all, superstition, scandal; there's as much scandal among us as among you, you know; a little more in fact, and spying, indeed, for we have our secret police department where private information is received. Well, this wild legend belongs to our middle ages--not yours, but ours--and no one believes it even among us, except the old ladies of eighteen stone, not your old ladies I mean, but ours. We've everything you have, I am revealing one of our secrets out of friendship for you; though it's forbidden. This legend is about Paradise. There was, they say, here on earth a thinker and philosopher. He rejected everything, 'laws, conscience, faith,' and, above all, the future life. He died; he expected to go straight to darkness and death and he found a future life before him. He was astounded and indignant. 'This is against my principles!' he said. And he was punished for that ... that is, you must excuse me, I am just repeating what I heard myself, it's only a legend ... he was sentenced to walk a quadrillion kilometers in the dark (we've adopted the metric system, you know) and when he has finished that quadrillion, the gates of heaven would be opened to him and he'll be forgiven--"
If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.
For when did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his friend?
The endearing elegance of female friendship.
There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no Friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.
Judge before friendship, then confide till death, / Well for thy friend, but nobler far for thee.
They that mean to make no use of friends will be at little trouble to gain them: and to be without friendship is to be without one of the first comforts of our present state.
Sine amicitia vitam esse nullam=--There is no life without friendship.
The longer we live and the more we think, the higher value we learn to put on the friendship and tenderness of parents and of friends.
The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.
That friendship, which is exerted in too wide a sphere, becomes totally useless.
Ye Gods! what city or what land soe'er Ulysses visits, how is he belov'd By all, and honour'd! many precious spoils He homeward bears from Troy; but we return, (We who the self-same voyage have perform'd) With empty hands. Now also he hath gain'd This pledge of friendship from the King of winds. But come--be quick--search we the bag, and learn What stores of gold and silver it contains.
That is friendship which is not feigned.
There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.
It is a great folly to be willing to violate the friendship of God, rather than the law of human friendship.--ST. TERESA.
Love, friendship, charity are subjects all / To envious and calumniating time.
Feasting makes no friendship.
A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.
Life is not long enough for art, not long enough for friendship.
Hatred is keener than friendship, less keen than love.
One of the representatives of the middle-class present today was a colonel of engineers, a very serious man and a great friend of Prince S., who had introduced him to the Epanchins. He was extremely silent in society, and displayed on the forefinger of his right hand a large ring, probably bestowed upon him for services of some sort. There was also a poet, German by name, but a Russian poet; very presentable, and even handsome-the sort of man one could bring into society with impunity. This gentleman belonged to a German family of decidedly bourgeois origin, but he had a knack of acquiring the patronage of "big-wigs," and of retaining their favour. He had translated some great German poem into Russian verse, and claimed to have been a friend of a famous Russian poet, since dead. (It is strange how great a multitude of literary people there are who have had the advantages of friendship with some great man of their own profession who is, unfortunately, dead.) The dignitary's wife had introduced this worthy to the Epanchins. This lady posed as the patroness of literary people, and she certainly had succeeded in obtaining pensions for a few of them, thanks to her influence with those in authority on such matters. She was a lady of weight in her own way. Her age was about forty-five, so that she was a very young wife for such an elderly husband as the dignitary. She had been a beauty in her day and still loved, as many ladies of forty-five do love, to dress a little too smartly. Her intellect was nothing to boast of, and her literary knowledge very doubtful. Literary patronage was, however, with her as much a mania as was the love of gorgeous clothes. Many books and translations were dedicated to her by her proteges, and a few of these talented individuals had published some of their own letters to her, upon very weighty subjects.
Our companionship with Him, like all true companionship, is a spiritual communion. All friendship, all love, human and Divine, is purely spiritual. It was after He was risen that He influenced even the disciples most. The Changed Life, p. 38.
That friendship only is, indeed, genuine when two friends, without speaking a word to each other, can, nevertheless, find happiness in being together.
Money may buy friendship but money cannot buy love.
What is commonly called friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.--_Thoreau._
14:27. Then the king, being in a rage, and provoked with this man's wicked accusation, wrote to Nicanor, signifying that he was greatly displeased with the covenant of friendship: and that he commanded him nevertheless to send Machabeus prisoner in all haste to Antioch.