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. George Washington: Social Maxims. 1786 I can never think of promoting my convenience at the expense of a friend's interest and inclination. 1787 George Washington: Moral Maxims. It is a pernicious complaisance to conceal from our friends mortifying and afflictive truths when it is expedient they should know them. 1788 Thomas Wilson: Maxims of Piety and of A true friend to a man, is a friend to all his friends. FRIENDSHIP -see Adversity, Character, Christianity, Churches, Companionship, Contamination, Enemies, Friends, Happiness, Hypocrisy, Imagination, Life, Love, Power, Re-action, Virtue. It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in a friendship with one who, by these changes and vicissitudes of humor, is sometimes amiable, and sometimes odious; and as most men are at some times in admirable frame and disposition of mind, it should be one of the greatest tasks of wisdom to keep ourselves well when we are so, and never to go out of that which is the agreeable part of our character. 1790 Addison: The Spectator. No. 68. A friendship formed in childhood, in youth, by happy accident at any stage of rising manhood, — becomes the genius that rules the rest of life. 1791 A. Bronson Alcott: Tablets. Friendship. Friendship is a plant that loves the sun, thrives ill under clouds. 1792 A. Bronson Alcott: Concord Days. June. Letters. In choosing one's friends we must choose those whose qualities are inborn, and their virtues virtues of temperament. To lay the foundations of friendship on borrowed or added virtues, is to build on an artificial soil; we run too many risks by it. 1793 Amiel: Journal. Dec. 28, 1880. (Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Translator.) But since friendship consists more in loving, and those who love their friends are praised, to love seems to be the excellence of friends. So that the parties between whom this takes place proportionately are lasting friends, and the friendship of such is lasting. In like manner those who are unequal, may also be the greatest friends, for they may be equalized. In all things which concern life, he who is pleasant as he should be is friendly, and the mean state friendliness. Aristotle: Ethics. Bk. ii. Ch. 7. (Browne, Translator.) 1796 When men are friends, there is no need of justice; but when they are just, they still need friendship. 1797 Aristotle: Ethics. Bk. viii. Ch. 1. (Browne, A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. 1798 Bacon Essays. Of Friendship. 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. 1799 Bacon Essays. Of Friendship. If a man have a true friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those things will continue after him; so that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship is, all offices of life are, as it were, granted to him and his deputy, for he may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? 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. 1800 Bacon: Essays. Of Friendship. In friendship your heart is like a bell struck every time your friend is in trouble. 1801 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and stab him with words; but so to love a man that you cannot bear to see the stain of sin upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship. But few have such friends. Our enemies usually teach us what we are, at the point of the sword. 1802 Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. Friendship is a word the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm. 1803 Augustine Birrell: Obiter Dicta. Second series. Friendship, although, strictly speaking, it is not a virtue, is, nevertheless, closely connected with virtue. The amiable feelings and affections of our nature, which are the foundation of friendship, if cultivated and rightly directed, lead to the discharge of our moral and social duties. It is also almost indispensable to the highest notions which we can form of human happiness. 1804 R. W. Browne: Aristotle's Ethics. Of Friendship. Note. Friendship heightens all our affections. We receive all the ardor of our friend in addition to our own. The communication of minds gives to each the fervor of each. 1805 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Friendship. Friendship imposes no yoke on its object, has not the feelings of a patron, expects no compliance with its opinions, no sacrifices of personal independence; but is jealous for the rights, dignity, and moral independence of its object, and takes pleasure in the free judgment and elevated spirit of a friend, only expecting these to be tempered with kindness. 1806 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Friendship. How far is love of the beautiful and lovely in others the great means of growth? Friendship how far the quickening principle? We receive other souls into our own. Love assimilates, appropriates. Sympathy, how nourishing! 1807 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Friendship. Is mutual service the bond of friendship? 1808 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Friendship. It confers favor, but so as to show that it is the party obliged, and never thinking of any recompense beyond the happiness of its object. 1809 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Friendship. It is essential to friendship that there be no labor to pass for more than we are, no effort, no anxiety to hide. If anything be concealed, the constant intercourse of friends will discover it, and one discovery will produce others. The idea that the heart has one secret fold extinguishes affection. 1810 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Friendship No discovery of defect in a character essentially good can so damp friendship as the suspicion that something is kept back. 181 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Friendship. Sincerity, truth, faithfulness, come into the very essence of friendship. 1812 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Friendship. True friendship, founded on moral qualities, is utterly inconsistent with a partial, exclusive, unsocial attachment to a few. I do not love my friend unless I am sensible to his excellences when manifested in others, and unless I am attached to the cause of universal virtue. 1813 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Friendship. We desire the homage of an exclusive friendship. We would have others render us the most refined service, that of love. We would be preferred, which to some is better than praise. 1814 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Friendship. Favors, and especially pecuniary ones, are generally fatal to friendship; for our pride will ever prompt us to lower the value of the gift by diminishing that of the donor. Ingratitude is an effort to recover our own esteem by getting rid of our esteem for our benefactor, whom we look upon as a sort of tooth-drawer, that has cured us of one pain by inflicting another. 1815 Paul Chatfield, M.D. (Horace Smith): The Tin Strange as it may sound, we are sometimes rather disposed to choose our friends from the unworthy than the worthy; for though it is difficult to love those whom we do not esteem, it is a greater difficulty to love those whom we esteem much more than ourselves. A perfect friendship requires equality, even in virtue. He who has merited friends, will seldom be without them; for attachment is not so rare as the desert that attracts and secures it. 1816 Paul Chatfield, M.D. (Horace Smith): The Tin Beware, therefore, now that you are coming into the world, of these proffered friendships. Receive them with great civility, but with great incredulity too; and pay them with compliments, but not with confidence. Do not let your vanity and self-love make you suppose that people become your friends at first sight, or even upon a short acquaintance. Real friendship is a slow grower, and never thrives unless ingrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit. 1817 Lord Chesterfield: Letter to His Son. London, The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections. friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them. 1818 Lord Chesterfield: Letter to His Son. Nov., 1749. Every one loves himself, not that he may exact from himself some reward of his affections, but that, for his own sake, every one is dear to himself. And unless this same principle be transferred to friendship, a true friend will never be found; for such an one is, as it were, a second self. 1819 Cicero: Offices and Moral Works. Laëlius, an (Edmonds, Friendship is nothing else than a complete union of feeling on all subjects, divine and human, accompanied by kindly feeling and attachment: than which, indeed, I am not aware whether, with the exception of wisdom, anything better has been bestowed on man by the immortal gods. 1820 Cicero: Offices and Moral Works. Essay on Friendship. Ch. 6. Translator.) Laelius, an (Edmonds, He removes the greatest ornament of friendship who takes away from it respect. 1821 Cicero: Offices and Moral Works. Laelius, an Essay on Friendship. Ch. 22. (Edmonds, I exhort you to lay the foundations of virtue, without which friendship cannot exist, in such a manner that, with this one exception, you may consider that nothing in the world is more excellent than friendship. 1822 Cicero: Offices and Moral Works. Laelius, an (Edmonds, In friendship we find nothing false or insincere; everything is straightforward, and springs from the heart. 1823 Laelius, an Ch. 8. (Edmonds, Cicero: Offices and Moral Works. It is of the greatest importance in friendship that the superior should be on an equality with the inferior. For there often are instances of superiority, as was the case with Scipio, one, so to speak, of our own herd. 1824 Cicero: Offices and Moral Works. Laelius, an (Edmonds, Let flattery, however, the handmaid of vices, be far removed from friendship, since it is not only unworthy of a friend, but of a free man. 1825 Cicero: Offices and Moral Works. Laëlius, an (Edmonds, |
