The Golden Link of Friendship Part 7

"Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friends.h.i.+p Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!"

_Longfellow_

Friends.h.i.+p like love is but a name, Unless to one you stint the flame.

The child, whom many fathers share, Hath seldom known a father's care.

'Tis thus in friends.h.i.+ps; who depend On many, rarely find a friend.

_Gay_

There must be many a pair of friends Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm Moon-births and the long evening-ends.

So, for their sake, be May still May!

_Robert Browning_

When two friends part, they should lock up each other's secrets and exchange keys.

_Anon_

Joy of Friends.h.i.+p

Life is to be fortified by many friends.h.i.+ps.

To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.

_Sydney Smith_

The joy that comes from a true communion of heart with another is perhaps one of the purest and greatest in the world.

_Hugh Black_

What joy is better than the news of friends Whose memories were a solace to me oft, As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight.

_Robert Browning_

Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.

_A. Bronson Alcott_

Who is not ready to acknowledge that friends.h.i.+p is the delight of youth, the pillar of age, the bloom of prosperity, the charm of solitude, the solace of adversity, the best benefactor and comforter in this vale of tears?

_Anon_

Reasonableness of Friends.h.i.+p

However well proved a friends.h.i.+p may appear, there are confidences which it should not hear, and sacrifices which should not be required of it.

_Joseph Roux_

Costly followers are not to be liked; lest while a man maketh his train longer, he maketh his wings shorter.

_Bacon_

Animals are such agreeable friends--they ask no questions, they pa.s.s no criticisms.

_George Eliot_

Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.

_Oliver Wendell Holmes_

A true friend will appear such in leaving us to act according to our intimate conviction,--will cherish this n.o.bleness of sentiment, will never wish to subst.i.tute his power for our own.

_William Ellery Channing_

The man who prefers his dearest friend to the call of duty will soon show that he prefers himself to his dearest friend.

_F. W. Robertson_

If you could keep your friend, approach him with a telescope, never with the microscope.

_Anon_

Give not thy friend so much power that if one day he should become a foe, thou mayst not be able to resist him.

_Saadi_

Don't flatter yourselves that friends.h.i.+p authorises you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

_Oliver Wendell Holmes_

Keep your undrest, familiar style for strangers, but respect your friend.

_Coventry Patmore_