Authors by Last Name
Quotations about friendship | |
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog. What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit. 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. Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief. Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends. If you know someone who's depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather. When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'. Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of Love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving. Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. When you don't have many friends and you don't have a social life you're kind of left looking at things, not doing things. There's a weird freedom in not having people treat you like you're part of society or where you have to fulfill social relationships. For great men, religion is a way of making friends; small people make religion a fighting tool. One man envies the success in life of another, and hates him in secret; nor is he willing to give him good advice when he is consulted, except it be by some wonderful effort of good feeling, and there are, alas, few such men in the world. A real friend, on the other hand, exalts in his friend's happiness, rejoices in all his joys, and is ready to afford him the best advice. The friendships formed between good and evil men differ. The friendship of the good, at first faint like the morning light, continually increases; the friendship of the evil at the very beginning is like the light of midday, and dies away like the light of evening. As gold is tried by the furnace, and the baser metal shown, so the hollow-hearted friend is known by adversity. I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world. One friend in a life-time is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim. He who knows the wild animals of the world always travels among friends, and in every land he finds a welcome. 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. Friendship is a calm and sedate affection, conducted by reason and cemented by habit; springing from long acquaintance and mutual obligations, without jealousies or fears, and without those feverish fits of heat and cold, which cause such an agreeable torment in the amorous passion. 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. I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications. When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain. If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others. We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losmg a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence. The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer. He will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings, and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth, an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death. Some cultures believe a long life brings wisdom. I'd like to think so. Perhaps part of that wisdom is to recognise some of life's baffling paradoxes, such as the way human beings have a huge propensity for good, and yet a capacity for evil. Even the power of faith, which frequently inspires great generosity and self-sacrifice, can fall victim to tribalism. But through the many changes I have seen over the years, faith, family and friendship have been not only a constant for me but a source of personal comfort and reassurance. |
Top 100 Topics