Part 2
Devotion of Friendship
Friendship? two bodies and one soul.
_Joseph Roux_
It is easy to say how we love _new_ friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibres that knit us to the _old_. _George Eliot_
We still have slept together, Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together: And wheresoe'er we went like Juno's swans, Still we went coupled, and inseparable.
_Shakespeare_
Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles; have no friends not equal to yourself. _Confucius_
Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes. They were easiest for his feet. _John Selden_
Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.
_Emerson_
A generous friendship no cold medium knows, Burns with one love, with one resentment glows, One should our interests and our passions be, My friend must hate the man that injures me.
_Pope_
Keep thy friend under thy own life's key.
_Shakespeare_
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. _John_ xv. 13
The friendship of the pure-minded, whether in presence or absence, is not such that they will find fault with thee behind thy back, and die for thee in thy presence. _Saadi_
"Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!"
_Longfellow_
Friendship 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 friendships; 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 Friendship
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. 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 friendship 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 Friendship
However well proved a friendship 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 pass 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 nobleness of sentiment, will never wish to substitute 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 friendship 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_
Profession of Friendship
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. _Longfellow_
It is good discretion not to make too much of any man at first, because one cannot hold out that proportion. _Bacon_
The man that hails you Tom or Jack, And proves by thumps upon your back How he esteems your merit, Is such a friend that one had need Be very much his friend indeed To pardon or to bear it.
_Cowper_
I have not from your eyes that gentleness, And show of love, as I was wont to have; You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand, Over your friend that loves you.
_Shakespeare_
When an enemy has tried every expedient in vain, he will pretend friendship, and then, by this pretext, execute designs which no enemy could have effected. _Saadi_
Worldly friendship is profuse in honeyed words, passionate endearments, commendations of beauty, while true friendship speaks a simple honest language. _Francis de Sales_
Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspected as it does religion. _Wycherley_
I am weary Of the bewildering masquerade of Life, Where strangers walk as friends and friends as strangers; Where whispers overheard betray false hearts; And through the mazes of the crowd we chase Some form of loveliness, that smiles, and beckons, And cheats us with fair words, only to leave us A mockery and a jest; maddened, confused,-- Not knowing friend from foe. _Longfellow_
Test of Friendship
A friend should be like money--tried before being required, not found faulty in our need. _Plutarch_
He is our friend who loves more than admires us, and would aid us in our great work. _William Ellery Channing_
Know this, that he that is a friend to himself, is a friend to all men. _Seneca_
A friend is he who sets his heart upon us, is happy with us, and delights in us; does for us what we want, is willing and fully engaged to do all he can for us, on whom we can rely in all cases.
_William Ellery Channing_
To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life. _Mrs Ellis_
There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself; we cannot force it any more than love. _Hazlitt_
If thou wouldst get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him. For some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in the day of trouble. _Ecclesiasticus_
When I see leaves drop from their trees in the beginning of autumn, just such, think I, is the friendship of the world. Whilst the sap of maintenance lasts, my friends swarm in abundance; but in the winter of my need they leave me naked. He is a happy man that hath a true friend at his need; but he is more truly happy that hath no need of his friend. _Warwick_
As the yellow gold is tried in the fire, so the faith of friendship must be seen in adversity. _Ovid_
True friendship, like a star, is made brilliant by the dark night.
_Anon_
Proof of Friendship
That friendship only is genuine when two friends, without speaking a word to each other, can, nevertheless, find happiness in being together. _George Ebers_
Promises may get friends, but it is performance that must nurse and keep them. _Owen Felltham_
He is a friend who, in dubious circumstances, aids in deeds when deeds are necessary. _Plautus_
In friendship your heart is like a bell struck every time your friend is in trouble. _Henry Ward Beecher_
Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep by a word or a look his real sympathy. _Emerson_
The vital air of friendship is composed of confidence.
_Joseph Roux_
Friendship closes its eyes rather than see the moon eclipst; while malice denies that it is ever at the full. _J. C. and A. W. Hare_
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
_Henry D. Thoreau_
It is a proof of a man's fitness for friendship that he is able to do without that which is cheap and passionate. A true friendship is as wise as it is tender. _Henry D. Thoreau_
A foe to God was ne'er true friend to man, Some sinister intent taints all he does.
_Young_
The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure.
_Hazlitt_
Think not thy friend one who in fortune's hour Boasts of his friendship and fraternity. Him I call friend who sums up all his power To aid thee in distress and misery. _Saadi_
Constancy of Friendship
A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
_Proverbs_ xvii. 17
Oh happy days, oh early friends, How Life since then hath lost its flowers! But yet--tho' Time _some_ foliage rends, The stem, the Friendship, still is ours; And long may it endure, as green And fresh as it hath always been!
_Thomas Moore_
A true friend is for ever a friend.
_George MacDonald_
Your friend has never really loved you, never quite trusted you, who lightly lets himself think that you have drifted away from him.
_Bishop Thorold_
There are three faithful friends--an old wife, an old dog, and ready money. _Benjamin Franklin_
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o' lang syne?
_Burns_
There is no treasure the which may be compared unto a faithful friend; Gold soone decayeth, and worldly wealth consumeth and wasteth in the winde: But love once planted in a perfect and pure minde endureth weale or woe; The frownes of fortune, come they never so unkinde, cannot the same overthrowe. _Roxburghe Ballads_
I am not of that feather to shake off My friend when he must need me.
_Shakespeare_
The faults of our friends ought never to anger us so far as to give an advantage to our enemies. _Lord Chesterfield_
Love is and was my Lord and King, And in his presence I attend To hear the tidings of my friend, Which every hour his couriers bring.
_Tennyson_
So Life's year begins and closes; Days, though short'ning, still can shine; What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine.
_Thomas Moore_
"Let all be forgotten between us-- All save the dear old friendship, and that shall grow older and dearer. _Longfellow_
Lack of Friends
It is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness. _Bacon_
Ill-starred, indeed, is he who injures men: Is fortune adverse, he is friendless then.
_Saadi_
Those that want friends are cannibals of their own hearts. Communicating a man's self to his friends redoubleth his joys and cutteth griefs in halves. A friend is another _himself_. If a man have not a friend, he may quit the world's stage! _Bacon_
A favourite has no friend.
_Gray_
It is only the great-hearted who can be true friends; the mean and cowardly can never know what true friendship means.
_Charles Kingsley_
We walk alone in the world. Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us and which we can love. _Emerson_
Loss of Friendship
Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
_Coleridge_
Intimacies which increase vanity destroy friendship.
_William Ellery Channing_
Between friends, frequent reproofs make the friendship distant.
_Confucius_
Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.
_Emerson_
Each spoke words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother: They parted--ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining-- They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between. But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.
_Coleridge_
Loss of Friends
What greetings smile, what farewells wave, What loved ones enter and depart! The good, the beautiful, the brave, The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart! How conscious seems the frozen sod And beechen slope whereon they trod! The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends.
_Whittier_
O friend! O best of friends! Thy absence more Than the impending night darkens the landscape o'er!
_Longfellow_
What shall I do, my friend, When you are gone forever? My heart its eager need will send Through the years to find you never, And how will it be with you, In the weary world I wonder, Will you love me with a love as true, When our paths be far asunder?
_Mary Clemmer_
A man dies as he looses his friends.
_Bacon_
We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower, that man who has lost his wife.... And that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing his friend, by what name do we call him?... Here every human language holds its peace in impotence. _Joseph Roux_
The fallying out of faithful frends is the renuyng of love.
_Richard Edwards_
Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love!-- Hearts, that the world in vain had tried And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off:-- Like ships that have gone down at sea, When heaven is all tranquillity!
_Thomas Moore_
Waste not the hour of friendship; outside this House of Two Doors Friends shall soon part asunder, no more together wending.
_Hafiz_
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: Very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
2 _Samuel_ i. 25, 26
Some tears fell down my cheeks and then I smiled, As those smile who have no face in the world To smile back to them. I had lost a friend.
_Mrs Browning_
Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair. I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved.
_Tennyson_
To wail friends lost Is not by much so wholesome--profitable, As to rejoice at friends but newly found.
_Shakespeare_
That aching of the breast, the grandest pain that man endures, which no other can assuage. _Henry D. Thoreau_
Immortality of Friendship
A day for toil, an hour for sport, But for a friend is life too short.
_Emerson_
Let us lay hold of Friendship. In the eternal life shall we not have friends for evermore? _Anna R. Brown_
Love is a sudden blaze which soon decays, Friendship is like the sun's eternal rays.
_Gay_
Fast as the rolling seasons bring The hour of fate to those we love, Each pearl that leaves the broken string Is set in friendship's crown above. As narrower grows the earthly chain, The circle widens in the sky; These are our treasures that remain, But those are stars that beam on high.
_O. W. Holmes_
True friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.
_Plato_
Sweet human hand and lips and eye, Dear heavenly friend that canst not die; Strange friend, past, present and to be; Loved deeplier, darklier understood; Behold I dream a dream of good, And mingle all the world with thee.
Thy voice is on the rolling air; I hear thee where the waters run; Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair.
_Tennyson_
Not mine the sad and freezing dream Of souls that, with their earthly mould, Cast off the loves and joys of old,-- * * * * * No!--I have friends in Spirit Land,-- Not shadows in a shadowy band, Not _others_, but _themselves_ are they. And still I think of them the same As when the Master's summons came.
_Whittier_
The way is short, O friend, That reaches out before us; God's tender heavens above us bend, His love is smiling o'er us; A little while is ours For sorrow or for laughter; I'll lay the hand you love in yours On the shore of the Hereafter.
_Mary Clemmer_
Yet less of sorrow lives in me For days of happy commune dead; Less yearning for the friendship fled, Than some strong bond which is to be.
_Tennyson_
Index of Authors
Addison, 7
Alcott, A. B., 43, 44, 57
Anon, 26, 56, 57, 60, 68
Aristotle, 39
Arnot, 25
Bacon, 42, 44, 46, 47, 51, 58, 61, 76, 77, 83
Baillie, Joanna, 46
Ballads, Roxburghe, 74
Beecher, H. W., 69
Birrell, Augustine, 30
Black, Hugh, 9, 13, 18, 38, 42, 56
Blair, 31
Brown, Anna R., 32, 35, 87
Browning, Robert, 9, 11, 27, 55, 57
Browning, Mrs, 85
Bruyère, De la, 14
Burns, 44, 73
Byron, 28
Canticles, 26
Carlyle, 48
Channing, W. E., 42, 59, 65, 66, 79
Chesterfield, Lord, 75
Cicero, 7, 27, 37, 47
Clemmer, M., 82, 91
Coleridge, 35, 78, 80
Colton, 8, 32
Confucius, 22, 52, 79
Cowper, 62
Drummond, Henry, 15
Ebers, 68
Ecclesiasticus, 36, 67
Edwards, R., 83
Eliot, George, 45, 51, 58
Ellis, Mrs, 66
Emerson, 7, 8, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 28, 33, 39, 42, 53, 69, 78, 79, 87
Euripides, 34
Felltham, Owen, 69
Fénelon, 30
Fielding, 21
Franklin, B., 73
Gay, 24, 55, 87
Goldsmith, 38, 43
Gray, 77
Hafiz, 12, 84
Hare, J. C. and A. W., 70
Hazlitt, 66, 71
Holmes, O. W., 18, 59, 60, 88
Homer, 41
Jerrold, Douglas, 13
John, St, 25, 54
Johnson, Samuel, 13, 50
Jonson, Ben, 30
Keats, 50
Kingsley, C., 77
Longfellow, 15, 29, 33, 36, 54, 61, 64, 76, 82
MacDonald, George, 73
Montaigne, 37
Moore, Thomas, 31, 72, 75, 84
Ovid, 68
Patmore, Coventry, 61
Persian, From the, 19
Philips, Catherine, 12, 20
Plato, 40, 88
Plautus, 69
Plutarch, 25, 65
Pope, 53
Proverb, German, 35
Proverb, Oriental, 33
Proverbs, The, 11, 26, 43, 72
Quarles, 49
Robertson, F. W., 59
Roux, Joseph, 27, 38, 51, 58, 70, 83
Saadi, 10, 25, 47, 54, 60, 63, 71, 76
Sales, Francis de, 63
Samuel (Book of), 85
Schiller, 35
Scuderi, Mlle. de, 17
Selden, 52
Seneca, 31, 65
Shakespeare, 23, 30, 36, 52, 53, 62, 74, 86
Smith, Horace, 48
Smith, Sydney, 56
Smith, William, 41
Taylor, Jeremy, 8, 24, 32, 39, 40, 50
Tennyson, 16, 24, 41, 45, 75, 86, 89, 91
Thackeray, 9, 46
Theophrastus, 40
Thoreau, Henry D., 28, 70, 86
Thorold, Bishop, 34, 73
Throckmorton, Allan, 10
Voltaire, 16
Warwick, 67
Washington, George, 37
Whittier, 81, 90
Wilson, Thomas, 40
Wycherley, 63
Young, 21, 71
HERE ENDS NUMBER TWELVE OF SESAME BOOKLETS
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Text in italics is surrounded with underscores: _italics_.
Spelling and punctuation have been retained from the original.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Golden Link of Friendship, by Various