For Auld Lang Syne | Page 5

I knew, to carry a
friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the
other. Why should I cumber myself with the poor fact that the receiver
is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall
wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the
reflecting planet.... It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the
great will see that true love cannot be unrequited.
--Emerson.

In the cause of friendship brave all dangers.
--Dickens.

Kindness given and received aright and knitting two hearts into one is a
thing of heaven, as rare in this world as a perfect love; both are the
overflow of only very rare and beautiful souls.
--Balzac.

Kindred passions and pursuits are the natural groundwork of friendship.
Real friendship is of slow growth, and never thrives, unless ingrafted
upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.
--Chesterfield.

Let this, therefore, be established as a primary law concerning
friendship, that we expect from our friends only what is honorable, and
for our friends' sake do what is honorable; that we should not wait till
we are asked; that zeal be ever ready, and reluctance far from us.
--Cicero.

Let Friendship's accents cheer our doubtful way,
And Love's pure
planet lend its guiding ray,--
Our tardy Art shall wear an angel's
wings,
And life shall lengthen with the joy it brings!
--Holmes.

I am not of that feather, to shake off my friend when most he needs me.
--Shakespeare.

Let the honor of thy friend be as dear unto thee as thy own.
--The Talmud.

Life to be rich and fertile must be reinforced with friendship. It is the
sap that preserves from blight and withering; it is the sunshine that
beckons on the blossoming and fruitage; it is the starlight dew that

perfumes life with sweetness and besprinkles it with splendor; it is the
music-tide that sweeps the soul, scattering treasures; it is the victorious
and blessed leader of integrity's forlorn hope; it is the potent alchemy
that transmutes failure into success; it is the hidden manna that
nourishes when all other sustenance fails; it is the voice that speaks to
hopes all dead, "Because I live, ye shall live also." For the loftiest
friendships have no commercial element in them: they are founded on
disinterestedness and sacrifices. They neither expect nor desire a return
for gift or service. Amid the tireless breaking of the billows on the
shores of experience, there is no surer anchorage than a friendship that
"beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things."
--Cooper.

It is one of the wretchednesses of the great that they have no approved
friends. Kings are the most solitary beings on earth.
--Channing.

Many kinds of fruit grow upon the tree of life, but none so sweet as
friendship.
--Larcom.

My treasures are my friends.
--Constantius.

Life should be fortified by many friendships.
--Smith.

Love begins with love; and there is no passing from firm friendship to
even feeble love.
--La Bruyere.

Live not without a friend; the Alpine rock must own
Its mossy grace
or else be nothing but a stone.
--Story.

Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin
its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand
years.
--Emerson.

Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold,

Brow may wrinkle, hair grows grey:
True friendship never knows
decay.
--Anon.

Oh, the comfort--the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a
person--having neither to weigh thought nor measure words, but
pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth
keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
--Muloch.

O matchless wisdom; those seem to take the sun out of the world who

remove friendship from the pleasures of life: than which we have
received nothing better or more pleasant from the gods.
--Cicero.

Not on the store of sprightly wine,
Nor plenty of delicious meats,

Though generous Nature did design
To court us with perpetual treats;

'Tis not on these we for content depend,
So much as on the shadow
of a friend.
--Menander.

Since human affairs are frail and fleeting, some persons must ever be
sought for whom we may love, and by whom we may be loved; for
when affection and kind feeling are done away with, all cheerfulness
likewise is banished from existence.
--Cicero.

Lying on lower levels is but a trivial offence compared with civility and
compliments on the level of friendship.
--Thoreau.

My friend, with you to live alone,
Were how much better than to own

A crown, a sceptre and