For Auld Lang Syne | Page 5

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 a throne!
--Tennyson.

Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can never taste.
--La Bruyere.

Sweet words will multiply a man's friends; and a fair-speaking tongue will multiply courtesies. Let those that are at peace with thee be many; but thy counsellors one of a thousand. If thou wouldest get thee a friend, get him by proving, and be not in haste to trust him. For there is a friend that is so for his own occasion, and he will not continue in the day of thy affliction. And there is a friend that turneth to enmity; and he will discover strife to thy reproach. And there is a friend that is a companion at the table, and he will not continue in the day of thy affliction; and in thy prosperity he will be as thyself, and will be bold over thy servants; if thou shalt be brought low, he will be against thee, and he will hide himself from thy face.
--Bible.

The first thing you should procure, after faith, is a good friend.
--Arabic.

Such a friendship, that through it we love places and seasons; for as bright bodies emit rays at a distance, and flowers drop their sweet leaves on the ground around them, so friends impart favor even to the places where they dwell. With friends even poverty is pleasant. Words cannot express the joy which a friend imparts; they only can know who have experienced. A friend is dearer than the light of heaven, for it would be better for us that the sun were extinguished than that we should be without friends.
--S. Chrysostom.

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,