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a man should, at the first approaches, favour their grief and express some approbation of their sorrow

There is nothing to which nature seems so much to have inclined us, as to society

We sought one another long before we met, and by the characters we heard of one another

Whereas in friendship, 'tis a general and universal fire, but temperate and equal, a constant established heat, all gentle and smooth, without poignancy or roughness.

Moreover men commonly deceive themselves in respect of the love which they imagine others bear them, nor can ever be sure of it until they have put it to the proof.

a prince should entrust his friends with so much authority only as leaves a certain interval between his position and theirs

a friend should be like money tried before being required, not found faulty in our need

not to find friends at a time when you want them is hard, as also not to be able to exchange an inconstant and bad friend for a constant and good one

Might not someone jeer at us in the same way, as being afraid, when we have not yet one firm friendship, that we shall without knowing it fall upon an abundance of friends?

intimacy is the full enjoyment of friendship, and most pleasant is companying with and spending the day with a friend

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hope of the heart.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.

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.

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 higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood.

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

The soul environs itself with friends that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.

What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted!

Amongst ourselves we are unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart I can only guess.

The powers and the ground of friendship is a mystery; but, looking back, I can discern that, in part, we loved the thing he was, for some shadow of what he was to be.

The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget.

Many friendships are formed by a community of sensual pleasures: all these will be cut off.

Parents we can have but once; and he promises himself too much, who enters life with the expectation of finding many friends.

The longer we live, and the more we think, the higher value we learn to put on the friendship and tenderness of parents and of friends.

A long life may be passed without finding a friend in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and sincerity.