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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

Now the discourse that ought to come from friends and people disposed to be helpful should be consolation, and not mere assent with a man's sad feelings.

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.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

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!

Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.

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

Before those who loved him, his memory shines like a reproach; they honour him for silent lessons; they cherish his example; and in what remains before them of their toil, fear to be unworthy of the dead.

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.

Indeed, the ideal story is that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room.

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.

To disappoint a friend is unpleasing; and he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed.

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.

Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own.

To lament the death of a friend is both natural and just; a sigh or a tear I would allow to his memory: but no profuse or obstinate sorrow.