Friendship

"Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell."

"Le sort fait les parents, le choix fait les amis."

"We ought to esteem him alone an agreeable and good-natured man, who, in his daily intercourse with others, behaves in such a manner as friends usually behave to each other. For as a person of that rustic character appears, wherever he comes, like a mere stranger: so, on the contrary, a polite man, wherever he goes, seems as easy as if he were amongst his intimate friends and acquaintances."

"Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them."

"To insure the probable continuance of friendship there must be a parity of station and fortune, and some kindred pursuit."

"Es gibt wenig aufrichtige Freunde. Die Nachfrage ist auch gering."

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.""

"But a companion and a friend shall be turned to an enemy."

"Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!"

"Friend more divine than all divinities."

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud."

"Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there."

"The only way to have a good friend is to be one."

"The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it."

"The wise man … needs no bribe or feast or palace to draw friends to him. He is supremely fair. He angles with himself and with no other bait."

"Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship."

"There are three faithful friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money."

"Thou canst not joke an Enemy into a Friend; but thou may'st a Friend into an Enemy."

"'Tis great Confidence in a Friend to tell him your Faults, greater to tell him his."

"A friendship that can be ended didn't ever start."

"Do not befriend an evil man and no evil will overtake you."

"Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace."

"I love everything that's old, — old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine."

"He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack; For he knew, when he pleas'd, he could whistle them back."

"Hazer de los amigos maestros, penetrando el útil del aprender con el gusto del conversar."

"If displeased with any man, do all you can to prevent his seeing it, for otherwise he will become estranged. And occasions often arise when he might and would have served you had you not lost him by showing your dislike. Of this I have had experience to my own profit. For once and again I have felt ill-disposed towards some one who not being aware of my hostility has afterwards helped me when I needed help and proved my good friend."

"Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies."

"A friend who offers help without asking for explanations is a treasure beyond price."

"Friendship is often outgrown; and his former child's clothes will no more fit a man than some of his former friendships."

"Friends . . old friends. . ."

"The difficulty is not so much to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for."

"The finest friendships are between those who can do without each other."

"Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow."

"Your friend is that man who knows all about you, and still likes you."

"Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of going out of one's self and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another."

"One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and more symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies."

"Chi si trova senz’ amici, e come un corpo senz’ anima."

"Sometimes, friendship may change the world."

"It is nothing against the validity of a friendship that the parties to it have not a mutual resemblance. There must be a basis of agreement, but the structure reared upon it may contain a thousand disparities."

"I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big."

"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

"Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of."

"Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success — yours or his."

"Got a lot of haters and a lot of homies; some friends and some phony."

"Choose your friends, then treat them as friends; do not regard them like slaves or servants, but associate with them frankly and simply and generously; not saying one thing of them and thinking something else."

"I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light."

"Friends need to tell each other the hard truth and friendships require mutual respect."

"The absolute condition for friendship is unity in a life-view. If a person has that, he will not be tempted to base his friendship on obscure feelings or on indefinable sympathies. As a consequence, he will not experience these ridiculous shifts, so that one day he has a friend and the next day he does not. He will not fail to appreciate the significance of the indefinable sympathies, because, strictly speaking, a person is certainly not a friend of everyone with whom he shares a life-view but neither does he stop with only the mysteriousness of the sympathies. A true friendship always requires consciousness and is therefore freed from being infatuation. The life-view in which one is united must be a positive view."

"There is nothing in the world more trustworthy than a friend one is sure will betray everything confided to him, nothing more trustworthy if only one is careful about what is confided to him. it is unsafe to ask a friend to tell this or that, but if one confides to him under the pledge of secrecy something one wishes to come out, then one can be absolutely sure, for then it must come out. Furthermore, it is a rare good fortune if in turn such a friend has a friend, and in turn this friend has a girlfriend-then it travels with the speed of lightning."

"my friend He was quite a dear, but very naughty. He would tell the filthiest jokes right up until the cameras started rolling, so one had to compose oneself before the scene started. He had originally been a dentist which always amused me because he had the worst teeth!"