Wise thoughts about FRIENDSHIP
A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously and continues a friend unchangeably.
A true friend is the gift of God, and He only who made hearts can unite them.
Friendship has the skill and observation of the best physician, the diligence and vigilance of the best nurse, and the tenderness and patience of the best mother.
To have a good friend is one of the highest delights of life; to be a good friend is one of the noblest and most difficult undertakings.
Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by doubling our joy and dividing our grief.
Anyone with a heart full of friendship has a hard time finding enemies.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them ?
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.
He who gets
and never gives will lose the truest friend that lives
He who gives and never gets will sour his
friendship with regrets
Giving and getting, thus alone a
friendship lives - or dies a-moan!
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.
Far better it were for either to be mute,
Than for to murder friendship by
dispute.
Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.
True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appelation.
It is prudent to pour the oil of delicate politeness on the machinery of friendship.
Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.
Promises may get friends, but it is performance that must nurse and keep them.
Friendships are fragile things, and require as much care in handling as any other fragile and precious thing.
The best way to keep your friends is not to give them go away.
To preserve a friend three things are necessary; to honor him present, praise him absent, and assist him in his necessities.
Who ceases to be a friend, never was one.
There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming more interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.
Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to every one about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will live.
The man who treasures his friends is usually solid gold himself.
Having and being a friend means wanting only the best for each other.
Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.
One does not make friends; one recognizes them.
The true happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and choice.
When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
Actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.
There is nothing so great that I fear to do it for my friend; nothing so small that I will disdain to do it for him.
There are deep sorrows and killing cares in life, but the encouragement and love of friends were given us to make all difficulties bearable.
It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
The reward of friendship is itself. The man who hopes for anything else does not understand what true friendship is.
A real friend is a person who, when you've made a fool of yourself, lets you forget it.
Who seeks a faultless friend remains friendless.
Every man should have a fair sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
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 getting out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.
from "God's Little Instruction Book on Friendship", 1996, Honor Books, Inc.