The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Golden Link of Friendship This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The Golden Link of Friendship Author: Various Release date: November 11, 2011 [eBook #37982] Language: English Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow, David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN LINK OF FRIENDSHIP *** Produced by Chris Curnow, David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net SESAME BOOKLETS _LATEST ADDITIONS TO SESAME BOOKLETS_ 41. Rab and his Friends. _Brown._ 42. Marjorie Fleming. _Brown._ 43. Poems of the East. 44. Gems from Balzac. 45. Thoughts from Tolstoi. 46. Thoughts from Jerome K. Jerome. 47. Thoughts from H. G. Wells. 48. Thoughts from E. F. Benson. 49. Thoughts from Augustine Birrell. 50. Thoughts from G. K. Chesterton. [Illustration] SESAME BOOKLETS The Golden Link of Friendship George G. Harrap & Co. 3 Portsmouth St. London "_A link to bind when circumstances part; A nerve of feeling stretched from heart to heart._" The Riverside Press Ltd., Edinburgh Foreword _Friendship is one of the most important things in the world. As a factor in educating the mind, forming the character, guiding the will, and shaping the destiny, the influence of Friendship can scarcely be overrated. Friendship has made a man a hero, a saint, a demon!_ _It is to be hoped, therefore, that these Golden Thoughts on Friendship--garnered from a wide field--will prove helpful and inspiring and tend to create pure and noble ideals in the minds of readers._ _The touching story of David and Jonathan continues to possess a surpassing charm for humanity; and the voyager over Life's ocean who discovers a true friend discovers an island offering a safe, quiet haven from every storm that blows, and which presents innumerable luscious fruits and sweet-scented flowers for his refreshment and enjoyment._ _A. E. S._ Birth of Friendship Nature loves nothing solitary, and always reaches out to something as a support, which ever in the sweetest friend is most delightful. _Cicero_ Great souls by instinct to each other turn, Demand alliance, and in friendship burn. _Addison_ The only way to have a friend, is to be one. _Emerson_ Some friendships are made by _nature_, some by _contract_, some by _interest_, and some by _souls_. _Jeremy Taylor_ The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame. _Colton_ Only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline and which does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience. _Emerson_ Culture of Friendship It is a friendly heart that has plenty of friends. _Thackeray_ We have few friendships, because we are not willing to pay the price of friendship. _Hugh Black_ Hand Grasps hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, And great hearts expand, And grow one in the sense of this world's life. _Robert Browning_ A friend whom you have been gaining during your whole life, you ought not to be displeased with in a moment. A stone is many years becoming a ruby; take care that you do not destroy it in an instant against another stone. _Saadi_ Once let friendship be given that is born of God, nor time nor circumstance can change it to a lessening; it must be mutual growth, increasing trust, widening faith, enduring patience, forgiving love, unselfish ambition--an affection built before the Throne, that will bear the test of time and trial. _Allan Throckmorton_ A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. _Proverbs_ xviii. 24 You'll never hope To be such friends, for instance she and you, As when you hunted cowslips in the woods Or played together in the meadow hay. Oh yes--with age, respect comes, and your worth Is felt, there's growing sympathy of tastes, There's ripened friendship, there's confirmed esteem. _Robert Browning_ Plant thou the tree of friendship only; so shall thy heart's desire bear fruit: Uproot thou hatred's plant completely, or woes unnumbered thence may shoot. _Hafiz_ Sacredness of Friendship Friendship's an abstract of this noble flame, 'Tis love refin'd, and purged from all its dross, 'Tis next to angels' love, if not the same, As strong in passion is, though not so gross. _Catherine Philips_ Golden friendship is not a common thing to be picked up in the street.... There are pearls of the heart, which cannot be thrown to swine. _Hugh Black_ Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven, The noble mind's delight and pride, To men and angels only given, To all the lower world denied. _Samuel Johnson_ O Friendship! thou divinest alchemist, that man should ever profane thee! _Douglas Jerrold_ Pure friendship is something which men of inferior intellect can never taste. _De la Bruyère_ The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god that it may deify both. _Emerson_ For perfect friendship it may be said to require natures so rare and costly, so well tempered each, and so happily adapted, and withal so circumstanced that very seldom can its satisfaction be realised. _Emerson_ Love shows me the opulence of nature, by disclosing to me in my friend a hidden wealth, and I infer an equal depth of good in every other direction. _Emerson_ Who talks of a _common_ friendship? There is no such thing in the world. On earth no word is more sublime. Friendship is the nearest thing we know to what religion is. God is love. _Henry Drummond_ "You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the friendship between us, Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily broken!" _Longfellow_ He that wrongs his friend Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about A silent court of justice in his breast, Himself the judge and jury, and himself The prisoner at the bar, ever condemn'd: And that drags down his life. _Tennyson_ Friendship is the marriage of the soul. _Voltaire_ Beauty of Friendship A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. _Emerson_ The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed: there is no winter, and no night: all tragedies, all ennuis vanish; all duties even; nothing fills the preceding eternity but the forms all radiant of beloved persons. _Emerson_ The only rose without thorns is friendship. _Mlle. de Scuderi_ To the young friendship comes as the glory of spring, a very miracle of beauty, a mystery of birth: to the old it has the bloom of autumn, beautiful still, but with the beauty of decay. _Hugh Black_ The pledge of Friendship! it is still divine, Though watery floods have quenched its burning wine; Whatever vase the sacred drops may hold, The gourd, the shell, the cup of beaten gold, Around its brim the bond of Nature throws A garland sweeter than the banquet's rose. _O. W. Holmes_ O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red; All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair. _Emerson_ Friend is a word of royal tone; Friend is a poem all alone. _From the Persian_ Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. _Emerson_ Thick waters show no images of things; Friends are each other's mirrors, and should be Clearer than crystal, or the mountain-springs, And free from clouds, design, or flattery. For vulgar souls no part of friendship share; Poets and friends are born to what they are. _Catherine Philips_ Choice of Friendship First on thy friend deliberate with thyself, Pause, ponder, sift; not eager in the choice, Nor jealous of the chosen: fixing, fix;-- Judge before friendship, then confide till death. _Young_ The highest friendship must always lead us to the highest pleasure. _Fielding_ Friendship demands a religious treatment. We must not be wilful, we must not provide. We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. _Emerson_ Friendship with the upright; friendship with the sincere; and friendship with the man of much observation: these are advantageous. Friendship with the man of specious airs; friendship with the insinuatingly soft; and friendship with the glib-tongued: these are injurious. _Confucius_ Oh, be my friend, and teach me to be thine! _Emerson_ My friends have come to me unsought; the great God gave them to me. _Emerson_ The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. _Shakespeare_ He makes no friend who never made a foe. _Tennyson_ Who friendship with a knave hath made Is judg'd a partner in the trade. _Gay_ A man's friends are his magnetisms. _Emerson_ A good man is the best friend, and therefore soonest to be chosen, longer to be retained, and, indeed, never to be parted with, unless he cease to be that for which he was chosen. _Jeremy Taylor_ Friendship sealed by companionship in sin will not last long. _Arnot_ Eschew that friend, if thou art wise, Who consorts with thy enemies. _Saadi_ Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy. _Plutarch_ Divine Friendship Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. _John_ xv. 14 His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. _Canticles_ v. 16 He that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the King shall be his friend. _Proverbs_ xxii. 11 It is said that when he came to die, the last words of the American President Edwards, after bidding his weeping relatives good-bye, were: "Now where is Jesus of Nazareth, my true and never-failing Friend?" So saying he fell asleep. _Anon_ Reality of Friendship Friendship is the ideal, friends are the reality; reality always remains far apart from the ideal. _Joseph Roux_ They seem to take away the sun from the world who withdraw friendship from life. _Cicero_ You're my friend-- What a thing friendship is, world without end! How it gives the heart and soul a stir up! _Robert Browning_ Friendship is Love without his wings! _Byron_ I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know. _Emerson_ Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. _Henry D. Thoreau_ O, weary hearts! O, slumbering eyes! O, drooping souls, whose destinies Are fraught with fear and pain, Ye shall be loved again! No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own. Responds,--as if with unseen wings, An angel touched its quivering strings; And whispers, in its song, Where hast thou stayed so long? _Longfellow_ Friendship is a word the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm. _Augustine Birrell_ Real friends are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow. _Fénelon_ Nature teaches beasts to know their friends. _Shakespeare_ Worth of Friendship True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice. _Ben Jonson_ Friendship, mysterious cement of the soul, Sweetener of life, and solder of society, I owe thee much: thou hast deserv'd from me Far, far beyond what I can ever pay. _Blair_ Not all the works of Science, Art, Or Genius in this world are worth One genuine sigh that from the heart Friendship or Love draws freshly forth. _Thomas Moore_ Friendship always benefits, while love sometimes injures. _Seneca_ To have a friend is to have one of the sweetest gifts that life can bring: to be a friend is to have a solemn and tender education of soul from day to day. _Anna R. Brown_ Friendship is an allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppressions, the sanctuary to our calamities, the counsellor of our doubts, the clarity of our minds, the emission of our thoughts, the exercise and improvement of what we meditate. _Jeremy Taylor_ True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost. _Colton_ Friendship is an order of nobility; from its revelations we come more worthily into nature. _Emerson_ Ah, how good it feels! the hand of an old friend. _Longfellow_ He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, But he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere. _Oriental Proverb_ Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind, A poet or a friend to find; Behold, he watches at the door, Behold his shadow on the floor. _Emerson_ A friend who will not despise us for our weakness, nor disown us for our sinfulness, nor tire of us for being troublesome, nor scoff at us for our sensibility, but who will patiently hear our tale, fully understand our regret, tenderly recognise our stumbling-blocks, and be honest enough to tell us the truth, cost us what it may--oh, do you not see what a real help he might be to us. _Bishop Thorold_ A friend Welded into our life is more to us Than twice five thousand kinsmen, one in blood. _Euripides_ I used to think that friendship meant happiness: I have learnt that it means discipline. _Anna R. Brown_ Dear is my friend--yet from my foe, as from my friend comes good: My friend shows what I can do, and my foe what I should. _Schiller_ We can live without a brother, but not without a friend. _German Proverb_ Love is flower-like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree. _Coleridge_ You shall perceive how you mistake my fortunes; I am wealthy in my friends. _Shakespeare_ A faithful friend is the medicine of life. _Ecclesiasticus_ "I know and esteem you, and feel that your nature is noble, Lifting mine up to a higher, a more ethereal level, Therefore I value your friendship." _Longfellow_ Disinterestedness of Friendship In friendship, there is no commerce or business depending on the same, but itself. _Montaigne_ You must therefore love me, myself, and not my circumstances, if we are to be real friends. _Cicero_ I can never think of promoting my convenience at the expense of a friend's interest and inclination. _George Washington_ There is possible to-day, as ever, a generous friendship which forgets self.... The miracle of friendship has been too often enacted on this dull earth of ours to suffer us to doubt either its possibility or its wondrous beauty. _Hugh Black_ Friendship is like a debt of honour; the moment it is talked of, it loses its real name and assumes the more ungrateful form of obligation. _Goldsmith_ Have friends, not for the sake of receiving, but of giving. _Joseph Roux_ Amongst true friends there is no fear of losing anything. _Jeremy Taylor_ When men are friends, there is no need of justice; but when they are just, they still need friendship. _Aristotle_ Better be a nettle in the side of your friend, than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. To be capable of that high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two before there can be very one. _Emerson_ No friendship can excuse a sin. _Jeremy Taylor_ Friendship is to be purchased only by friendship. A man must have authority over others, but he can never have their heart but by giving his own. _Thomas Wilson_ True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come without invitation. _Theophrastus_ Now can there be a worse disgrace than this--that I should be thought to value money more than the life of a friend? _Plato_ Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight. _Tennyson_ True friendship's laws are by this rule express'd, Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. _Homer_ Service of Friendship The services which cement friendship are reciprocal services. _William Smith_ Friends are to incite one another to God's works. _William Ellery Channing_ I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them. _Emerson_ A principal fruit of friendship is the use and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. _Bacon_ Most of our friendships lack the distinction of greatness, because we are not ready for little acts of service. _Hugh Black_ Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly. _A. Bronson Alcott_ Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart: So doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel. Iron sharpeneth iron; So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. _Proverbs_ xxvii. 6, 9, 17 Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals. _Goldsmith_ To take the advice of some few friends is ever honourable; for lookers-on many times see more than gamesters, and the vale best discovereth the hill. _Bacon_ Here around the ingle bleezing, Wha sae happy and sae free; Tho' the northern wind blaws freezing, Frien'ship warms baith you and me. _Burns_ Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs. _A. Bronson Alcott_ Where you have friends you should not go to inns. _George Eliot_ More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? _Tennyson_ If I mayn't tell you what I feel, what is the use of a friend? _Thackeray_ I take of worthy men whate'er they give: Their heart I gladly take, if not, their hand; If that, too, is withheld, a courteous word, Or the civility of placid looks. _Joanna Baillie_ Friendship maketh a fair day in the affections, from storm and tempest; but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts. _Bacon_ He who will not to friends' advice attend; Must not complain when they him reprehend. _Saadi_ There is no such flatterer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. _Bacon_ Let flattery, however, the bond-maid of vices, be far removed from friendship, since it is not only unworthy of a friend, but of a free man. _Cicero_ How were friendship possible? In mutual devotedness to the Good and True: otherwise impossible, except as armed neutrality or hollow commercial league. A man, be the heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man. _Carlyle_ A real friend is one who will tell you of your faults and follies in prosperity, and assist you with his hand and heart in adversity. _Horace Smith_ There be three sorts of friends: the first is like a torch we meet in a dark street; the second is like a candle in a lanthorn that we overtake; the third is like a link that offers itself to the stumbling passenger. The met torch is the sweet-lipped friend, which lends us a flash of compliment for the time, but quickly leaves us to our former darkness. The over-taken lanthorn is the true friend, which, though it promise but a faint light, yet it goes along with us as far as it can to our journey's end. The offered link is the mercenary friend, which though it be ready enough to do us service, yet that service hath a servile relation to our bounty. _Quarles_ That which is most beneficent is also most excellent; and therefore those friendships must needs be most perfect where the friends can be most useful. _Jeremy Taylor_ I would not live without the love of my friends. _Keats_ Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain forever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attractive to every misery. _Samuel Johnson_ There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. _Bacon_ Devotion of Friendship Friendship? two bodies and one soul. _Joseph Roux_ It is easy to say how we love _new_ friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibres that knit us to the _old_. _George Eliot_ We still have slept together, Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together: And wheresoe'er we went like Juno's swans, Still we went coupled, and inseparable. _Shakespeare_ Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles; have no friends not equal to yourself. _Confucius_ Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes. They were easiest for his feet. _John Selden_ Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul. _Emerson_ A generous friendship no cold medium knows, Burns with one love, with one resentment glows, One should our interests and our passions be, My friend must hate the man that injures me. _Pope_ Keep thy friend under thy own life's key. _Shakespeare_ Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. _John_ xv. 13 The friendship of the pure-minded, whether in presence or absence, is not such that they will find fault with thee behind thy back, and die for thee in thy presence. _Saadi_ "Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!" _Longfellow_ Friendship like love is but a name, Unless to one you stint the flame. The child, whom many fathers share, Hath seldom known a father's care. 'Tis thus in friendships; who depend On many, rarely find a friend. _Gay_ There must be many a pair of friends Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm Moon-births and the long evening-ends. So, for their sake, be May still May! _Robert Browning_ When two friends part, they should lock up each other's secrets and exchange keys. _Anon_ Joy of Friendship Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence. _Sydney Smith_ The joy that comes from a true communion of heart with another is perhaps one of the purest and greatest in the world. _Hugh Black_ What joy is better than the news of friends Whose memories were a solace to me oft, As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight. _Robert Browning_ Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary. _A. Bronson Alcott_ Who is not ready to acknowledge that friendship is the delight of youth, the pillar of age, the bloom of prosperity, the charm of solitude, the solace of adversity, the best benefactor and comforter in this vale of tears? _Anon_ Reasonableness of Friendship However well proved a friendship may appear, there are confidences which it should not hear, and sacrifices which should not be required of it. _Joseph Roux_ Costly followers are not to be liked; lest while a man maketh his train longer, he maketh his wings shorter. _Bacon_ Animals are such agreeable friends--they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. _George Eliot_ Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them. _Oliver Wendell Holmes_ A true friend will appear such in leaving us to act according to our intimate conviction,--will cherish this nobleness of sentiment, will never wish to substitute his power for our own. _William Ellery Channing_ The man who prefers his dearest friend to the call of duty will soon show that he prefers himself to his dearest friend. _F. W. Robertson_ If you could keep your friend, approach him with a telescope, never with the microscope. _Anon_ Give not thy friend so much power that if one day he should become a foe, thou mayst not be able to resist him. _Saadi_ Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorises you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. _Oliver Wendell Holmes_ Keep your undrest, familiar style for strangers, but respect your friend. _Coventry Patmore_ Profession of Friendship Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things Keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred professions of friendship. _Longfellow_ It is good discretion not to make too much of any man at first, because one cannot hold out that proportion. _Bacon_ The man that hails you Tom or Jack, And proves by thumps upon your back How he esteems your merit, Is such a friend that one had need Be very much his friend indeed To pardon or to bear it. _Cowper_ I have not from your eyes that gentleness, And show of love, as I was wont to have; You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand, Over your friend that loves you. _Shakespeare_ When an enemy has tried every expedient in vain, he will pretend friendship, and then, by this pretext, execute designs which no enemy could have effected. _Saadi_ Worldly friendship is profuse in honeyed words, passionate endearments, commendations of beauty, while true friendship speaks a simple honest language. _Francis de Sales_ Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspected as it does religion. _Wycherley_ I am weary Of the bewildering masquerade of Life, Where strangers walk as friends and friends as strangers; Where whispers overheard betray false hearts; And through the mazes of the crowd we chase Some form of loveliness, that smiles, and beckons, And cheats us with fair words, only to leave us A mockery and a jest; maddened, confused,-- Not knowing friend from foe. _Longfellow_ Test of Friendship A friend should be like money--tried before being required, not found faulty in our need. _Plutarch_ He is our friend who loves more than admires us, and would aid us in our great work. _William Ellery Channing_ Know this, that he that is a friend to himself, is a friend to all men. _Seneca_ A friend is he who sets his heart upon us, is happy with us, and delights in us; does for us what we want, is willing and fully engaged to do all he can for us, on whom we can rely in all cases. _William Ellery Channing_ To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life. _Mrs Ellis_ There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself; we cannot force it any more than love. _Hazlitt_ If thou wouldst get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him. For some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in the day of trouble. _Ecclesiasticus_ When I see leaves drop from their trees in the beginning of autumn, just such, think I, is the friendship of the world. Whilst the sap of maintenance lasts, my friends swarm in abundance; but in the winter of my need they leave me naked. He is a happy man that hath a true friend at his need; but he is more truly happy that hath no need of his friend. _Warwick_ As the yellow gold is tried in the fire, so the faith of friendship must be seen in adversity. _Ovid_ True friendship, like a star, is made brilliant by the dark night. _Anon_ Proof of Friendship That friendship only is genuine when two friends, without speaking a word to each other, can, nevertheless, find happiness in being together. _George Ebers_ Promises may get friends, but it is performance that must nurse and keep them. _Owen Felltham_ He is a friend who, in dubious circumstances, aids in deeds when deeds are necessary. _Plautus_ In friendship your heart is like a bell struck every time your friend is in trouble. _Henry Ward Beecher_ Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep by a word or a look his real sympathy. _Emerson_ The vital air of friendship is composed of confidence. _Joseph Roux_ Friendship closes its eyes rather than see the moon eclipst; while malice denies that it is ever at the full. _J. C. and A. W. Hare_ The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. _Henry D. Thoreau_ It is a proof of a man's fitness for friendship that he is able to do without that which is cheap and passionate. A true friendship is as wise as it is tender. _Henry D. Thoreau_ A foe to God was ne'er true friend to man, Some sinister intent taints all he does. _Young_ The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure. _Hazlitt_ Think not thy friend one who in fortune's hour Boasts of his friendship and fraternity. Him I call friend who sums up all his power To aid thee in distress and misery. _Saadi_ Constancy of Friendship A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. _Proverbs_ xvii. 17 Oh happy days, oh early friends, How Life since then hath lost its flowers! But yet--tho' Time _some_ foliage rends, The stem, the Friendship, still is ours; And long may it endure, as green And fresh as it hath always been! _Thomas Moore_ A true friend is for ever a friend. _George MacDonald_ Your friend has never really loved you, never quite trusted you, who lightly lets himself think that you have drifted away from him. _Bishop Thorold_ There are three faithful friends--an old wife, an old dog, and ready money. _Benjamin Franklin_ Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o' lang syne? _Burns_ There is no treasure the which may be compared unto a faithful friend; Gold soone decayeth, and worldly wealth consumeth and wasteth in the winde: But love once planted in a perfect and pure minde endureth weale or woe; The frownes of fortune, come they never so unkinde, cannot the same overthrowe. _Roxburghe Ballads_ I am not of that feather to shake off My friend when he must need me. _Shakespeare_ The faults of our friends ought never to anger us so far as to give an advantage to our enemies. _Lord Chesterfield_ Love is and was my Lord and King, And in his presence I attend To hear the tidings of my friend, Which every hour his couriers bring. _Tennyson_ So Life's year begins and closes; Days, though short'ning, still can shine; What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine. _Thomas Moore_ "Let all be forgotten between us-- All save the dear old friendship, and that shall grow older and dearer. _Longfellow_ Lack of Friends It is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness. _Bacon_ Ill-starred, indeed, is he who injures men: Is fortune adverse, he is friendless then. _Saadi_ Those that want friends are cannibals of their own hearts. Communicating a man's self to his friends redoubleth his joys and cutteth griefs in halves. A friend is another _himself_. If a man have not a friend, he may quit the world's stage! _Bacon_ A favourite has no friend. _Gray_ It is only the great-hearted who can be true friends; the mean and cowardly can never know what true friendship means. _Charles Kingsley_ We walk alone in the world. Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us and which we can love. _Emerson_ Loss of Friendship Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain. _Coleridge_ Intimacies which increase vanity destroy friendship. _William Ellery Channing_ Between friends, frequent reproofs make the friendship distant. _Confucius_ 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 laws of friendship are great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. _Emerson_ Each spoke words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother: They parted--ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining-- They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between. But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been. _Coleridge_ Loss of Friends What greetings smile, what farewells wave, What loved ones enter and depart! The good, the beautiful, the brave, The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart! How conscious seems the frozen sod And beechen slope whereon they trod! The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends. _Whittier_ O friend! O best of friends! Thy absence more Than the impending night darkens the landscape o'er! _Longfellow_ What shall I do, my friend, When you are gone forever? My heart its eager need will send Through the years to find you never, And how will it be with you, In the weary world I wonder, Will you love me with a love as true, When our paths be far asunder? _Mary Clemmer_ A man dies as he looses his friends. _Bacon_ We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower, that man who has lost his wife.... And that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing his friend, by what name do we call him?... Here every human language holds its peace in impotence. _Joseph Roux_ The fallying out of faithful frends is the renuyng of love. _Richard Edwards_ Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love!-- Hearts, that the world in vain had tried And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off:-- Like ships that have gone down at sea, When heaven is all tranquillity! _Thomas Moore_ Waste not the hour of friendship; outside this House of Two Doors Friends shall soon part asunder, no more together wending. _Hafiz_ How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: Very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. 2 _Samuel_ i. 25, 26 Some tears fell down my cheeks and then I smiled, As those smile who have no face in the world To smile back to them. I had lost a friend. _Mrs Browning_ Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair. I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved. _Tennyson_ To wail friends lost Is not by much so wholesome--profitable, As to rejoice at friends but newly found. _Shakespeare_ That aching of the breast, the grandest pain that man endures, which no other can assuage. _Henry D. Thoreau_ Immortality of Friendship A day for toil, an hour for sport, But for a friend is life too short. _Emerson_ Let us lay hold of Friendship. In the eternal life shall we not have friends for evermore? _Anna R. Brown_ Love is a sudden blaze which soon decays, Friendship is like the sun's eternal rays. _Gay_ Fast as the rolling seasons bring The hour of fate to those we love, Each pearl that leaves the broken string Is set in friendship's crown above. As narrower grows the earthly chain, The circle widens in the sky; These are our treasures that remain, But those are stars that beam on high. _O. W. Holmes_ True friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal. _Plato_ Sweet human hand and lips and eye, Dear heavenly friend that canst not die; Strange friend, past, present and to be; Loved deeplier, darklier understood; Behold I dream a dream of good, And mingle all the world with thee. Thy voice is on the rolling air; I hear thee where the waters run; Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair. _Tennyson_ Not mine the sad and freezing dream Of souls that, with their earthly mould, Cast off the loves and joys of old,-- * * * * * No!--I have friends in Spirit Land,-- Not shadows in a shadowy band, Not _others_, but _themselves_ are they. And still I think of them the same As when the Master's summons came. _Whittier_ The way is short, O friend, That reaches out before us; God's tender heavens above us bend, His love is smiling o'er us; A little while is ours For sorrow or for laughter; I'll lay the hand you love in yours On the shore of the Hereafter. _Mary Clemmer_ Yet less of sorrow lives in me For days of happy commune dead; Less yearning for the friendship fled, Than some strong bond which is to be. _Tennyson_ Index of Authors Addison, 7 Alcott, A. B., 43, 44, 57 Anon, 26, 56, 57, 60, 68 Aristotle, 39 Arnot, 25 Bacon, 42, 44, 46, 47, 51, 58, 61, 76, 77, 83 Baillie, Joanna, 46 Ballads, Roxburghe, 74 Beecher, H. W., 69 Birrell, Augustine, 30 Black, Hugh, 9, 13, 18, 38, 42, 56 Blair, 31 Brown, Anna R., 32, 35, 87 Browning, Robert, 9, 11, 27, 55, 57 Browning, Mrs, 85 Bruyère, De la, 14 Burns, 44, 73 Byron, 28 Canticles, 26 Carlyle, 48 Channing, W. E., 42, 59, 65, 66, 79 Chesterfield, Lord, 75 Cicero, 7, 27, 37, 47 Clemmer, M., 82, 91 Coleridge, 35, 78, 80 Colton, 8, 32 Confucius, 22, 52, 79 Cowper, 62 Drummond, Henry, 15 Ebers, 68 Ecclesiasticus, 36, 67 Edwards, R., 83 Eliot, George, 45, 51, 58 Ellis, Mrs, 66 Emerson, 7, 8, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 28, 33, 39, 42, 53, 69, 78, 79, 87 Euripides, 34 Felltham, Owen, 69 Fénelon, 30 Fielding, 21 Franklin, B., 73 Gay, 24, 55, 87 Goldsmith, 38, 43 Gray, 77 Hafiz, 12, 84 Hare, J. C. and A. W., 70 Hazlitt, 66, 71 Holmes, O. W., 18, 59, 60, 88 Homer, 41 Jerrold, Douglas, 13 John, St, 25, 54 Johnson, Samuel, 13, 50 Jonson, Ben, 30 Keats, 50 Kingsley, C., 77 Longfellow, 15, 29, 33, 36, 54, 61, 64, 76, 82 MacDonald, George, 73 Montaigne, 37 Moore, Thomas, 31, 72, 75, 84 Ovid, 68 Patmore, Coventry, 61 Persian, From the, 19 Philips, Catherine, 12, 20 Plato, 40, 88 Plautus, 69 Plutarch, 25, 65 Pope, 53 Proverb, German, 35 Proverb, Oriental, 33 Proverbs, The, 11, 26, 43, 72 Quarles, 49 Robertson, F. W., 59 Roux, Joseph, 27, 38, 51, 58, 70, 83 Saadi, 10, 25, 47, 54, 60, 63, 71, 76 Sales, Francis de, 63 Samuel (Book of), 85 Schiller, 35 Scuderi, Mlle. de, 17 Selden, 52 Seneca, 31, 65 Shakespeare, 23, 30, 36, 52, 53, 62, 74, 86 Smith, Horace, 48 Smith, Sydney, 56 Smith, William, 41 Taylor, Jeremy, 8, 24, 32, 39, 40, 50 Tennyson, 16, 24, 41, 45, 75, 86, 89, 91 Thackeray, 9, 46 Theophrastus, 40 Thoreau, Henry D., 28, 70, 86 Thorold, Bishop, 34, 73 Throckmorton, Allan, 10 Voltaire, 16 Warwick, 67 Washington, George, 37 Whittier, 81, 90 Wilson, Thomas, 40 Wycherley, 63 Young, 21, 71 HERE ENDS NUMBER TWELVE OF SESAME BOOKLETS TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Text in italics is surrounded with underscores: _italics_. Spelling and punctuation have been retained from the original. End of Project Gutenberg's The Golden Link of Friendship, by Various *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN LINK OF FRIENDSHIP *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. 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