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  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:

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End of Project Gutenberg's The Golden Link of Friendship, by Various