26
Whereas in friendship, 'tis a general and universal fire, but temperate and equal, a constant established heat, all gentle and smooth, without poignancy or roughness.
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Attribution
27
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.
28
In love there is no first nor last!
29
The result of it all may be summed up in his favourite motto, “Be kind, for every one is fighting a hard battle.”
Platomisattributed·“Ian Maclaren”: The Life of the Rev. John Watson, D.D., by W. Robertson Nicoll·1908
Wrongly attributed
Attributed to Plato constantly, and to Philo of Alexandria almost as often; it is in neither. The words belong to John Watson, a Liverpool Presbyterian minister who wrote fiction as Ian Maclaren, and they are recorded here by his biographer and editor as his favourite motto. The popular form has been smoothed twice over: every one has become everyone you meet, and the earliest circulating version of the motto is not kind at all but pitiful, in the older sense of full of pity. Nothing in the record puts any form of it before the 1890s.
30
intimacy is the full enjoyment of friendship, and most pleasant is companying with and spending the day with a friend
31
Whereas among real friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is superior.
32
Only in love are unity and duality not at variance.
33
The soul environs itself with friends that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.
34
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.
35
Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own.
36
To disappoint a friend is unpleasing; and he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed.
37
Think only when you see me, that you see a man who loves you, and is proud and glad that you love him.
38
One good turn deserves another.
39
Where there is great love there are always miracles.
40
Friendships are frequently taken up on some sudden sympathy, and we see only as much as we please of one another's characters afterwards.