The quote database

it is in regard to friendship, as in so many other things, so supple and sensitive that it expands, so to speak, at a friend's good fortune, contracts at his misfortunes

For them all is suspicion and anxiety; for them there is no possibility of friendship.

Such friendship enhances prosperity, and relieves adversity of its burden by halving and sharing it.

In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self.

Affected of course I am by the loss of a friend as I think there will never be again, such as I can fearlessly say there never was before.

Fire and water themselves, to use a common expression, are not of more universal use than friendship.

a man should, at the first approaches, favour their grief and express some approbation of their sorrow

There is nothing to which nature seems so much to have inclined us, as to society

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.

We sought one another long before we met, and by the characters we heard of one another

Moreover men commonly deceive themselves in respect of the love which they imagine others bear them, nor can ever be sure of it until they have put it to the proof.

a prince should entrust his friends with so much authority only as leaves a certain interval between his position and theirs

The result of it all may be summed up in his favourite motto, “Be kind, for every one is fighting a hard battle.”

Whereas having many friends puts people apart and severs and disunites them, by transferring and shifting the tie of friendship too frequently, and does not admit of a mixture and welding of goodwill by the diffusing and compacting of intimacy.

intimacy is the full enjoyment of friendship, and most pleasant is companying with and spending the day with a friend

Might not someone jeer at us in the same way, as being afraid, when we have not yet one firm friendship, that we shall without knowing it fall upon an abundance of friends?

not to find friends at a time when you want them is hard, as also not to be able to exchange an inconstant and bad friend for a constant and good one

a friend should be like money tried before being required, not found faulty in our need

Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted!

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.

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.

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 higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood.