Proverb Lore / Many sayings, wise or otherwise, on many subjects, gleaned from many sources

by F. Edward Hulme

An old adage says, "Leave jesting ere it ceaseth to please"; while another warns us that "A joke never gains over an enemy, but often loses a friend."[217:A] Some folk have a bantering manner that is disastrous, and if not held sternly in check will presently turn a warm-hearted friendship into indifference and repulsion.

The part of the candid friend is a very difficult one; nothing short of transparent honesty and abounding sympathy will make it possible. "Few there are," says the adage, "that will endure a true friend"; while another runs, "I will be thy friend, but not thy vice's friend," but we should imagine that the recipient would scarcely take kindly to such a remark. "Better a little chiding than a great deal of heart-break," but few can bear it. On the other hand, "Toleration should spring from our charity, and not from our indifference." "Reproach is usually honest—the same cannot always be said of praise"; but the happiest proverb is, "Charity is greater than all." Those who live their lives in the light of that will need no lessons in the art of friendship, but will be already in the midst of friends, and themselves of that happy company.

Some people's notion of acquaintance seems to be what they can get out of it, and though they talk freely of "my friend," such folk have little notion of friendship. The following proverbs, though not exclusively theirs, point to this state of mind: "A friend in need is a friend indeed," "Short reckonings make long friends," "The begging of a courtesy is selling of liberty," "He is not charitable that will not be so privately," "Lenders have better memories than borrowers," "He is my friend that succoureth me, not he that pitieth me," "Promises may get friends, but performance keeps them," "He that gives his heart will not deny his money," "He loseth his thanks who promiseth and delayeth." Chaucer, in the "Romant of the Rose," writes:

"Soth to saie
Of him that loueth trew and well
Frendship is more than is cattell,
For frend in Court aie better is
Then penny in purse certis";

while one of our old proverbs declares, "As a man is friended, so the law is ended." This seems to imply that in the case of the man who has friends on the bench Justice will be a little blinder than usual, but it is evident that an unknown and friendless culprit must necessarily start under a disadvantage.

The following proverbs we see we have classed in our rough notes as pertaining to "friends you have not proved,"[219:A] and this classification may very well stand. It includes such sayings as "Friends got without desert will be lost without cause," "A friend is never known till one have need," "Before you make a friend eat a bushel of salt with him." Heywood seems to have got very near to the root of the matter in these lines of his:

"Many kinsfolke and few friends, some folke say:
But I find many kinsfolke and friend not one.
Folke say it hath been sayd many yeares since gone
Prove thy friend ere thou hast neede: but in deede
A friend is never knone till a man have neede.
Before I had neede my most present foes
Seemed my best friends, but thus the world goes."

The experience, we suppose, of all men, if ever this testing time really comes, is a twofold surprise—how entirely some they had trusted failed them, and how splendidly others came out of whom it was not expected.

Seneca declares that "Our happiness depends upon the choice of our company," and we may, we suppose, take it that we all of us get about such friends as we deserve. "Our friends are the mirror in which we see ourselves." Other excellent adages pertaining to friendship are these: "Be slow in choosing a friend, slower yet in changing";[219:B] "Friendship multiplies joy and divides grief"; "Wherever you see your friend trust yourself"; "The way to have a friend is to be one"; "Hearts may agree though heads differ"; "Wise and good men are friends, others are but companions"; "Search thy friend for his virtues, thyself for thy faults"; "Love sought is good, but given unsought is better"; "God divideth man into men, that so they may help each other"; "A man is valued as he makes himself valuable." The Spaniards declare that "Eggs of an hour, bread of a day, wine of a year, a friend of thirty years, are best."

"The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel";