Goethe's advice to young men was: "Make good thy standing place, and move the world."
No. XIX. FRIENDSHIP
Friendship is that feeling between people which leads them to trust each other entirely, to tell each other of their difficulties, hopes, and fears; to share with each other pleasures and sorrows; to help each other when need arises, even though it involves a sacrifice.
Cicero thought Friendship of so much importance in life that he wrote a treatise on it. He said: "Of all the things which wisdom provides for the happiness of a lifetime, by far the greatest is friendship." Certainly, it is a thing for which human nature seems to cry out. Lord Bacon quotes an old saying: "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." Just as we all desire to be liked rather than to be hated, so we long to have, at least, one friend to whom we can tell everything, and who will stand by us. We envy him who has many friends. We may set it down as a truth, that if we have no friends the fault lies in ourselves. There is something lacking in us, or there is some horrid thing in our character that others cannot like. Real Friendship must be based on admiration, or liking for some quality that he who is desired as a friend possesses. The boy who lacks friends, but longs for them, must search his own heart and character to see if he cannot find out what is the matter with him.
It is better to have one or two friends than to be popular with the crowd. Some boys will do anything to be popular, even to sacrificing Friendship. It is quite a common thing for boys to make themselves out to be much worse than they really are in order to gain admiration. They will pretend to be guilty of all sorts of things in order to get others to think them more daring than themselves. The worst of it is that a boy of that kind often becomes thoroughly bad at heart.
It is in the power of every one to have at least one sincere friend; if we are willing to be unselfish, to forget ourselves, and to try to help others, we can have many. There is nothing that makes the daily life so pleasant as the companionship of a friend present, or the thought of a friend absent. Cicero said: "A true friend is he who is, as it were, a second self." But, if we wish to keep our friends, we must be prepared to make sacrifices sometimes. No man ever kept a friend for a long time without occasionally doing something to prove the warmth of his feeling for that friend. Friendships are generally broken because one or the other partner turns out selfish. Boyish Friendships would be much more lasting than they are, except for the great difficulty most boys have in "giving up" to others.
If Friendship is a sacred thing, how necessary it is to use care in making a friend! It is the sign of wisdom to have many companions, but few friends. To have many companions is to knock off our own rough corners, and to teach us the principle of "give and take." In dealing with a real friend, it should be mostly "give" and very little "take." He who tries to make a friend should begin by giving his Friendship, and give it with all his heart. But if he does that to one who is morally below his own standard, the result will be disastrous. The old Romans had a saying, taken from their poet Virgil, Facilis descensus Averno est, which means that it is wonderfully easy to lower one's standard of right and wrong. The poet went on to say: "But to retrace your steps, and escape to the upper air, this is a work, this is a toil."