—Coleridge

Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.

—Emerson

Friendship is like rivers, and the strand of seas, and the air, common to all the world; but tyrants, and evil customs, wars, and want of love, have made them proper and peculiar.

—Jeremy Taylor

I hate where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

—Emerson

He who is a friend to everybody is nobody’s friend.

—Spanish Proverb

For tho’ the faults were thick as dust
Vacant chambers, I could trust
Your kindness.
—Tennyson