Enmity is unhappily a much more active principle than friendship.
Save me from my friends!
An ejaculation often called forth by the indiscreet zeal which damages a man's cause whilst professing to serve it. The full form of the proverb—"God save me from my friends, I will save myself from my enemies"—is almost obsolete amongst us, but is found in most languages of the continent, and is applied to false friends. Bacon tells us that "Cosmos, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends that we read we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read we ought to forgive our friends."
A full purse never lacked friends.
An empty purse does not easily find one. To say that "The best friends are in the purse" (German),[188] is, perhaps, putting the matter a little too strongly; but, at all events, "Let us have florins, and we shall find cousins" (Italian).[189] "The rich man does not know who is his friend."[190] This Gascon proverb may be taken in a double sense: the rich man's friends are more than he can number; he cannot be sure of the sincerity of any of them. "He who is everybody's friend is either very poor or very rich" (Spanish).[191] "Now that I have a ewe and a lamb everybody says to me, 'Good day, Peter'" (Spanish).[192] Everybody looks kindly on the thriving man.
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
But, as such friends are rare, the Scotch proverb counsels not amiss,—
Try your friend afore ye need him.
On the other hand, "He that would have many friends should try few of them" (Italian).[193] "Let him that is wretched and beggared try everybody, and then his friend" (Italian).[194]