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For Auld Lang Syne

A Book Of Friendship

Selected by
RAY WOODWARD

Affectionately Dedicated to

My Father,
FRED E. WOODWARD.

INTRODUCTION

Friendship is essentially the same bond, whether it unites persons of intellect and refined tastes, or those more unfortunate ones, who, perhaps, have no conception of their mission in the world, or of their duty to society. Its manifestations may be wholly different, but the two friendships will have some points in common. In both instances the friends are drawn close together and are united by that bond which has been so beautifully written about throughout the ages.

The abstract theorizing of one philosopher can never satisfy the individual in regard to the varied manifestations of friendship, and it is therefore interesting and profitable to note what various writers have said about this world-wide force under the varying conditions of the past and the present. It would be a well-nigh hopeless task to attempt to gather within the compass of a single volume all that has been written about it. The present volume present some selections that express in a measure what is implied by the word Friendship.

For Auld Lang Syne

It is a noble and great thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury his weaknesses in silence, but to proclaim his virtues upon the housetop.

—South.

* * * * *

E'en as a traveller, meeting with the shade
Of some o'erhanging tree, awhile reposes,
Then leaves its shelter to pursue his way,
So men meet friends, then part with them forever.

—Hitopadesa.

* * * * *

A true friendship is as wise as it is tender.

—Thoreau.

* * * * *

As ships meet at sea—a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away upon the deep—so men meet in this world; and I think we should cross no man's path without hailing him, and if he needs, giving him supplies.

—H. W. Beecher.

* * * * *

A friend is more necessary than either fire or water.

—Proverbs.

* * * * *

A long novitiate of acquaintance should precede the vows of friendship.

—Lord Bolingbroke.

* * * * *

A beloved friend does not fill one part of the soul, but, penetrating the whole, becomes connected with all feeling.

—Channing.

* * * * *

A reverse of fortune is a mighty sifter of friendship. So is distance. Go a little way out of town, and see how many people will take the trouble to come to see you. Well, we must be patient and forbearing. It is a question of intensity of need. Friendly relations depend upon vicinity amongst other things, and there are degrees; but the best kind of friendship has a way of bridging time and space for all that.

—Haweis.

* * * * *

A female friend, amiable, clever, and devoted, is a possession more valuable than parks and palaces; and without such a muse few men can succeed in life, none be contented.

—Lord Beaconsfield.

* * * * *

A true friend embraces our objects as his own. We feel another mind bent on the same end, enjoying it, ensuring it, reflecting it, and delighting in our devotion to it.

—Channing.

* * * * *

A pretended affection is not easily distinguished from a real one, unless in seasons of distress. For adversity is to friendship what fire is to gold—the only infallible test to discover the genuine from the counterfeit. In all other cases they both have the same common marks.

—Cicero.

* * * * *

A little peaceful home bounds all my wants and wishes;
Add to this my book and friend—and this is happiness supreme.

—Montaigne.

* * * * *

A true friend is more precious to the soul than all which it inherits beneath the sun.

—Irving.

* * * * *

A friend
Welded into our life is more to us
Than twice five-thousand kinsmen, one in blood.

—Euripides.

* * * * *

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swelling of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. No receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.

—Bacon.

* * * * *

Be true to thy friend. Never speak of his faults to another, to show thy own discrimination; but open them all to him, with candor and true gentleness; forgive all his errors and his sins, be they ever so many; but do not excuse the slightest deviation from rectitude. Never forbear to dissent from a false opinion, or a wrong practice, from mistaken motives of kindness; nor seek thus to have thy own weaknesses sustained; for these things cannot be done without injury to the soul.

—Child.

* * * * *

Be admonished not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be.

—Emerson.

* * * * *

A day for toil, an hour for sport,
But for a friend life is too short.

—Emerson.

* * * * *

After a certain age a new friend is a wonder. There is the age of blossoms and sweet budding green, the age of generous summer, the autumn when the leaves drop, and then winter shivering and bare.

—Thackeray.

* * * * *

Bitter and unrelenting enemies often deserve better of us than those friends whom we are inclined to regard as pleasant companions; the former often tell us the truth, the latter never.

—Cicero.

* * * * *

Does friendship really go on to be more pain than pleasure? I doubt it, for even in its deepest sorrows there is a joy which makes ordinary pleasure a very poor, meaningless affair.

—Unknown.

* * * * *

Friendship does not spring up and grow great and become perfect all at once, but requires time and the nourishment of thoughts.

—Dante.

* * * * *

Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for friendship, for friends do not live in harmony, merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for friends to feed and clothe our bodies,—neighbors are kind enough for that,—but to do the like office to our spirits. For this, few are rich enough, however well disposed they may be.

—Thoreau.

* * * * *

A pure friendship inspires, cleanses, expands, and strengthens the soul.

—Alger.

* * * * *

A friend is he that loves, and he that is beloved.

—Hobbe.

* * * * *

Change, care, nor Time while life endure
Shall spoil our ancient friendship sure.

—Lang.

* * * * *

Every young man is the better for cherishing strong friendships with the wise and good; and he whose soul is knit to one or more chosen associates with whom he can sympathize in right aims and feelings, is thereby the better armed against temptation and confirmed in paths of virtue.

—Carlyle.

* * * * *

Believing hear, what you deserve to hear:
Your birthday, as my own, to me is dear.
Blest and distinguished days! which we should prize
The first, the kindest, bounty of the skies.
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend
Me to the world, yours gave to me a friend.

—Martial.

* * * * *

Choose for your friend him that is wise and good, and secret and just, ingenious and honest, and in those things which have a latitude, use your own liberty.

—Taylor.

* * * * *

Friendship is made up of esteem and pleasure; pity is composed of sorrow and contempt: the mind may for some time fluctuate between them, but it can never entertain both at once.

—Goldsmith.

* * * * *

Friends are much better tried in bad fortune than in good fortune.

—Aristotle.

* * * * *

Fellowship of souls does not consist in the proximity of persons. There are millions who live in close personal contact—dwell under the same roof, board at the same table, and work in the same shop—between whose minds there is scarcely a point of contact, whose souls are as far asunder as the poles; whilst, contrariwise, there are those separated by oceans and continents, ay, by the mysterious gulf that divides time from eternity, between whom there is a constant intercourse, a delightful fellowship. In truth, we have often more communion with the distant than the near.

—Dr. Thomas.

* * * * *

Friendship must live by faith and not by sight.

—Eliot.

* * * * *

Friends should not be chosen to flatter. The quality we should prize is that rectitude which will shrink from no truth. Intimacies, which increase vanity, destroy friendship.

—Channing.

* * * * *

Favors, and especially pecuniary ones, are generally fatal to friendship; for our pride will ever prompt us to lower the value of the gift by diminishing that of the donor. Ingratitude is an effort to recover our own esteem by getting rid of our esteem for our benefactor, whom we look upon as a sort of tooth-drawer, that has cured us of one pain by inflicting another.

—Smith.

* * * * *

Friendship throws a greater lustre on prosperity, while it lightens adversity by sharing in its griefs and anxieties.

—Cicero.

* * * * *

Friendship hath the skill and observation of the best physician; the diligence and vigilance of the best nurse; and the tenderness and patience of the best mother.

—Lord Clarendon.

* * * * *

Friendship! the precious gold of life
By age refined, yet ever new;
Tried in the crucible of time
It always rings of service true.

Friendship! the beauteous soul of life
Which gladdens youth and strengthens age;
May it our hearts and lives entwine
Together on life's fleeting page.

—Shaylor.

* * * * *

Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which strengthens with the setting sun of life.

—La Fontaine.

* * * * *

Friendship, love, and piety, ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence.

—Novalis.

* * * * *

Few men are calculated for that close connection which we distinguish by the name of friendship, and we well know the difference between a friend and an acquaintance.

—Sterne.

* * * * *

Friendship is the nearest thing we know to what religion is. God is love. And to make religion akin to friendship is simply to give it the highest expression conceivable by man.

—Drummond.

* * * * *

Friendship is the great chain of human society.

—Howell.

* * * * *

Friendship is an allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppressions, the sanctuary to our calamities, the counsellor of our doubts, the charity of our minds, the emission of our thoughts, the exercise and improvement of what we meditate.

—Taylor.

* * * * *

Friendship springs up from sources so subtile and undefinable, that it cannot be forced into particular channels; and whenever the attempt has been made, it has usually been unsuccessful.

—Day.

* * * * *

God wills that we have sorrows here,
And we will share it;
Whisper thy sorrow in my ear,
That I may also bear it.
If anywhere our trouble seems
To find an end,
'Tis in the fairy land of dreams,
Or with a friend.

—Tennyson.

* * * * *

Friendship is a union of spirits, a marriage of hearts, and the bond thereof virtue.

—Penn.

* * * * *

Friendship that makes the least noise is very often the most useful; for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one.

—Addison.

* * * * *

Friendship, like love, is but a name
Unless to one you stint the flame.
The child, whom many fathers share,
Hath seldom known a father's care.
'Tis thus in friendships; who depends
On many, rarely finds a friend.

—Gay.

* * * * *

Friend is a word of royal tone;
Friend is a poem all alone.

—From the Persian.

* * * * *

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. It is well worth while to learn how to win the heart of man the right way. Force is of no use to make or preserve a friend, who is an animal that is never caught and tamed but by kindness and pleasure. Excite them by your civilities, and show them that you desire nothing more than their satisfaction; oblige with all your soul that friend who has made you a present of his own.

—Socrates.

* * * * *

He who gives pleasure, meets with it; kindness is the bond of friendship, and the book of love; he who sows not, reaps not.

* * * * *

Friendship is the holiest of gifts,
God can bestow nothing more sacred upon us!
It enhances every joy, mitigates every pain.
Everyone can have a friend
Who himself knows how to be a friend.

—Teidge.

* * * * *

In this respect friendship is superior to relationship, because from relationship benevolence can be withdrawn, and from friendship it cannot; for with the withdrawal of benevolence the very name of friendship is done away, while that of relationship remains.

—Cicero.

* * * * *

I want a warm and faithful friend,
To cheer the adverse hour;
Who ne'er to flatter will descend,
Nor bend the knee to power.
A friend to chide me when I'm wrong,
My inmost soul to see;
And that my friendship prove as strong
To him as his to me.

—Adams.

* * * * *

Friendship's true laws are by this rule expressed,
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

—Pope.

* * * * *

Human spirits are only to be drawn together and held together by the living bond of having found something in which they really do agree.

—Greenwell.

* * * * *

He has the substance of all bliss
To whom a virtuous friend is given:
So sweet harmonious friendship is,
Add but eternity, you'll make it heaven.

—Norris.

* * * * *

He who wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more and ever bears about
A silent court of justice in his breast.

—Tennyson.

* * * * *

Hearts only thrive on varied good,
And he who gathers from a host
Of friendly hearts his daily food,
Is the best friend that we can boast.

—Holland.

* * * * *

I exhort you to lay the foundations of virtue, without which friendship cannot exist, in such a manner that, with this one exception, you may consider that nothing in the world is more excellent than friendship.

—Cicero.

* * * * *

It is a beautiful thing to feel that our friends are God's gifts to us. Thinking of it has made me understand why we love and are loved, sometimes when we cannot explain what causes the feeling. Feeling so makes friendship such a sacred, holy thing!

—Porter.

* * * * *

If my brother, or kinsman, will be my friend, I ought to prefer him before a stranger; or I show little duty or nature to my parents.

And as we ought to prefer our kindred in point of affection, so, too, in point of charity, if equally needing and deserving.

—Penn.

* * * * *

It is equally impossible to forget our friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we begin to keep them company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends that we may go out and meet their ideal cousins!

—Thoreau.

* * * * *

I must feel pride in my friend's accomplishments as if they were mine—wild, delicate, throbbing property in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised as the lover when he hears applause of his engaged maiden.

—Emerson.

* * * * *

In very many cases of friendship, or what passes for it, the old axiom is reversed, and like clings to unlike more than to like.

—Dickens.

* * * * *

Hearts are linked to hearts by God. The friend on whose fidelity you can count, whose success in life flushes your cheek with honest satisfaction, whose triumphant career you have traced and read with a heart throbbing almost as if it were a thing alive, for whose honor you would answer as for your own; that friend, given to you by circumstances over which you have no control, was God's own gift.

—Robertson.

* * * * *

If thou neglect thy love to thy neighbor, in vain thou professest thy love to God.

—Quarles.

* * * * *

I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in particular, without a catalogue for my friends; nor request a happiness, wherein my sociable disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbor.

—Browne.

* * * * *

It's an owercome sooth for age an' youth
And it brooks wi' nae denial,
That the dearest friends are the auldest friends
And the young are just on trial.

There's a rival bauld wi' young an' auld
And it's him that has bereft me;
For the surest friends are the auldest friends
And the maist o' mine hae left me.

There are kind hearts still, for friends to fill
And fools to take and break them;
But the nearest friends are the auldest friends
And the grave's the place to seek them.

—Stevenson.

* * * * *

God divided man into men that they might help each other.

—Seneca.

* * * * *

I sometimes hear my friends complain finely that I do not appreciate their fineness. I shall not tell them whether I do or not. As if they expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing which they uttered or did! Who knows but it was finely appreciated? It may be that your silence was the finer thing of the two…. In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. Then there can never be an explanation.

—Thoreau.

* * * * *

It is a friendly heart that has plenty of friends.

—Thackeray.

* * * * *

It is not becoming to turn from friends in adversity, but then it is for those who have basked in the sunshine of their prosperity to adhere to them. No one was ever so foolish as to select the unfortunate for their friends.

—Lucanus.

* * * * *

It is essential to friendship that there be no labor to pass for more than we are, no effort, no anxiety to hide! If anything be concealed, the constant intercourse of friends will discover it, and one discovery will produce others. The idea that the heart has one secret fold extinguishes affection.

—Channing.

* * * * *

Impatient and uncertain lovers think that they must say or do something kind whenever they meet; they must never be cold. But they who are friends do not do what they think they must, but what they must. Even their friendship is, in one sense, a sublime phenomenon to them.

—Thoreau.

* * * * *

It is a good and safe rule to sojourn in many places, as if you meant to spend your life there, never omitting an opportunity of doing a kindness or speaking a true word or making a friend.

—Ruskin.

* * * * *

It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with the poor fact that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet…. It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited.

—Emerson.

* * * * *

In the cause of friendship brave all dangers.

—Dickens.

* * * * *

Kindness given and received aright and knitting two hearts into one is a thing of heaven, as rare in this world as a perfect love; both are the overflow of only very rare and beautiful souls.

—Balzac.

* * * * *

Kindred passions and pursuits are the natural groundwork of friendship. Real friendship is of slow growth, and never thrives, unless ingrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.

—Chesterfield.

* * * * *

Let this, therefore, be established as a primary law concerning friendship, that we expect from our friends only what is honorable, and for our friends' sake do what is honorable; that we should not wait till we are asked; that zeal be ever ready, and reluctance far from us.

—Cicero.

* * * * *

Let Friendship's accents cheer our doubtful way,
And Love's pure planet lend its guiding ray,—
Our tardy Art shall wear an angel's wings,
And life shall lengthen with the joy it brings!

—Holmes.

* * * * *

I am not of that feather, to shake off my friend when most he needs me.

—Shakespeare.

* * * * *

Let the honor of thy friend be as dear unto thee as thy own.

—The Talmud.

* * * * *

Life to be rich and fertile must be reinforced with friendship. It is the sap that preserves from blight and withering; it is the sunshine that beckons on the blossoming and fruitage; it is the starlight dew that perfumes life with sweetness and besprinkles it with splendor; it is the music-tide that sweeps the soul, scattering treasures; it is the victorious and blessed leader of integrity's forlorn hope; it is the potent alchemy that transmutes failure into success; it is the hidden manna that nourishes when all other sustenance fails; it is the voice that speaks to hopes all dead, "Because I live, ye shall live also." For the loftiest friendships have no commercial element in them: they are founded on disinterestedness and sacrifices. They neither expect nor desire a return for gift or service. Amid the tireless breaking of the billows on the shores of experience, there is no surer anchorage than a friendship that "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things."

—Cooper.

* * * * *

It is one of the wretchednesses of the great that they have no approved friends. Kings are the most solitary beings on earth.

—Channing.

* * * * *

Many kinds of fruit grow upon the tree of life, but none so sweet as friendship.

—Larcom.

* * * * *

My treasures are my friends.

—Constantius.

* * * * *

Life should be fortified by many friendships.

—Smith.

* * * * *

Love begins with love; and there is no passing from firm friendship to even feeble love.

—La Bruyere.

* * * * *

Live not without a friend; the Alpine rock must own
Its mossy grace or else be nothing but a stone.

—Story.

* * * * *

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.

—Emerson.

* * * * *

Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold,
Brow may wrinkle, hair grows grey:
True friendship never knows decay.

—Anon.

* * * * *

Oh, the comfort—the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person—having neither to weigh thought nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

—Muloch.

* * * * *

O matchless wisdom; those seem to take the sun out of the world who remove friendship from the pleasures of life: than which we have received nothing better or more pleasant from the gods.