From the Heart of
a Friend

Selected By
AMY ADDINGLEY

New York
THE PLATT & PECK CO.

PREFACE.

There is something in the very name of FRIEND that quickens the pulse and warms the heart. The most beautiful relationship in human intercourse is friendship, and it is at once the easiest and most difficult of attainment. In friendship’s name much is endured, much attempted and many sacrifices are made, and the greatest happiness is gained. Friends may come and go with the passing years, but the sweet memory of friendship’s happy hour remains.

Deliberate long before thou consecrate a friend; and when thy impartial judgment concludes him worthy of thy bosom, receive him joyfully and entertain him wisely; impart thy secrets boldly, and mingle thy thought with his; he is thy very self; and use him so. If thou firmly believe him faithful, thou makest him so.

—Quarles.

In the hours of distress and misery, the eyes of every mortal turn to friendship. In the hour of gladness and conviviality, what is your want? It is friendship. When the heart overflows with gratitude, or with any other sweet and sacred sentiment, what is the word to which it would give utterance? A Friend.

—Landor.

A man’s best female friend is a wife of good sense and good heart, whom he loves, and who loves him. If he have that, he need not seek elsewhere. But supposing the man be without such a helpmate, female friendship he must have, or his intellect will be without a garden, and there will be many an unheeded gap even in its strongest fence.

—Lytton.

After friendship it is confidence; before friendship it is judgment.

—Seneca.

A friend is a person before whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.

—Emerson.

A faithful friend is the true image of the Deity.

—Napoleon.

A friend cannot be known in prosperity, and an enemy cannot be hidden in adversity.

True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come without invitation.

A friend may be often found and lost, but an old friend can never be found, and nature has provided that he cannot be easily lost.

—Jonson.

A friend is he who sets his heart upon us, is happy with us, and delights in us; and does for us what we want, is willing and fully engaged to do all he can for us, on whom we can rely in all cases.

—Channing.

A friendship will be young after the lapse of half a century; a passion is old at the end of three months.

Ah, were I sever’d from thy side,

Where were thy friend, and who my guide?

Years have not seen—Time shall not see

The hour that tears my soul from thee.

—Byron.

Although a friend may remain faithful in misfortune, yet none but the very best and loftiest will remain faithful to us after our errors and our sins.

—Farrar.

Friendship is the greatest bond in the world.

—Taylor.

A man should not repudiate the friendship of a woman because it may lead to harm; he should cherish the friendship and beware of the harm.

—Alger.

A man’s reputation is what his friends say about him. His character is what his enemies say about him.

—Unknown.

A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends, and that the most liberal profession of good will is very far from being the surest mark of it.

—Washington.

A woman, if she really be your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor, repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing, for a woman friend desires to be proud of you. At the same time her constitutional timidity makes her more cautious than your male friend. She therefore seldom counsels you to do an imprudent thing.

—Lytton.

A true test of friendship: to sit or walk with a friend for an hour in perfect silence without wearying of one another’s company.

—Mulock.

Always leave my friend something more to be desired of me. Be useful to my friend, as far as he permits, and no further. Be much occupied with my own affairs, and little, very little, with those of my friend. Leave my friend always at liberty to think and act for himself, especially in matters of little importance.

—Gold Dust.

And thou, my friend, whose gentle love

Yet thrills my bosom’s chords,

How much thy friendship was above

Description’s power of words!

—Byron.

As o’er the glacier’s frozen sheet

Breathes soft the Alpine rose,

So, through life’s desert springing sweet,

The flower of friendship grows.

—Holmes.

A faithful friend, best boon of Heaven,

Unto some favored mortal given;

Though still the same, yet varying still,

Our each successive wants to fill,

Whatever form his presence wears

That presence every form endears.

—Williams.

As people grow older friends and associates of youth are apt to be more appreciated, and old relations are oftentimes resumed that have been suffered to languish for many years.

These links with the past form a chain that, next to the ties of blood, forms one of the strongest relations of social life.

Although pessimists declare that friendship is a myth and what are called intimates are people who consort together for amusement or self-interest, the very fact that there is this feeling of especial kindness for old time associates proves that there is such a thing as sentiment independent of worldly considerations.

—Unknown.

Every friend is to the other a sun and a sunflower also. He attracts and follows.

—Richter.

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 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.

Beware lest thy friend learn to tolerate one frailty of thine, and so an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love.

—Thoreau.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

—Franklin.

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.

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which concern yourself; his counsel may then be useful, where your own self-love might impair your judgment.

—Seneca.

Constant and solid, whom no storms can shake,

Nor death unfix, a right friend ought to be;

And if condemned to survive, doth make

No second choice, but grief and memory.

But friendship’s best fate is, when it can spend

A life, a fortune, all to serve a friend.

—Philips.

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

—Stowe.

Commend me to the friend that comes

When I am sad and lone,

And makes the anguish of my heart

The suffering of his own;

Who calmly shuns the glittering throng

At pleasure’s gay levee,

And comes to gild a sombre hour

And gives his heart to me.

Commend me to that generous heart

Which, like the pine on high,

Uplifts the same unvarying brow

To every change of sky;

Whose friendship does not fade away

When wintry tempests blow,

But like the winter’s icy crown,

Looks greener through the snow.

He flits not with the flitting stork

That seeks a southern sky,

But lingers where the wounded bird

Hath laid him down to die.

Oh, such a friend he is in truth,

Whate’er his lot may be,

A rainbow on the storm of life,

An anchor on its sea.

—Anon.

Choose your friend wisely,

Test your friend well,

True friends, like rarest gems,

Prove hard to tell.

Winter him, summer him,

Know your friend well.

—Unknown.

Dear to me is a friend, yet I can also make use of an enemy; the friend shows me what I can do, the foe teaches me what I should.

—Schiller.

Don’t flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.

—Holmes.

Everything that is mine, even to my life, I may give to one I love; but the secret of my friend is not mine to give.

—Sidney.

Every One that flatters thee

Is no friend in misery.

Words are easy, like the wind;

Faithful friends are hard to find.

Every man will be thy friend

Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend.

—Shakespeare.

Friendship, peculiar boon of heaven,

The noble mind’s delight and pride,

To men and angels only given,

To all the lower world denied.

Thy gentle flows of guiltless joys

On fools and villains ne’er descend;

In vain for thee the tyrant sighs,

And hugs a flatterer for a friend.

Nor shall thine ardours cease to glow

When souls to peaceful climes remove;

What rais’d our virtue here below

Shall aid our happiness above.

—Jonson.

Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship never.

Friendship is love without its flowers or veil.

Friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.

—Bacon.

Friendship is to be valued for what there is in it, not what can be gotten out of it. When two people appreciate each other because each has found the other convenient to have around, they are not friends, they are simply acquaintances with a business understanding. To seek friendship for its utility is as futile as to seek the end of a rainbow for its bag of gold. A true friend is always useful in the highest sense; but we should beware of thinking of our friends as brother members of a mutual benefit association, with its periodical demands and threats of suspension for non-payment of dues.

Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;

Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O! the joys, that came down shower-like,

Of Friendship, Love and Liberty.

—Coleridge.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it we value more when it is regained; but that which has been lost until it is forgotten will be found at last with little gladness, and with still less if a substitute has supplied the place.

—Jonson.

Far from the eyes, far from the heart, say the vulgar. Believe nothing of it; if it was so, the farther you were distant from me the cooler my love for you would be; whilst on the contrary the less I can enjoy your presence, the more the desire of that pleasure burns in the soul of your friend.

—St. Anselm.

Female friendship, indeed, is to a man the bulwark, sweetener, ornament, of his existence. To his mental culture it is invaluable; without it all his knowledge of books will never give him knowledge of the world.

—Montaigne.

Friendship is rarer than love and more enduring.

—Taylor.

Friends require to be advised and reproved, and such treatment, when it is kindly, should be taken in a friendly spirit.

—Cicero.

Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of each other.

—Addison.

Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon earth, it is for fellowship’s sake that ye do them.

—Morris.

If you have a friend worth loving,

Love him. Yes, and let him know

That you love him, ere life’s evening

Tinge his brow with sunset glow;

Why should good words ne’er be said

Of a friend till he is dead?

—Unknown.

Has fortune frowned? Her frowns were vain;

For hearts like ours she could not chill!

Have friends proved false? Their love might wane,

But ours grew fonder, firmer still.

—Watts.

He who serves and seeks for gain,

And follows but for form,

Will pack when it begins to rain,

And leave thee in the storm.

—Shakespeare.

He that hath no friend and no enemy is one of the vulgar, and without talents, power, or energy.

—Lavater.

Happy the man whose life is spent in friendship’s calm security.

—Aeschylus.

Friend is a word of royal tone;

Friend is a poem all alone.

—From the Persian.

How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude,

But grant me still a friend in my retreat,

Whom I may whisper—solitude is sweet.

—Cowper.

Hand grasps hand, eye lights eye, in good Friendship. And great hearts expand and grow one in the sense of this world’s life.

—Browning.

How few are there born with souls capable of friendship. Then how much fewer must there be capable of love, for love includes friendship and much more besides!

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has an enemy will meet him everywhere.

I could not live without the love of my friends.

—Keats.

I awake this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

—Emerson.

I find no place that does not breathe

Some gracious memory of my friend.

—Tennyson.

From the Heart ofa Friend

PREFACE.

From the Heart of
a Friend