Friendship is the ideal, friends are the reality; reality always remains far apart from the ideal.

_Joseph Roux_

They seem to take away the sun from the world who withdraw friendship from life.

_Cicero_

You're my friend-- What a thing friendship is, world without end!

How it gives the heart and soul a stir up!

_Robert Browning_

Friendship is Love without his wings!

_Byron_

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not gla.s.s threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know.

_Emerson_

Nothing makes the earth seem so s.p.a.cious as to have friends at a distance; they make the lat.i.tudes and longitudes.

_Henry D. Th.o.r.eau_

O, weary hearts! O, slumbering eyes!

O, drooping souls, whose destinies Are fraught with fear and pain, Ye shall be loved again!

No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own.

Responds,--as if with unseen wings, An angel touched its quivering strings; And whispers, in its song, Where hast thou stayed so long?

_Longfellow_

Friendship is a word the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.

_Augustine Birrell_

Real friends are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow.

_Fenelon_

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

_Shakespeare_

Worth of Friendship

True happiness consists not in the mult.i.tude of friends, but in the worth and choice.

_Ben Jonson_

Friendship, mysterious cement of the soul, Sweetener of life, and solder of society, I owe thee much: thou hast deserv'd from me Far, far beyond what I can ever pay.

_Blair_

Not all the works of Science, Art, Or Genius in this world are worth One genuine sigh that from the heart Friendship or Love draws freshly forth.

_Thomas Moore_

Friendship always benefits, while love sometimes injures.

_Seneca_

To have a friend is to have one of the sweetest gifts that life can bring: to be a friend is to have a solemn and tender education of soul from day to day.

_Anna R. Brown_

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

_Jeremy Taylor_

True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.

_Colton_

Friendship is an order of n.o.bility; from its revelations we come more worthily into nature.

_Emerson_

Ah, how good it feels! the hand of an old friend.

_Longfellow_