Размышления великих людей о дружбе
Шрифт:
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.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.