Inspirational and Insightful Quotations #74 - Friendship

Friendship is something more than a name. Deep within the recesses of the heart lie emotions which only need to be warmed into life by contact with kindred spirits. One realizes the true nobility of his nature. The intellectual and moral functions are brought into healthful action. Kind feelings—that earnest desire to benefit his fellows—belong to true friendship. We learn to look upon our fellow man, not as one who can be used to advantage, but as one who has claims upon our sympathy and regard. Shun moroseness, jealousy and suspicion—and cultivate courtesy, affability and frankness. Now the heart, thus alive to the gentle feelings—thus full of love and mercy—must be possessed also of charity. Charity looks abroad upon the whole human family—and recognizes all as brethren. Charity looks to the moral as well as the physical improvements of man, seeks to clothe him with the armor of righteousness, to present him with the shield of virtue. Charity desires man’s intellectual advancement and strives to raise him from the degraded condition to which sin has reduced him, and to elevate him nearer to that state of perfection in which he was originally created. Mildness of demeanor should ever mark his conduct—purity of heart his daily life. Wisdom imparts fresh vigor to the soul and supports it amid difficulties. True wisdom [is] that knowledge of God which brings forth the fruits of a righteous and holy life. The incense of prayer and praise is doubly fragrant when perfumed by deeds of benevolence and kindness. Oh how much we all need a brother’s helping hand!

---William H. Minor, New York Daily Tribune, New York, N.Y., Dec. 28, 1850.

The seven laws of friendship are: 1. Moral sincerity. 2. Likeness of personality, that is, much overlapping of tastes. 3. Complimentary personality, sufficient unlikeness to give a zest and flavor to friendship. 4. Community of experience. What friends have lived through together is a bond that holds tight. 5. Growth. Friendship is not static; it must be wooed afresh every day. 6. Loyalty. Not only a faithful recognition of the bonds already established, but also a sincerity and an absence of pretense. There must needs be succession of growing comradeships for every growing life. It is folly to blow the ashes of a dead fire and pretend to be warmed. 7. Independence of personality. To be worthy of a great friendship you must be able to do without it.

---Edward Howard Griggs, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Va., May 14, 1916.

Friendship commences with our lives, grows with our growth and spreads through all our conversation and conduct. Friendship intermingles with almost every action we perform, subjugating our harshness to the controlling influences of kindness and love.

Friendship has been the guiding hand that has ever led the sons through the dust of ages, invigorating the weak, stimulating the faint, and encouraging the downcast, careworn, footsore pilgrims as he gropes his way through darkness and doubt, in search of fraternal peace, which along can fill the great immensity of our beings.

Friendship is the hand that lifts the burden from the shoulders of our grief-stricken brother, snatching him from the grasp of greed and robbery, and then leads him safely to the Inn of Rest, Food and Safety.

Friendship minimizes the faults of a neighbor, overlooks his shortcomings, and forgives his sins; enlarges his merits, praises his good deeds, and multiplies his good intentions by the highest number of his environed conditions and birth-given capabilities.

Friendship floors, walls and roofs the house for the homeless, plows, sows and reaps the harvest that supplies the table for the widow and orphan, ever detailing a true interpretation of the law of love, its mission to humanity, defined in the golden rule, “As ye would that others should do to you, do ye even also to them.”

Friendship is the key that unlocks the shackles that bind the helpless poor to the stake of torture, and liberates body, soul and spirit and sets the downtrodden, discouraged captive free.

Friendship divinely weds itself to love.
Friendship is a cement of the soul, uniting with an unbreakable strength.

---Bob Killgore, Howarden Independent, Howarden, Iowa, May 2, 1912.

This we all know, who hold deep within us the friendships of those who are living in larger life, that love can never die, that affection enlarges despite the decays of time and grave and that something of the self which is the basis of friendship is eternal.

This sense of the persistence of friendship is more than a state of feeling; it is the first flower of immortality; it is the eternal and divine in us answering to the eternal and divine in lives that have been loosed from our limitations. It has nothing to do with alleged communications from the other world. It is the deep, abiding and strengthening sense that the web of love cannot be cut by the keen edge of death, that friendships abide through all, that love is immortal and loving the measures and our immortality.

No wonder the immortal hope burns low when unfed by this secret supply; no wonder men doubt the future, when their hearts find no vital contact with its life, when they must depend on what the head may reason from analyses and probabilities.

---Henry F. Cope, Flesherton Advance, Flesherton, Ontario, Canada, Dec.10, 1908.

Friendship is the sacred tie that binds all humanity into one family, with common interests and affections. It is human to have a few trusted friends and to regard the balance of the world as pieces of common clay. It is divine to magnify the good in others and to bind humanity into one common bond of friendship. Continuously beholding mankind as the image of good destroys the thought of evil in others and is the only basis upon which universal friendship can be established. There is enough of good in every man to entitle him to one’s personal friendship. It is also possible to establish universal friendship. That is a matter that is not complicated with the world at large as we see it, but is a matter for each individual conscience to handle for itself.

It has been said that we admire most in others what we possess the least of. That may be true if the virtues of life are meant. The human mind is so constituted that it feeds upon the thoughts of others. It may be said to tire of one food and it likes to come in contact with different aspirations, hopes and virtues of others. In this demand for variety comes the necessity of different associated and different amusements. While light literature or a companionable friend is needed at one time, music or a touch of science is restful at another.

---John F. Easley, Daily Ardmoreite, Ardmore, Okla., April 11, 1915.

Friendship is a reciprocal relationship. It must give as well as take. It finds immense happiness in the sheer joy of serving unselfishly. This is not an easy task. It is not always productive of visible values. It is frequently met by ingratitude, selfishness and distrust. Hence, it is often a discouraging experience and, unless persisted in from well-founded motives, is likely to be abandoned.

---John N. Borton, Buffalo Evening News, Buffalo, N.Y., Dec. 12, 1927.

Life has no greater prize than friendship. The man who has one true friend that will stand by him in adversity has made a high and deep success of life.

---William T. Ellis, Binghamton Press, Binghamton, N.Y., Jan. 25, 1918.

The ideal friendship is one which unites friendship and service.

---DeWitt Long, Omaha Daily Bee, Omaha, Neb., May 20, 1901.

If we may know a man by the company he keeps we may also know him by the men who will not keep company with him.

---Daniel H. Tuttle, The Progressive Farmer, Winston, N.C., April 14, 1896.

Noble, self-sacrificing friendship shines brightest in adversity’s hour and makes a brother’s happiness and interests his own; and love, which is the quintessence, the fruit of friendship; and truth, which is felt by the heart, sanctioned of the conscience and embodied in every act of life.

---J.O. Harris, Ottawa Free Trader, Ottawa, Ill., May 4, 1867.

True, genuine friendship prompts a good action from the high and noble motive of doing good.

---H.T. Johnson, Memphis Daily Appeal, Memphis, Tenn., Aug. 19, 1875.

Friendship exemplifies brotherhood in its truest, purest, most heroic and self-sacrificing phases of human life. It signifies aid, kindness, benevolence, charity and amicable assistance.

---J.N. Pickering, Colfax Gazette, Colfax, Wash., May 4, 1900.

Don’t buy your friends. They never last as long as those you make yourself.

---Sam S. Stimson, McBride’s Magazine, Philadelphia, Pa., July 1913.