The collection / 11,870 fragments

Friendship.

Explore passages mentioning friend, friends, friendship. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Reviewed editorial meanings may also connect entries to this topic; those assignments are labelled separately from word matching.

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01c. 1565 AD

But in deede, A friend is never knowne till a man have neede.

John Heywood / quote

02c. 1595 AD

Only a few industrious Scots perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on 't, in the world, than they are. And for my own part, I would a hundred thousand of them were there [Virginia]; for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here.

George Chapman / quote

03c. 1590 AD

Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent.

William Shakespeare / quote

04c. 1590 AD

This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.

William Shakespeare / quote

05c. 1590 AD

For when did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his friend?

William Shakespeare / quote

06c. 1590 AD

He that wants money, means, and content is without three good friends.

William Shakespeare / quote

07c. 1590 AD

And do as adversaries do in law,— Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.

William Shakespeare / quote

08c. 1590 AD

My friends were poor but honest.

William Shakespeare / quote

09c. 1590 AD

Call you that backing of your friends? A plague upon such backing!

William Shakespeare / quote

10c. 1590 AD

Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news Hath but a losing office, and his tongue Sounds ever after as a sullen bell, Remember'd tolling a departing friend.

William Shakespeare / quote

11c. 1590 AD

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there 's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

William Shakespeare / quote

12c. 1590 AD

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

William Shakespeare / quote

13c. 1590 AD

The world is not thy friend nor the world's law.

William Shakespeare / quote

14c. 1590 AD

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.

William Shakespeare / quote

15c. 1590 AD

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts: I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man.

William Shakespeare / quote

16c. 1590 AD

Should I have answer'd Caius Cassius so? When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous, To lock such rascal counters from his friends, Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts: Dash him to pieces!

William Shakespeare / quote

17c. 1590 AD

A friend should bear his friend's infirmities, But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.

William Shakespeare / quote

18c. 1590 AD

My way of life Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but in their stead Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

William Shakespeare / quote

19c. 1590 AD

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

William Shakespeare / quote

20c. 1590 AD

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

William Shakespeare / quote

21c. 1590 AD

And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did speak of some distressful stroke That my youth suffer'd. My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs; She swore, in faith, 't was strange, 't was passing strange. 'T was pitiful, 't was wondrous pitiful; She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd That Heaven had made her such a man; she thank'd me, And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story, And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake: She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd, And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used.

William Shakespeare / quote

22c. 1593 AD

Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things,—old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Francis Bacon / quote

23c. 1593 AD

Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, "Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone."

Francis Bacon / quote

24c. 1593 AD

Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that "We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."

Francis Bacon / quote