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The collection / 353 fragments

Friendship.

Explore passages mentioning friend, friends, friendship. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Editorial meanings and lexical matches are discovery aids, not independent authentication of a quotation.

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Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

353 results · Page 12 of 15Play this collection ▷
01c. 1842 AD
I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best; and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.... In the morning I awake, and find the old world, wife, babes and mother, Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old devil not far off. If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway.
Ralph Waldo Emerson / quote
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02c. 1842 AD
The law of the table is beauty, a respect to the common soul of the guests. Everything is unreasonable which is private to two or three, or any portion of the company. Tact never violates for a moment this law; never intrudes the orders of the house, the vices of the absent, or a tariff of expenses, or professional privacies; as we say, we never "talk shop" before company. Lovers abstain from caresses, and haters from insults, while they sit in one parlor with common friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson / quote
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03In print by 1893 AD
A drop of honey catches more flies than a hogshead of vinegar.
Traditional proverb · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: A considerate approach can win cooperation more readily than a sour or hostile one. Honey and vinegar contrast inviting and repellent manners, rather than offering a literal rule about catching insects.

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04In print by 1893 AD
A friend in court makes the process short.
Traditional proverb · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: Someone familiar with a decision-making process may help another person navigate it more quickly. The saying can describe useful guidance, but it also invites questions about favouritism and unequal access.

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06In print by 1893 AD
A friend to everybody is a friend to nobody.
Traditional proverb · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: Trying to please everyone can make personal loyalty seem shallow or unreliable. The saying questions indiscriminate promises of friendship, without establishing that a welcoming person cannot maintain sincere relationships with many others.

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07In print by 1893 AD
Before you trust a man, eat a peck of salt with him.
Traditional proverb · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: Trust is developed through time and shared experience rather than a first impression alone. Eating a large quantity of salt together stands for repeated ordinary encounters in which reliability can become clearer.

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08In print by 1857 AD
A table friend is changeable.
Traditional (French-language collection) · Unknown culture / proverb

Meaning: A companion drawn mainly by hospitality may not remain dependable when the benefits end. Sharing a table alone does not establish lasting friendship.

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11c. 1790 AD
He considered the idea as a thing of the mind, that had, it is true, no reality, but still, on passing away, left a residuum—a caput mortuum—to which some reality could not be altogether refused. We may think this a very perverse and material notion; but when he entertained his friends with the neverending consequences of his life and actions, in full belief and confidence in them, he expressed himself quite differently. Then, indeed, he was ready to admit that life produces life; that a fruitful act has effects to all time. He took pleasure in confessing that he had given a great impulse, a new direction, to the course of the world's affairs.
Goethe / quote
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18c. 1872 AD
Sympathy Stronger Than Suffering.—There are cases when sympathy is stronger than actual suffering. For instance, we are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves. For one thing, we have more faith in the purity of his character than he has himself; then our love for him, probably on account of this very faith, is stronger than his love for himself. And even if his egoism suffers more thereby than our egoism, inasmuch as it has to bear more of the bad consequences of his fault, the un-egoistic in us—this word is not to be taken too seriously, but only as a modification of the expression—is more deeply wounded by his guilt than is the un-egoistic in him.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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20c. 1872 AD
The Writings of Acquaintances and Their Readers.—We read the writings of our acquaintances (friends and enemies) in a double sense, inasmuch as our perception constantly whispers, "That is something of himself, a remembrance of his inward being, his experiences, his talents," and at the same time another kind of perception endeavours to estimate the profit of the work in itself, what valuation it merits apart from its author, how far it will enrich knowledge. These two manners of reading and estimating interfere with each other, as may naturally be supposed. And a conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends.
Friedrich Nietzsche / quote
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