Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Friends
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A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no otherlaw nor kindness.
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Our actual Friends are but distant relations of those to whom we are pledged.
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The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.
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The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?
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Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers.
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There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains itsmaxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants.
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There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
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The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
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I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified.
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We never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.
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Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.
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One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then
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At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.
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The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
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I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.
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To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
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For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant.It is suicide, and corrupts good manners, to welcome any less than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not dispense with your company.
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Nothing but great antiquity can make graveyards interesting to me. I have no friends there.
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It is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we beginto keep them company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
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Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail.... It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act.
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What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not often transfigured and translated by love in each other's presence. I do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man.
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My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.
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I often accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we donot teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual; however, for we do not habitually demand any more of each other.
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It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest Friend. We may bid him farewell forever sooner than complain, for our complaint is too well grounded to be uttered.
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While my friend was my friend, he flattered me, and I never heard the truth from him. When he became my enemy, he shot it to me on a poisoned arrow.
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