September 26

“By friendship I mean, the greatest love and the greatest usefulness, and the most open communication, and the noblest sufferings, and the most exemplary faithfulness, and the severest truth, and the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of mind, of which brave men and women are capable.”

JEREMY TAYLOR

“I love to think that Christian friendships may be part of the business of eternity.”

Dr ARNOLD

“Beyond all wealth, honour, or even health, is the attachment we form to noble souls; because to become one with the good, generous, and true, is to become in a measure, good, generous, and true ourselves.”

Dr ARNOLD

September 25

“But still higher in Him was that intense sensibility to human feeling which made Him by instinct know, without the necessity of speech, the feelings of those He met.
“This is the highest touch of beauty in a character. What is it that most charms us in a friend? It is that he can read the transient expression in our face, and modify himself to suit the feeling we are ourselves but half conscious of possessing; it is that he knows when to be silent and when to speak; it is that he never mistakes, but sees us true, when all the world is wrong about us; it is that he can distinguish the cynicism of tenderness from that of malice, and believe our love though we try to mask our heart. Such a friend has not only power of character, but beauty of character.”

STOPFORD BROOKE

“We are over-hasty to speak – as if God did not manifest Himself by our silent feeling, and make His love felt through ours.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

September 23

“It is the wisdom of life to receive our friends as from the hand of God, and to give to the task of understanding them the same trouble that we give to the comprehension of the thoughts of God in nature; to work out the drama of our love and friendship, subject to the primary feeling in the mind of Christ, reverence for the human soul. Then, in the midst of the new enjoyment which they bring us, we shall find additional power of progress, and the delights of life will be as much an element of our evolution as its sorrows.”

STOPFORD BROOKE

“Each year to ancient friendships adds a ring,
As to an oak, and precious more and more,
Without deservingness, or help of ours
They grow, and, silent, wider spread each year
Their unbought ring of shelter or of shade.”

LOWELL

“’The theatre of all my actions is fallen’; said an antique personage when his chief friend was dead; and they are fortunate who get a theatre where the audience demands their best.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

September 22

“There is as yet, no culture, no method of progress known to men, that is so rich and complete as that which is ministered by a truly great friendship.
“No natural appetite, no artificial taste, no rivalry of competition, no contagion of social activity, calls out such a large, healthy, symmetrical working of a human nature, as the constant half unconscious power of a friend’s presence whom we thoroughly respect and love. In a true friendship there is emulation without its jealousy; there is imitation without its servility. When one friend teaches another by his present life, there is none of that divorce of truth from feeling, and of feeling from truth, which in so many of the world’s teachings makes truth hard, and feeling weak; but truth is taught, and feeling is inspired, by the same action of one nature on the other, and they keep each other true and warm. Surely there is no more beautiful sight to see in all this world, full as it is of beautiful adjustments and mutual ministrations, than the growth of two friends’ natures who, as they grow old together, are always fathoming, with newer needs, deeper depths of each other’s life, and opening richer views of one another’s helpfulness. and this best culture of personal friendship is taken up and made, in its infinite completion, the gospel method of the progressive saving of the soul by Christ.”

PHILLIPS BROOKS

“A true friend is one who makes us do what we can.”

PHELPS

April 19

“Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of each other.”

ADDISON

. . . “The divinest prerogative of friendship, which consists in the communication to others of all that we have ourselves experienced to be most divine.”

Archdeacon FARRAR

“Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy, and the dividing of our grief.”

CICERO

“There are no bounds to the help which spirit can give to spirit in the intercourse of a noble life.”

Dr. TEMPLE

April 18

“It is pleasant to think that Christ sanctified distinctiveness in love and friendship.
“No character can be beautiful, though it may be excellent, which can give the same amount of affection to all alike. It argues a want of delicacy, and worse still, a want of individuality in the character which at once negatives its beauty. There are some who think that they should strive to bestow equal love on all, and who on religious grounds avoid particular friendships. It was not Christ’s way and it ends badly. They only succeed in spoiling their power of loving and power of sympathy. These are gained and strengthened by strongly felt love and special love for a few. If you want to give love and sympathy to all, have profound love for particular persons; for you cannot gain the power of loving otherwise than in a natural manner, and it is unnatural to love all alike. But love, easily going forth to those whom you find it easy to love, learns to grow deep and to double its power, and then spreads abroad like a stream which is most impetuous at its fountains.”

STOPFORD BROOKE

“Devotion is the exercise of love, by which it grows.”

R. L. STEVENSON

April 17

“This communicating of a man’s selfe to his friends works two contrarie effects; for it redoubleth joies and cutteth griefes in halfes. For there is no man that imparteth his joies to his friend but he grieveth the less. . . . Certain it is that whosoever has his minde fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do break up and clarifie in the communicating and discoursing with another. He tosseth his thoughts more easily, he marshalleth them more orderly, he seeth how they look when they are turned into words, finally he waxeth wiser than himselfe, and that more by an houre’s discourse than by a day’s meditation. . . . Neither is this second fruit of friendship in opening the understanding restrained only to such friends as are able to give a man counsell (they indeed are best); but even without that, a man learneth of himselfe, and brigeth his owne thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone which itselfe cuts not. In a word, a man were better to relate himselfe to a statue or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to passe in smother. . . . I have given the rule where a man cannot fitly play his own part, if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.”

BACON

"Thus fortune’s pleasant fruits by friends increased be;
The bitter, sharp and sour by friends allayed to thee;
That when thou dost rejoice, then doubled is thy joy;
And eke in cause of care, the less is thy annoy.”

April 16

“A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have afriend, who knows the best and the worst of us, and loves us in spite of all our faults. In spite of all our faults! It was not the least among the many fine traits of Kingsley’s character, that he took his friends as he found them, and loved them for what they really were, rather than for what he fancied or wished them to be. . . . To the last he was ready to meet and make friends, to love and be beloved, with the freshness of youth.”

From Life of C. Kingsley

“True friendship can afford true knowledge. A want of discernment cannot be an ingredient in it.”

THOREAU

“Once in an age God finds us a friend who loves in us not a false, imaginary, and unreal character, but looking through all the rubbish and imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature.”

Mrs H. B. STOWE