Ralph Waldo Emerson on Friendship
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“The only way to have a good friend is to be one.”
“The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.”
“I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.”
“There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.”
“The wise man … needs no bribe or feast or palace to draw friends to him. He is supremely fair. He angles with himself and with no other bait.”
“Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor, busy men can usually command.”
“Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.”
“The highest compact we can make with our fellow is, — Let there be truth between us two forevermore. * * * It is sublime to feel and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him; we need not reinforce ourselves or send tokens of remembrance; I rely on him as on myself; if he did thus or thus, I know it was right.”