I have been much afflicted again lately by visitors. . . and they gave me to understand that if they had had the arranging of the garden it would have been finished long ago - whereas I don't believe a garden is ever finished. They have all gone now, thank heaven.
The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.
Families, friends and communities often find a source of courage rising up from within. Indeed, sadly, it seems that it is tragedy that often draws out the most and the best from the human spirit
If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will -the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.
The truth is friendship is every bit as sacred and eternal as marriage.
In comradeship is danger countered best.
Follow your heart, and you perish.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. The older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
Friendship is the most pleasant of all things, and nothing more glads the heart of man.
Love without reverence and enthusiasm is only friendship.
My friend Winnie is a procrastinator. He didn't get his birth mark til he was eight years old.
Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. but if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.
Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.
Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.
It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
Cursed be the verse, how well so e'er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe.
My friend Sally is a nudist. I went to her house. The closets have no doors. The walls are covered with see-through wallpaper.
My only politics have been friendship.