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What can we see or acquire, but what we are? You have seen a skilful man reading Virgil. Well, that author is a thousand books to a thousand persons. Take the book into your two hands, and read your eyes out, you will never find what I find. If any ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom or delight he gets, he is as secure now the book is Englished, as if it were imprisoned in the Pelews tongue. It is with a good book as it is with good company. Introduce a base person among gentlemen: it is all to no purpose: he is not their fellow. Every society protects itself. The company is perfectly safe, and he is not one of them, though his body is in the room.

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Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions,

because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are great, austere, and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness.

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-FRIENDSHIP

Socrates entered the prison, and took away all ignominy from the place, which could not be a prison, whilst he was there. Crito bribed the jailer; but Socrates would not go out by treachery.

"Whatever inconvenience ensue, nothing is to be preferred before justice. These things I hear like pipes and drums, whose sound makes me deaf to everything you say."

The fame of this prison, the fame of the discourses there, and the drinking of the hemlock, are one of the most precious passages in the history of the world.

-PLATO

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?
At rich men's table eaten bread and pulse?
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?
And loved so well a high behavior,

In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
Nobility more nobly to repay?

O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!

-FORBEARANCE

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily sheweth himself so to me in his gifts?

-FRIENDSHIP

To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a credit-system in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succours than food and fire. We owe to man man. If he is sick, is unable, is meanspirited and odious, it is because there is so much of his nature which is unlawfully witholden from him. He should be visited in this his prison with rebuke to the evil demons, with manly encouragement, with no mean-spirited offer of condolence because you have not money, or mean offer of money, as the utmost benefit, but by your heroism, your purity, and your faith. You are to bring with you that spirit which is understanding, health, and self-help. The great depend on their heart, not on their purse. Genius and virtue, like diamonds, are best plain set,-set in lead, set in poverty. The greatest man in history was the poorest.

-DOMESTIC LIFE

There are three wants which never can be satisfied:

that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveller, who says, "Anywhere but here."

-CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good-fame,

Plans, credit and the Muse,

Nothing refuse.

-GIVE ALL TO LOVE

The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics!

-THE POET

Human character does evermore publish itself. It will not be concealed. It hates darkness,—it rushes into light. The most fugitive deed and word, the mere air of doing a thing the intimated purpose expresses character. If you act, you shew character; if you sit still, you shew it; if you sleep, you shew it. You think because you have spoken nothing, when others spoke, and have given no opinion on the times, on the church, on slavery, on the college, on parties and persons, that your verdict is still expected with curiosity as a reserved wisdom. Far otherwise; your silence answers very loud.

-SPIRITUAL LAWS

A friend is Janus-faced: he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come. He is the harbinger of a greater friend.

-FRIENDSHIP

Our chief want in life is, somebody who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend. With him we are easily great. There is a sublime attraction in him to whatever virtue is in us. How he flings wide the doors of existence! What questions we ask of him! what an understanding we have! how few words are needed! It is the only real society.

-COMPENSATIONS BY THE WAY

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He that feeds men serveth few;
He serves all who dares to be true.

-THE CELESTIAL LOVE

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Let

a man keep the law,—any law, and his way will be strown with satisfactions. There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.

The only money of God is God.

-PRUDENCE

He pays never with
The only reward of

any thing less or any thing else. virtue is virtue: the only way to have a friend is to be one. Vain to hope to come nearer a man by getting into his house.

-FRIENDSHIP

Trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will shew themselves great, though make an exception in your favour to all their rules of trade.

-PRUDENCE

I do, then, with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

-FRIENDSHIP

We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility, requires to be humoured;he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and so spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring me to stoop, or to lisp, or to mask myself. . A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.

-FRIENDSHIP

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is, ability to do without it. To be capable of that high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be very one.

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,

Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;

Heartily know,

When half-gods go,

The gods arrive.

-FRIENDSHIP

-GIVE ALL TO LOVE

But never can any advantage be taken of Nature by a trick. The spirit of the world, the great calm presence of the creator, comes not forth to the sorceries of opium or of wine. The sublime vision comes to the pure and simple soul in a clean and chaste body. That which we owe to narcotics is not an inspiration, but some counterfeit excitement and fury.

-THE POET

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