2446. The Word Friend is a common Name, and appropriated by most People ; but believe me, thou wilt scarce ever find a Man that gives solid Proof of a true, unfeigned, and uninterested Friendship.

He ought not to pretend to friendship's name, Who reckons not himself and friend the same.

Friendship's an empty name, made to deceive Those whose good nature tempts them to believe: There's no such thing on earth; the best that we Can hope for here is faint neutrality.

However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.

Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.

And what is friendship but a name,
A charm that lulls to sleep,
A shade that follows wealth or fame,
And leaves the wretch to weep?

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

However rare true love is, true friendship is rarer.

When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy — that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.

Success, fame, and fortune, they're all illusions. All there is that is real is the friendship that two can share.

In America everyone called the merest acquaintance a ‘friend’ – Guy had taken up the habit. It made him feel better about not having any real friends.

Friends as a rule are a mistake.

A man who trusts everyone is a fool, and a man who trusts no one is a fool. We are all fools, if we live long enough.

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.