Great Throughts Treasury

"I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method for settling international disputes." - Douglas MacArthur

"The friend of humanity cannot recognize a distinction between what is political and what is not. There is nothing that is not political." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"Justice is the only friend that follows men after death." -

"I need my enemy in my community. He keeps me alert, vital... But beyond what we specifically learn from our enemies, we need them emotionally, our psychic economy cannot get along well without them... Our enemy is as necessary for us as is our friend. Both together are part of authentic community." -

"Every fresh appointment I make produces for me one cool friend and one hundred earnest enemies." - Marcus Morton

"There’s not so much danger in a known foe as a suspected friend." - Nabb NULL

"Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Night steals on; and the day takes its farewell, like the words of a departing friend, or the last tone of hallowed music in a minister’s aisles, heard when it floats along the shade of elms; in the still place of graves." - Margaret Percival

"Get your enemies to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you." - Alexander Pope

"It is very natural for a young friend and a young lover to think the persons they love have nothing to do but to please them." - Alexander Pope

"No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hates a man for being a friend to her." - Alexander Pope

"If thou expect death as a friend, prepare to entertain it; if thou expect death as an enemy, prepare to overcome it; death has no advantage, but when it comes a stranger." - Francis Quarles

"Better an intelligent enemy than an ignorant friend." - Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

"Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become an enemy. And bring not all the mischief you are able to do upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend." - Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

"One who's our friend is fond of us: one who's fond of us isn't necessarily our friend." -

"What madness is it for a man to starve himself to enrich his heir, and so turn a friend into an enemy! For his joy at your death will be proportioned to what you leave him." -

"Your son at five is your master, at ten your slave, at fifteen your double, and after that, your friend or your foe, depending on his bringing up." - Hasdai Ibn Shaprut

"The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend is the moment you receive them; then the warmth of friendship and the intelligence received most forcibly co-operate." - William Shenstone

"The happiest miser on earth is the man who saves up every friend he can make." - Robert E. Sherwood, fully Robert Emmet Sherwood

"Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half-jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. 'Yes,' he replied, ' there is a meaning, at least for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.'" - Logan Pearsall Smith

"The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired." - Robert Southey

"A friend is a gift you give to yourself." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

"Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner of his joy; a friend shares my sorrow and makes it but a moiety, but he swells my joy and makes it double." - Jeremy Taylor

"Observe thyself as thy greatest enemy would do, so shalt thou be thy greatest friend." - Jeremy Taylor

"It takes your enemy and your friend, working together to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you." -

"Integrity of life is fame’s best friend." - Daniel Webster

"Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success." -

"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out." - Walter Winchell

"The first sign of love to God is not to be afraid of death, and to be always waiting for it. For death unites the friend to his friend - the seeker to the object which he seeks." - Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali

"Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other." -

"In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts." - Carlos Castaneda, fully Carlos César Salvador Arana Castaneda

"Every time you give a bit of yourself and you plant a little seed of Future Happiness. All the rest of your life these seeds will keep springing up unexpectedly along your path. When you need a friend to give you a lift in some situation, likely as not along will come a person for whom you did something thoughtful when you were a youngster. Taking up giving-away as a hobby while you are young, and you will live a happy life. What is more, because you do so many wonderful thoughtful things on impulse, you will develop a lively and interesting personality - gracious, friendly, likable." - David Dunn

"All domination involves invasion – at times physical and overt, at times camouflaged, with the invader assuming the role of a helping friend." - Paulo Freire

"And he who would be a friend with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friend." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"The kingdom of God means that He, the Father, the Brother, the Friend, is near, in the depths of the spirit, in the core of the heart; that loves rules perceptibly in our goings and comings, our dispensing and our receiving; the whole of existence is transfigured by it, and that, while everything is transfigured into this one thing, the essential beauty and character of each blossoms forth." - Romano Guardini

"Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left." -

"I tell the truth: your enemy is also your friend – his presence makes your life fuller and richer." - Mohamed Iqbal or Sir Muhammad Iqbal, aka Allama Iqbal

"The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away." - Barbara Kingsolver

"Say what you mean to do… and take it for granted that you mean to do right. Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one… you will wrong him and wrong yourself by equivocation of any kind." -

"Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one." -

"I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me." - Abraham Lincoln

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend." - Abraham Lincoln

"A prince is further esteemed when he is a true friend or a true enemy, when, that is, he declares himself without reserve in favor of some one or against another. This policy is always more useful than remaining neutral." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

"No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend." -

"May God preserve me from the love of a friend who will never dare to rebuke me." - Thomas Merton

"He who studies the Torah in order to learn and to do God’s will acquire many merits; and not only that, but the whole world is indebted to him. He is cherished as a friend, a lover of God and of his fellow man." - Mishnah or The Mishnah NULL

"To be a friend of the weak – that is the artist’s point of departure as well as his ultimate goal." - Dazai Osamu

"A friend in need is a friend indeed." - John Ray or Wray

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words." -