This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"There is no friend like industry: cultivate it, and you will never fail." - Bhartrihari NULL
"Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion. Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart. I set it down as a fact that if all men know what each said to the other, there would not be four friends in the world." - Blaise Pascal
"Few friendships would endure if each party knew what his friend said about him in his absence, even when speaking sincerely and dispassionately." - Blaise Pascal
"An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter the temple of wisdom. When we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by our own exertions, we have gained something that will stay by us and will serve us again. But if to avoid the trouble of the search we avail ourselves of the superior information of a friend, such knowledge will not remain with us; we have not bought, but borrowed it." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention; there are many books that owe their success to two things; good memory of those who write them, and the bad memory of those who read them." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Religion has treated knowledge sometimes as an enemy, sometimes as an hostage; often as a captive and more often as a child; but knowledge has become of age, and religion must either renounce her acquaintance, or introduce her as a companion and respect her as a friend." - Charles Caleb Colton
"There are two things that declare, as with a voice from heaven, that he that fills that eternal throne must be on side of virtue, and that which he befriends must finally prosper and prevail. The first is that the bad are never completely happy and at ease, although possessed of everything that this world can bestow; and that the good are never completely miserable, although deprived of everything that this world can take away. The second is that we are so framed and constituted that the most vicious cannot but pay a secret though unwilling homage to virtue, inasmuch as the worst men cannot bring themselves thoroughly to esteem a bad man, although he may be their dearest friend, nor can they thoroughly despise a good man, although he may be their bitterest enemy." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other; it warns us with a voice tht even the sagest discredit too long, and the silliest believe too late. Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it; he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends." - Charles Caleb Colton
"When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead." - Chinese Proverbs
"You can hardly make a friend in a year, but you can lose one in an hour." - Chinese Proverbs
"Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"One of the surest ways of making a friend and influencing the opinion of another is to give consideration to his opinion, to let him sustain his feeling of importance." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
"You can be cured in 14 days patients afflicted with melancholia if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone. It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. All that we demand of a human being and the highest praise we can give him, is that he should be a good fellow worker, a friend to all other men, and a true partner in love and marriage." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
"The road to a friend's house is never long." - Danish Proverbs
"The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"With every rising of the sun, think of your life as just begun. The past has shrived and buried deep all yesterdays; there let them sleep. Concern yourself with but today, woo it, and teach it to obey your will and wish. Since time began today has been the friend of man; but in his blindness and his sorrow, he looks to yesterday and tomorrow. You, and today! a soul sublime, and the great pregnant hour of time, with God himself to bind the twain! Go forth, I say - attain, attain! With God himself to bind the twain." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"It is not so much our friend's help that helps us as the confidence of their help." - Epicurus NULL
"Habit, my friend, is practice long pursued, that at last becomes man himself." - Evenus or Evenus of Paros, alt. Euenus NULL
"Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home." - Francis Bacon
"A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. that is the purpose and nature of miracles... Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle." - George Bernard Shaw
"The only service a friend can render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself." - George Bernard Shaw
"The best mirror is an old friend." - George Herbert
"Life without a friend is death without a witness." - George Herbert
"Wine is a turn-coat, first a friend, then an enemy." - George Herbert
"A friend’s only gift is himself, and friendship is not friendship, it is not a form of free or liberal society, if it does not terminate in an ideal possession, in an object loved for its own sake. Such objects can be ideas only, not forces, for forces are subterranean and instrumental things, having only such value as they borrow from their ulterior effects and manifestations... We are not to look now for what makes friendship useful, but for whatever may be found in friendship that may lend utility to life." - George Santayana
"The best preacher is the heart; the best teacher, time; the best book, the world; the best friend, God." - Hebrew Proverbs
"The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship." - Henry Ward Beecher
"To spend several days in a friend's house and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, and sitting upon luxurious chairs and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind." - Henry Ward Beecher
"It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship." - Henry Ward Beecher
"It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend of his faults… To speak painful truth through loving words – that is friendship." - Henry Ward Beecher
"There is nothing in all the world so precious as a friend who is at once wise and true." - Herodotus NULL
"Suspicion is far more apt to be wrong than right; oftener unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness." - Hosea Ballou
"Suspicion is far more apt to be wrong than right is oftener unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness." - Hosea Ballou
"The friend that can be bought is not worth buying." - Irish Proverbs
"Virtue, without talent, is a coat of mail without a sword; it may indeed defend the wearer, but will not enable him to protect his friend." - James Bryant Conant
"There are two things that declare, as with a voice from heaven, that he that fills that eternal throne must be on the side of virtue, and that which he befriends must finally prosper and prevail. The first is that the bad are never completely happy and at ease, although possessed of everything that this world can bestow; and that the good are never completely miserable, although deprived of everything that this world can take away. The second is that we are so framed and constituted that the most vicious cannot but pay a secret though unwilling homage to virtue, inasmuch as the worst men cannot bring themselves thoroughly to esteem a bad man, although he may be their dearest friend, nor can they thoroughly despise a good man, although he may be their bitterest enemy." - James Bryant Conant
"The greatest friend of truth is time; her greatest enemy is prejudice; and her constant companion is humility." - James Bryant Conant
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved with mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - John Donne
"I can forgive a foe, but not a mistress and a friend; treason is there in its most horrid shape, where trust is greatest!" - John Dryden
"What a superlatively grand and consoling idea is that of death! Without this radiant idea - this delightful morning star, indicting that the luminary of eternity is going to rise, life would, to my view, darken into midnight melancholy. The expectation of living here, and living thus always, would be indeed a prospect of overwhelming despair. But thanks to that fatal decree that dooms us to die; thanks to that gospel which opens the vision of an endless life; and thanks above all to that Saviour friend who has promised to conduct the faithful through the sacred trance of death, into scenes of Paradise and everlasting delight." - John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
"A man is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by the smile; each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God." - John Ruskin
"A friend exaggerates a man’s virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes." - Joseph Addison
"A friendship that makes the least noise is very often the most useful; for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one." - Joseph Addison