“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

“The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.”

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”

“An Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad truth, —"He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.”

“My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me.”

“In good company there is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly coextensive with the several consciousnesses there present. No partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited to his own. Now this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute running of two souls into one.”

“Every[one] I meet is in some way my superior.”