“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.”

— George Washington

Letter to Bushrod Washington http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushrod_Washington (15 January 1783) <br class="br">1780s

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first President of the United States 1732–1799

Related quotes

“True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few,”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Bushrod Washington http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushrod_Washington (15 January 1783) <br class="br">1780s <br class="br">Context: Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

“I see before me the statue of a celebrated minister, who said that confidence was a plant of slow growth. But I believe, however gradual may be the growth of confidence, that of credit requires still more time to arrive at maturity.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech of 9 November 1867.

“Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech, Jan. 14, 1766, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“I want to plant a few more seeds here and there before they plant me.”

Doris Haddock (1910–2010) American political activist

“Well fitted for friendship is he whom men have not disgusted with mankind, and who, believing and knowing that there are a few noble men, a few great minds, a few delightful souls scattered through the crowd, never tires of searching for them, and loves them even before he has found them.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

“Be polite to all, but intimate with few.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

“I was very careful to send Mr. Roosevelt every few days a statement of our casualties. I tried to keep before him all the time the casualty results because you get hardened to these things and you have to be very careful to keep them always in the forefront of your mind.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

As quoted by Forrest C. Pogue, in "George C. Marshall: Global Commander" (1968)

“Whether nature gives me a right, or whether God, the people's choice, etc., does so, all of that is the same foreign right, a right that I do not give or take to myself. Thus the Communists say, equal labour entitles man to equal enjoyment. […] No, equal labour does not entitle you to it, but equal enjoyment alone entitles you to equal enjoyment. Enjoy, then you are entitled to enjoyment. But, if you have laboured and let the enjoyment be taken from you, then – ‘it serves you right.’ If you take the enjoyment, it is your right; if, on the contrary, you only pine for it without laying hands on it, it remains as before, a, ‘well-earned right’ of those who are privileged for enjoyment. It is their right, as by laying hands on it would become your right.”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 170, 171
The Ego and Its Own (1844)

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