Letter 12
Letters Written in Sweden (1796)
Context: Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing.
Quotes about friendship
page 9
Source: The Campaign (1704), Line 101.
Context: Great souls by instinct to each other turn,
Demand alliance, and in friendship burn;
A sudden friendship, while with stretched-out rays
They meet each other, mingling blaze with blaze.
Polished in courts, and hardened in the field,
Renowned for conquest, and in council skilled,
Their courage dwells not in a troubled flood
Of mounting spirits, and fermenting blood:
Lodged in the soul, with virtue overruled,
Inflamed by reason, and by reason cooled,
In hours of peace content to be unknown.
And only in the field of battle shown:
To souls like these, in mutual friendship joined,
Heaven dares intrust the cause of humankind.
1870s, Seventh State of the Union Address (1875)
Context: Our liberties remain unimpaired; the bondmen have been freed from slavery; we have become possessed of the respect, if not the friendship, of all civilized nations. Our progress has been great in all the arts—in science, agriculture, commerce, navigation, mining, mechanics, law, medicine, etc.; and in general education the progress is likewise encouraging. Our thirteen States have become thirty-eight, including Colorado (which has taken the initiatory steps to become a State), and eight Territories, including the Indian Territory and Alaska, and excluding Colorado, making a territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On the south we have extended to the Gulf of Mexico, and in the west from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
127 - 134
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part II
Context: They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill, what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship. If Absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; They live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is Omnipresent. In this Divine Glass, they see Face to Face; and their Converse is Free, as well as Pure. This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal.
We the People interview (1996)
Context: Here is the right word. Hospitality was a condition consequent on a good society in politics, politaea, and by now might be the starting point of politaea, of politics. But this is difficult because hospitality requires a threshold over which I can lead you — and TV, internet, newspaper, the idea of communication, abolished the walls and therefore also the friendship, the possibility of leading somebody over the door. Hospitality requires a table around which you can sit and if people get tired they can sleep. You have to belong to a subculture to say, we have a few mattresses here. It's still considered highly improper to conceive of this as the ideal moments in a day or a year. Hospitality is deeply threatened by the idea of personality, of scholastic status. I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied it is hospitality. A practice of hospitality— recovering threshold, table, patience, listening, and from there generating seedbeds for virtue and friendship on the one hand — on the other hand radiating out for possible community, for rebirth of community.
The Cultivation of Conspiracy (1998)
Context: The impending loss of spirit, of soul, of what I call atmosphere, could go unnoticed.
Only persons who face one another in trust can allow its emergence. The bouquet of friendship varies with each breath, but when it is there it needs no name. For a long time I believed that there was no one noun for it, and no verb for its creation. Each time I tried one, I was discouraged; all the synonyms for it were shanghaied by its synthetic counterfeits: mass-produced fashions and cleverly marketed moods, chic feelings, swank highs and trendy tastes. Starting in the seventies, group dynamics retreats and psychic training, all to generate "atmosphere," became major businesses. Discreet silence about the issue I am raising seemed preferable to creating a misunderstanding.
Then… I suddenly realized that there is indeed a very simple word that says what I cherished and tried to nourish, and that word is peace. Peace, however, not in any of the many ways its cognates are used all over the world, but peace in its post-classical, European meaning. Peace, in this sense, is the one strong word with which the atmosphere of friendship created among equals has been appropriately named. But to embrace this, one has to come to understand the origin of this peace in the conspirator, a curious ritual behavior almost forgotten today.
Source: The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness (1962), p. 91
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Love (1947), p. 274
Context: To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).
Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 11
Context: Once, when hitchhiking, I was picked up by a professor from some small college. He noticed a book in my coat pocket, and was curious. It was a Modern Library edition, in the limp bindings they used to have, which sold at the time for 95 cents. This one contained Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, and The Birth of Tragedy.
The professor was a pedantic man of limited imagination and seemed almost offended that I was reading such a book. Obviously I did not fit some category in which he decided I belonged, and when he dropped me off in town, I suspect he was relived to be rid of me.
He kept asking me why I wanted to read such a book. At first, he doubted I was reading it. Where had I heard of Nietzsche?
When I told him I thought it was in the preface to a book on Schopenhauer, he was even more disturbed and probably believed I was lying. Fortunately, there seem to be few of his kind, and my subsequent friendships with university professors have proved exciting, stimulating and fun.
Attributed
Letter to the Lenape Nation (18 October 1681); as published in William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania 1680 - 1684: A Documentary History, (1983) edited by Jean R. Soderlund, University of Pennsylvania Press
Context: There is one great God and power that has made the world and all things therein, to whom you and I and all people owe their being and well-being, and to whom you and I must one day give an account for all that we do in this world. This great God has written his law in our hearts, by which we are taught and commanded to love and help and do good to one another, and not to do harm and mischief one unto another. Now this great God has been pleased to make me concerned in your parts of the world, and the king of the country where I live has given unto me a great province therein, but I desire to enjoy it with your friends, else what would the great God say to us, who has made us not to devour and destroy one another, but live soberly and kindly together in the world.
Now I would have you well observe, that I am very sensible of the unkindness and injustice that has been too much exercised towards you by the people of these parts of the world, who have sought themselves, and to make great advantages by you, rather than be examples of justice and goodness unto you; which I hear has been matter of trouble to you and caused great grudgings and animosities, sometimes to the shedding of blood, which has made the great god angry. But I am not such man as is well known in my own country. I have great love and regard toward you, and I desire to win and gain your love and friendship by a kind just, and peaceable life; and the people I send are of the same mind, and shall in all things behave themselves accordingly.
As quoted in Screen Stories magazine (1967)
Context: I guess you could say that I was somewhat withdrawn from my classmates. I spent a good deal of time being a loner. I suppose that had something to do with the way we lived — always on the move, never living in one town very long. It's very hard to make lasting friendships that way. And my father was rather strict with me and my two younger sisters. He insisted on proper behaviour and very often vetoed our choices of boyfriends. There was always a curfew whenever my sisters or I would go out on a date — we had to be home on time or else. But I never resented his authority. In fact, I'm thankful for my strict upbringing; I feel it has helped me learn discipline — and that's very important in this business.
A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)
Context: The rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labour continually, which is the severest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.
X & XI
Miscellaneous Poems (1773), A Paraphrase on the Prayer used in The Church Liturgy for All Sorts and Conditions Of Men
Context: The Church is indeed, in its real Intent,
An Assembly where Nothing but
Friendship is meant;
And the utter Extinction of Foeship and Wrath
By the Working of Love in the Strength of its Faith.
This gives it its holy and catholic Name,
And truly confirms its apostolic Claim;
Showing what the One Saviour's One Mission had been:
"Go and teach all the World," — ev'ry Creature therein. In the Praise ever due to the Gospel of Grace
Its Universality holds the first Place.
When an Angel proclaim'd Its glad Tidings the Morn
That the Son of the Virgin, the Saviour, was born,
"Which shall be to all People," was said to complete
The angelical Message, so good and so great,
Full of " Glory to God," in the Regions Above,
And of "Goodness to Men," is so Boundless a Love.
Letter to http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit(tj110158)) Thomas Leiper (12 June 1815). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf, pp. 477–478.
The sentence "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be." was used by US-President Barack Obama in his A New Beginning Speech.
1810s
Context: We concur in considering the government of England as totally without morality, insolent beyond bearing, inflated with vanity and ambition, aiming at the exclusive dominion of the sea, lost in corruption, of deep-rooted hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world. In our estimate of Bonaparte, I suspect we differ. [... ] Our form of government is odious to him, as a standing contrast between republican and despotic rule; and as much from that hatred, as from ignorance in political economy, he had excluded intercourse between us and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they wanted from us, that is, cotton and tobacco. Whether the war we have had with England, and the achievements of that war, and the hope that we may become his instruments and partisans against that enemy, may induce him, in future, to tolerate our commercial intercourse with his people, is still to be seen. For my part, I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want; and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.
We the People interview (1996)
Context: I do not believe that friendship today can flower out — can come out — of political life. I do believe that if there is something like a political life to be — to remain for us, in this world of technology — then it begins with friendship.
Therefore my task is to cultivate disciplined, self-denying, careful, tasteful friendships. Mutual friendships always. I-and-you and, I hope, a third one, out of which perhaps community can grow. Because perhaps here we can find what the good is.
(Hindu Politics, p.103) . Quoted from Elst, K. : Was Veer Savarkar a Nazi? , 1999 https://web.archive.org/web/20100706155911/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/savarkarnazi.html
The Friendship Case: Space Brothers teach lessons of brotherhood – an excerpt by Gerard Aartsen Share International http://share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2011/2011-04.htm#correo (2011)
Loud and continued cheers.
Speech in Birmingham (15 May 1903), quoted in The Times (16 May 1903), p. 8
1900s
Remarks https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/edward-abbey-remarks-glen-canyon-dam-spring-equinox-1981, Glen Canyon Dam, Spring Equinox 1981.
Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 2
On the lessons her “home girls” taught her in “‘Either Hyper-Visible or Invisible’: An Interview with Jaquira Díaz” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/either-hyper-visible-or-invisible-an-interview-with-jaquira-diaz/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2019 Oct 29)
On Jim Jones, upon hearing of the mass murders and suicides of Jonestown, as quoted in "Cult Chief's Beginnings in Indianapolis Recalled" by James Feron, The New York Times (22 November 1978); in the early years of Jones' ministries, Davis had sold Jones a synagogue in Indianapolis within which Jones housed his first "People's Temple"; also quoted in "Masters and Slaves: The Tragedy of Jonestown", by Fanita English, M.S.W, in Idea, Vol.1, no.2 (1 September 1996) http://www.ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=7
Independence Day address (1821)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2048220/Chris-Martin-Coldplay-Gwyneth-Paltrow-album.html source
On what motivated her to write the play El Grito in “INTERVIEW WITH MIGDALIA CRUZ, PLAYWRIGHT” https://collaboraction.typepad.com/collaboraction/2009/07/interview-with-migdalia-cruz-playwright.html in Collaboraction
Burt Ward, Hollywood Reacts to Adam West's Death http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/hollywood-reacts-adam-wests-death-a-sweet-nutty-guy-1012217 (June 10, 2017)
1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)
George Evers, President of the Deutsch Hockey Board and the International Hockey Federation after India won the Olympics at Berlin in a message to Dhyan Chand quoted in "India and the Olympics" in page=64
Address to the German Reichstag (15 October 1928), quoted in The Times (16 October 1928), p. 15
1920s
“Friendship … flourishes not so much by kindnesses as by sincerity.”
Part 3
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
Letter to Hitler. 24 December 1940. Quoted from Koenraad Elst: Return of the Swastika (2007). (Also in https://web.archive.org/web/20100310135408/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/gandhihitler.html)
1940s
Mahatma Gandhi, Harijan, 26 November 1938. Quoted from Hinduism and Judaism compilation https://web.archive.org/web/20060423090103/http://www.nhsf.org.uk/images/stories/HinduDharma/Interfaith/hinduzion.pdf
1930s
Любовь и беспредельная преданность великой Родине не исключают любви к родному краю, к родным местам, могилам своих предков, наоборот, эта последняя любовь украшает и усиливает любовь к великой Родине, она украшает и обогащает человеческое счастье… Великая наша Родина состоит и из наших родных краев: великая дружественная семья советских народов состоит из наших народов, из наших семей. Всё, что мешает миру, счастью семьи и народа, должно быть заботливо изучено и устранено, ибо от этого зависит мир, дружба и могущество нашей страны, нашего народа. Исходя из этих убеждений, во имя дружбы и счастья всех народов, я — сын своего народа, вместе с тем беспредельно преданный Великой Родине, родной Коммунистической партии — гражданин СССР — сын советского народа, обращаюсь к ленинской партии с просьбой: 1. Народ мой унижен, оскорблён тем, что безвинно, без нужды и основания выслан из родного края. Верните его в родной край — Крым. 2. У народа отнято равноправие. Восстановите это равноправие, верните его в монолитную дружественную семью народов СССР как равноправный народ.
From a petition he signed (letter) http://ndkt.org/yu.-osmanov-ob-amethane-sultane.html to the leadership of the Soviet Union resquesting the rehabilitation and right of return for the Crimean Tatar people
Quotes by Amet-khan
Twitter post https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard, (31 May 2019)
Twitter account, May 2019
In response to a comment by Douglas Mitchell (leader of the opposition) that South Africa was retreating into isolation, as quoted in The New Republic https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=rRI1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=wqULAAAAIBAJ&pg=5390%2C4506760, Glasgow Herald (30 May 1961)
“Britain must now take our hand of friendship or reject it. I do not believe it will be rejected.”
The New York Review of Books interview with the French writer Roger Errera (1978)
Gilbert Burnet History of His Own Time (London: William S. Orr, 1850)
[Wetzel, Richard, The Globalization of Music in History, http://books.google.com/books?id=kjS9PnHJUE4C&pg=PA26, 17 June 2013, Routledge, 978-1-136-62624-1, 26–]
Chap. 10 : Beware the Fragile Ego
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)
“to one of which I am attached by bonds of friendship, to other by ties of common origin”
Queen Wilhelmina and the Boers, 1899 - 1902, MA PCNI dissertation, E.R.J.G. Picard, S1029215, Prof.dr.H. te Velde, 26-06-2018.
As quoted in[Rockey Fleming, Alexandra, Meet the Inspiring Author Who Writes Books He Wanted to Read Growing Up: 'Every Kid Knows Fear', https://people.com/human-interest/jason-reynolds-author-long-way-down/, People, 10 March 2020, October 24, 2017]
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Twelve, Human Connections: Relationships Changing
Chap. 4 : The Live-and-Let-Live System in World War I
The Evolution of Cooperation (1984; 2006)
On her time working for the lesbian magazine esto no tiene nombre (as quoted in “Celebrating Tatiana De La Tierra And The Latina Lesbian Zine Culture Of The '90s” https://bust.com/books/194419-tatiana-de-la-tierra-zine-culture.html in Bust Magazine)
“My best friends are my memories
They're the only ones that save me from misery”
Source: Song Tear me down
Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress
1930s
Source: Letter to Hitler, quoted in Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm
As Minister of External Affairs, His career events [citation needed]
Source: The day my atheist convictions were shattered https://catholicherald.co.uk/rob-flello-the-day-my-atheist-convictions-were-shattered/ (October 16, 2020)
Remarks to the Leaders of the United Defense Fund (April 29, 1954). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20210125121539/https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes from the original https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes on January 25, 2021.
1950s
Said in an interview with the Guardian. Russell Tovey: ‘When I started having sex I panicked because I didn’t feel old enough’ https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/11/russell-tovey-when-i-started-having-sex-i-panicked-because-i-didnt-feel-old-enough (11 March 2018)
“Sell not the friendship of the Lord for the friendship of the world and its possessions.”
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 29
“In love and friendship small attentions give great emotions.”
Original: (it) In amore e in amicizia piccole attenzioni regalano grandi emozioni.
Source: prevale.net
From the introduction to Correspondence of John, Fourth Duke of Bedford, Vol. 3 (1847), p. lxii
1840s
Billboard Cover: Fifth Harmony on Surviving Pop-Star Fame and 'Finally Having a Damn Voice', Billboard, May 5, 2016 https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/cover-story/7356880/fifth-harmony-billboard-cover-story-fame-challenges-new-album-the-x-factor,
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1849/feb/02/the-address-in-answer-to-the-speech#column_206 in the House of Commons (2 February 1849)
1840s
Speech to the Reichstag introducing the Military Bill (April 1913), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany from Defeat to Conquest, 1913–1933 (1945), p. 28
“There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.”
“A quarrel between friends, when made up, adds a new tie to friendship.”
“Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.”
“All I required to be happy was friendship and people I could admire.”
“Share your smile with the world. It's a symbol of friendship and peace.”
“Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.”
“The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.”
“Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.”
“Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.”
“Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love.”
“Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”