
“A Friend to all, is a Friend to none.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“A Friend to all, is a Friend to none.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“He who hath many friends hath none.”
“An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.”
Quoted by George Bernard Shaw in a letter to Ellen Terry, 25 September 1896.
Context: On George Bernard Shaw An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.
“He that is a friend to himself, is a friend to all mankind.”
Derived from Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium; Epistle VI of Seneca the Younger:
"I shall tell you what pleased me today in the writings of Hecato; it is these words: 'What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.' That was indeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind." ["Interim quoniam diurnam tibi mercedulam debeo, quid me hodie apud Hecatonem delectaverit dicam. 'Quaeris' inquit 'quid profecerim? amicus esse mihi coepi.' Multum profecit: numquam erit solus. Scito esse hunc amicum omnibus."]
Misattributed
“If my life is of no value to my friends it is of none to myself.”
History of the Church, 6:549 (22 June 1844)
Smith's reply when friends accused him of cowardice for intending to leave Illinois to avoid legal prosecution.
1840s
“I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there”
No known source in Oscar Wilde's works. Earliest known example of a similar quote comes from a 2001 usenet post https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.atheism/ZadPWBw-wew/G_3tx370wpoJ (not attributed to Wilde)
Attributed to Wilde on Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/15736-i-don-t-want-to-go-to-heaven-none-of-my?page=83 some time on or before January 2008.
Bears some resemblance to Machiavelli's deathbed dream https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#Disputed.
Disputed
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Context: p>Whatever prize he wanted lay ready for him — scientific social, literary, political — and he knew how to take them in turn. With ordinary luck he would die at eighty the richest and most many-sided genius of his day.So little egoistic he was that none of his friends felt envy of his extraordinary superiority, but rather grovelled before it, so that women were jealous of the power he had over men; but women were many and Kings were one. The men worshipped not so much their friend, as the ideal American they all wanted to be.</p
“He is worst of all, that is malicious against his friends.”
The Sayings of the Wise (1555)