“Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back”

“I often find myself going back to Darwin's saying about the duration of a man's friendships being one of the best measures of his worth.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

“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 (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

“HAST thou a Friend, as heart may wish at will?
Then use him so, to have his friendship still.
Would'st have a Friend, would'st know what friend is best?
Have God thy friend who passeth all the rest.”

Thomas Tusser (1524–1580) English poet

“My father was a cool-tempered and unaffected man. Everyone who came in contact with him knew his straightforward way of acting, his scrupulous honesty; but few, very few, of his friends knew his noble and manly heart. Indifferent to praise and fame, as well as calumny, he was ever anxious to do good in silence; and it can be said of him, without fear of contradiction, that during his whole life he could never reproach himself with having been guilty of a bad or mean action.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

“He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

“Such an intimate, promoted to power, was always lost. His duties and cares absorbed him and affected his balance of mind. Unless his friend served some political purpose, friendship was an effort.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“The only thing that mattered was that the quarter century or so he had remaining would be his life, to live out as he chose and in his own best interests. Nothing took precedence over that: not work, not friendships, not relationships with women. Those were all components of his life, and valuable ones, but they did not define it or control it. That was up to him, and him alone.
The possibilities, Jeff knew, were endless.”

Ken Grimwood book Replay

“Thus they are destitute of that very lovely and exquisitely natural friendship, which is an object of desire in itself and for itself, nor can they learn from themselves how valuable and powerful such a friendship is. For each man loves himself, not that he may get from himself some reward for his own affection, but because each one is of himself dear to himself. And unless this same feeling be transferred to friendship, a true friend will never be found; for a true friend is one who is, as it were, a second self.”
Ita pulcherrima illa et maxime naturali carent amicitia per se et propter se expetita nec ipsi sibi exemplo sunt, haec vis amicitiae et qualis et quanta sit. Ipse enim se quisque diligit, non ut aliquam a se ipse mercedem exigat caritatis suae, sed quod per se sibi quisque carus est. Quod nisi idem in amicitiam transferetur, verus amicus numquam reperietur; est enim is qui est tamquam alter idem.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman