* * * * *

Friendship must live by faith and not by sight.

--_Eliot_.

* * * * *

Friends should not be chosen to flatter. The quality we should prize is
that rectitude which will shrink from no truth. Intimacies, which
increase vanity, destroy friendship.

--_Channing_.

* * * * *

Favors, and especially pecuniary ones, are generally fatal to
friendship; for our pride will ever prompt us to lower the value of the
gift by diminishing that of the donor. Ingratitude is an effort to
recover our own esteem by getting rid of our esteem for our benefactor,
whom we look upon as a sort of tooth-drawer, that has cured us of one
pain by inflicting another.

--_Smith_.

* * * * *

Friendship throws a greater lustre on prosperity, while it lightens
adversity by sharing in its griefs and anxieties.