Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it,
while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill.
The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation
is the same as in the life of the individual.
Pessimism kills the instinct that
urges men to struggle against poverty,
ignorance and crime, and dries up
all the fountains of joy in the world.
- Helen Keller
The River of Life flows without emotion.
The River surges. The River quiets.
The River overflows its banks. The River dries to a trickle.
The River swirls and storms. The River becomes calm.
The River runs clear. The River runs dark with silt.
The River is indifferent to what benefit
or what harm is caused by its water.
The River is the River, and that is all there is to it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Regret, worry, and fear squeeze
the juice from life leaving a dry hulk.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A man's interest in a single bluebird
is worth more than a complete but dry list
of the fauna and flora of a town.
- Henry David Thoreau
When the well's dry, we know the worth of water.
- Benjamin Franklin
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze
than it should be stifled by dry rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor,
every atom of me in magnificent glow,
than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
- Jack London
Take some time in a quiet place to contemplate
the balance between being of service -
both to this generation and to generations yet unborn -
and renewing your vitality with play and celebration.
Without play, one becomes old and dry.
Without service, life becomes meaningless.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Today is what life is all about.
When I desire for the future to arrive quickly,
I become unable to savor today.
I can't live in tomorrow, and when I focus
all my energies on the future, I shortchange today.
Likewise, fearing the future emasculates today,
leaving it dry and lifeless.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil;
but it needs a little much of letters and phone calls
and small, silly presents every so often -
just to save it from drying out completely.
- Pam Brown
From wine what sudden friendship springs.
- John Gay
No man is truly married until he understands
every word his wife is NOT saying.
- Anonymous
Everyone should have at least two friends -
one to talk to and one to talk about.
- Anonymous
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet
and steady and loyal and enduring a nature
that it will last through a whole lifetime,
if not asked to lend money.
- Mark Twain
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious
as to have friends at a distance;
they make the latitudes and the longitudes.
- Henry David Thoreau
A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend -
and he's a priest.
- Erma Bombeck
I have lost friends, some by death ...
others by sheer inability to cross the street.
- Virginia Woolf
The worst part of success is to try to find
someone who is happy for you.
- Bette Midler
A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat.
- Erma Bombeck
A man's friendships are, like his will,
invalidated by marriage -
but they are also no less invalidated
by the marriage of his friends.
- Samuel Butler
Nothing echoes like an empty mailbox.
- Charles M. Schulz' cartoon Peanuts
One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends
is that three out of four murders
are committed by people who know the victim.
- George Carlin
The feeling of friendship is like that
of being comfortably filled with roast beef;
love, like being enlivened with champagne.
- Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more cheerful than talking
about our friends' shortcomings.
- Mason Cooley
A friend is someone who will bail you out of jail.
A best friend is the one sitting next
to you saying "boy was that fun."
- The Maugles
A loyal friend laughs at your jokes
when they're not so good,
and sympathizes with your problems
when they're not so bad.
- Arnold H. Glasgow
It is far better to be alone,
than to be in bad company.
- George Washington
Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.
- Lord Chesterfield
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
- Oscar Wilde
Contrary to general belief,
I do not believe that friends are necessarily
the people you like best,
they are merely the people who got there first.
- Peter Ustinov
We make our friends; we make our enemies;
but God makes our next-door neighbor.
- Gilbert (G. K.) Chesterton
I'm a very loyal and unreliable friend.
- Bono
Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
Marriage is a sort of friendship recognized by the police.
- Anonymous
Friendship is born at that moment
when one person says to another,
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
- C. S. Lewis
Money can't buy friends
but it can get you a better class of enemy.
- Spike Milligan
Distance cannot matter - ours is a friendship of the heart.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
I never considered a difference of opinion
in politics, in religion, in philosophy,
as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
- Thomas Jefferson
I choose my friends for their good looks,
my acquaintances for their good characters,
and my enemies for their intellects.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
- Oscar Wilde
A true friend stabs you in the front.
- Oscar Wilde
A true friend is one who
overlooks your failures
and tolerates your success.
- Doug Larson
A benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself,
to keep his friends in countenance.
- Benjamin Franklin
My father and he had one of those English friendships
which begins by avoiding the intimacies
and eventually eliminates speech altogether.
- Jorge Luis Borges
"Appeasement" is the policy of feeding your friends to a crocodile,
one at a time, in hopes that the crocodile will eat you last.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Do not use a hatchet to remove
a fly from your friend's forehead.
- Chinese Proverb
A lifelong friend is someone
you haven't borrowed money from yet.
- Anonymous
Best Friends: we're a parade - even by ourselves!
- Mary Anne Radmacher
I have lost my seven best friends,
which is to say that God has had mercy on me
seven times without realizing it.
He lent a friendship, took it from me, and sent me another.
- Jean Cocteau
Give Honest and Sincere Appreciation.
- Dale Carnegie
To the people who love you,
you are beautiful already.
This is not because they're
blind to your shortcomings
but because they so clearly see your soul.
- Victoria Moran
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
- George Bernard Shaw
A friend is someone who knows all about you,
and loves you just the same.
- Elbert Hubbard
Love me when I least deserve it,
because that's when I really need it.
- Swedish Proverb
It is the friends you can call up at 4 A.M. that matter.
- Marlene Dietrich
True friendship is like sound health;
the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
- Charles Caleb Colton
A true friend is someone who
thinks that you are a good egg
even though he knows that
you are slightly cracked.
- Bernard Meltzer
True friendship's laws are by this rule express'd,
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.
- Alexander Pope
Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache;
do be my enemy - for friendship's sake.
- William Blake
True friendship is never serene.
- Marquise de Sevigne
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
Our relationships - love and friendship -
are at the core of the meaning of our lives.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
It is the first law of friendship
that it has to be cultivated.
The second is to be indulgent
when the first law is neglected.
- Voltaire
A person isn't who they are during
the last conversation you had with them -
they're who they've been
throughout your whole relationship.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
True friendship can afford true knowledge.
It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
- Henry David Thoreau
There are not many things in life
so beautiful as true friendship,
and not many things more uncommon.
- Anonymous
Farewell My Friend
It was beautiful as long as it lasted
The journey of my life.
I have no regrets whatsoever
save the pain I'll leave behind.
Those dear hearts who love and care...
And the strings pulling at the heart and soul...
The strong arms that held me up
When my own strength let me down.
At every turning of my life
I came across good friends,
Friends who stood by me,
Even when the time raced me by.
Farewell, farewell my friends
I smile and bid you goodbye.
No, shed no tears for I need them not
All I need is your smile.
If you feel sad do think of me
for that's what I'll like
when you live in the hearts
of those you love, remember then
you never die.
- Gitanjali Ghei
The finest kind of friendship is between people
who expect a great deal of each other but never ask it.
- Anonymous
Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
- Aristotle
We can never replace a friend.
When a man is fortunate enough to have several,
he finds they are all different.
No one has a double in friendship.
- Johann Schiller
Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people stay for awhile,
and move our souls to dance.
They awaken us to a new understanding,
leave footprints on our hearts,
and we are never, ever the same.
- Flavia Weedn
You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you.
You have to go to them sometimes.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
If a friendship isn't comfortable, it's not a friendship.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.