Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.
I see it only that thyself is here, and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels and the supreme being shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest.
The mind is key. If anything should be considered a god, so to speak, it is the mind, not money. A healthy positive mind is the utmost priority. But if we were to reverse the order of these priorities, what would happen? I find it hard to imagine how a person with great wealth, bad health, no friends, and no peace of mind could feel even slightly happy.
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.
I don't think any woman in power really has a happy life unless she's got a large number of women friends ... because you sometimes must go and sit down and let down your hair with someone you can trust totally.
Lovers may be and indeed generally are enemies, but they never can be friends, because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a something of Self in all their speculations.
There is no treasure the which may be compared unto a faithful friend; Gold some decayeth, and worldly wealth consumeth, and wasteth in the winde; But love once planted in a perfect and pure minde indureth weale and woe; The frownes of fortune, come they never so unkinde, cannot the same overthrowe.
On the moral plane, true friends enjoy the same protection as the sense of smell confers upon dogs. They scent the sorrow of their friends, they divine its causes, and they clasp it to their minds and hearts.
We will stand up for our friends in the world. And one of the most important friends is the State of Israel. My administration will be steadfast in support Israel against terrorism and violence, and in seeking the peace for which all Israelis pray.
We say that every man is entitled to be valued by his best moment. We measure our friends so. We know, they have intervals of folly, whereof we take no heed, but wait the reappearings of the genius, which are sure and beautiful.
All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity.