Lord Chesterfield Friendship Quotations

Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible reason.

People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb which says vry justly, 'Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are.'

The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.

In your friendships and in your enmities let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds; make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business.

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.

Real friendship is a slow grower.

The permanency of most friendships depends upon the continuity of good fortune.

In friendship, as well as in love, the mind is often the dupe of the heart.

Ties of blood are not always ties of friendship; but friendship founded on merit, on esteem, and on mutual trust, becomes more vital and more tender when strengthened by the ties of blood.