Ralph Waldo Emerson Friends Quotations

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

A friend is the hope of the heart.

God evidently does not intend us all to be rich, or powerful or great, but He does intend us all to be friends.

O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched. Through thee the rose is red; All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, The mill-round of our fate appears A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair.

We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves.

My joy in friends, those sacred people, is my consolation.

Oh, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!

The genius of life is friendly to the noble, and, in the dark, brings them friends from far.

We want but two or three friends, but these we cannot do without, and they serve us in every thought we think.

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.

Treat your friend as a spectacle.

Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends.

The only joy in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine.

You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house.

A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man's friends are his magnetisms.

The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has heenterprise? has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.

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.

Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?

We talk of choosing our friends, but our friends are self-elected.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

The only reward of virtue is virtue.