Francois de La Rochefoucauld Friendship Quotations

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.

If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.

In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.

Though most of the friendships of the world ill deserve the name of friendships; yet a man may make use of them on occasion, as of a traffic whose returns are uncertain, and in which 'tis usual to be cheated.

The better part of one's life consists of his friendships. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, letter to Joseph Gillespie, July 13, 1849 Friendship is insipid to those who have experienced love.

Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.

A true friend is the most precious of all possessions and the one we take the least thought about acquiring.

The thing that makes our friendships so short and changeable is that the qualities and dispositions of the soul are very hard to know, and those of the understanding and wit very easy.

The reason why most women have so little sense of friendship is that this is but a cold and flat passion to those that have felt that of love.

The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.

The love of new acquaintance comes not so much from being weary of what we had before, or from any satisfaction there is in change, as from the distaste we feel in being too little admired by those that know us too well, and the hope of being more admired by those that know us less.

As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.

The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.

When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.

The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends.

True friendship destroys envy, and true love destroys coquetterie.

Self-love makes our friends appear more or less deserving in proportion to the delight we take in them, and the measures by whichwe judge of their worth depend upon the manner of their conversing with us.

We love everything on our own account; we even follow our own taste and inclination when we prefer our friends to ourselves; and yet it is this preference alone that constitutes true and perfect friendship.

Friendship is a traffic wherein self-love always proposes to be the gainer.