William Hazlitt Quotes on Friendship (13 Quotes)

Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!

I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure.

Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.

It is well that there is no one without a fault for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to a different species.

If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will. . .

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.

The youth is better than the old age of friendship.

Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.

The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.

There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding or good nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you complain of on the contrary, they have probably many points of attraction but they have one that neutralizes all these --they care nothing about you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach and when you leave them, it is with a feeling that they can do just as well without you. This is not sullenness, nor indifference, nor absence of mind but they are intent solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in society as in a solitude.

The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.