The following passages highlight what others have said about friendship in the past. For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight. The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor'd and sorrows end. Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence.
Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.
A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably. Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family - but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved for yourself, or, more correctly, in spite of yourself. A grief too deep to trust the sculptor's art.