678

CHOOSING FRIENDS.

We ought always to make choice of persons of such worth and honor for our friends, that, if they should even cease to be so, they will not abuse our confidence, nor give us cause to fear them as enemies.

--_Addison._

679

Let us make the best of our friends while we have them, for how long we shall keep them is uncertain.

680

Friends are like melons. Shall I tell you why?

To find one good, you must a hundred try.

--_Claude Mermet._

681

Friends are sometimes like t.i.tled husbands, easy to get, if you have enough money.

--_H. L. Meader._

682

Make new friends, but keep the old; Those are silver, these are gold.

683

My treasures are my friends.

684

Without friends, no one would choose to live, even if he had all other good things.

685

Old friends and old ways ought not to be disdained.

--_Danish._

686

FRIENDS--PAUCITY OF

Friends, but few on earth, and therefore dear.

--_Pollok._

687

The poor man"s a.s.sets are his friends.

688

Purchase not friends by gifts; when thou ceasest to give such will cease to love.

--_Fuller._

689

RECOGNITION IN HEAVEN.

Baxter said:--"I must confess, as the experience of my own soul, that the expectation of loving my friends in heaven princ.i.p.ally kindles my love to them while on earth. If I thought I should never know, and consequently never love them after this life, I should number them with temporal things, and love them as such; but I now delightfully converse with my pious friends, in a firm persuasion that I shall converse with them forever; and I take comfort in those that are dead or absent, believing that I shall shortly meet them in heaven, and love them with a heavenly love."

690

A gift kept back where it was hoped, often separateth chief friends.

691

Strange to say,--I am the only one of my friends I can rely upon.

--_Terence._

692

There is no living without friends.

--_Portuguese._

693