Selected Writings on Friendship

The wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments. Yet I cannot persuade myself that all the beautiful souls are fled out of the planet, or that always I shall be excluded from good company and yoked with green, dull, pitiful persons. After being cabined up by sea and by land, since I left home, with various little people,—all better to be sure and much wiser than me, but still such persons as did not help me,—how refreshing was it to fall in with two or three sensible persons with whom I could eat my bread and take my walk and feel myself a free man once more of God’s universe.

—Emerson to Mary Moody Emerson, April 22, 1833²

It occurs that the distinction should be drawn in treating of Friendship between the aid of commodity which our friends yield us, as in hospitality, gifts, sacrifices, etc., and which, as in the old story about the poor man’s will in Montaigne, are evidently esteemed by the natural mind (to use such a cant word) the highest manifestations of love; and, secondly, the spiritual aid,—far more precious and leaving the other at infinite distances,—which our friends afford us, of confession, of appeal, of social stimulus, mirroring ourselves.

—Journal, March 23, 1834³

If friendship were perfect, there would be no false prayers.

—Journal, June 26, 1834⁴

Who is capable of a manly friendship? Very few.

—Journal, May 13, 1835⁵

Every person who comes to me has two offices,—a present and a prophetical. He is at once a fulfilment and a prediction. He is the long expected son returned, and he is a herald of a coming Friend.

—Journal, 1835⁶

I take the law of hospitality to be this:—I confer on the friend whom I visit the highest compliment, in giving him my time. He gives me shelter and bread. Does he therewith buy my suffrage to his opinions henceforward? No more than by giving him my time, I have bought his. We stand just where we did before. The fact is, before we met he was bound to “speak the truth (of me) in love”; and he is bound to the same now.

—Journal, January16, 1836⁷

Miserable is my own prospect from whom my friend is taken.

—Journal, May 16, 1836⁸

We are associated in adolescent and adult life with some friends, who, like skies and waters, are coextensive with our idea; who, answering each to a certain affection of the soul, satisfy our desire on that side; whom we lack power to put at such focal distance from us, that we can mend or even analyze them. We cannot choose but love them.

—Nature (1836)⁹

Last Saturday evening, I had a conversation with Elizabeth Hoar which I cannot recall, but of which the theme was, that when we deal truly and lay judgment to the line and rule, we are no longer permitted to think that the presence or absence of friends is material to our highest states of mind.

—Journal, June 6, 1836¹⁰

Have you been associated with any friend whose charm over you was coextensive with your idea, that is, was infinite; who filled your thought on that side; and so, as most certainly befals us, you were enamoured of the person? And from that person have you at last, by incessant love and study, acquired a new measure of excellence, also a confidence in the resources of God who thus sends you a real person to outgo your ideal,—you will readily see, when you are separated, as you shortly will be, the bud, flower, and fruit of the whole fact. As soon as your friend has become to you an object of thought, has revealed to you with great prominence a new nature, and has become a measure whereof you are fully possessed to gauge and test more, as his character becomes solid and sweet wisdom, it is already a sign to you that his office to you is closing: expect thenceforward the hour in which he shall be withdrawn from your sight.

—Journal, June 14, 1836¹¹

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

—Emerson to Thomas Carlyle, September 17, 1836¹²

The newspapers persecute Alcott. I have never more regretted my inefficiency in practical ends. I was born a seeing eye, not a helping hand. I can only comfort my friends by thought, and not by love or aid. But they naturally look for this other also, and thereby vitiate our relation throughout.

—Journal, April 16, 1837¹³

A friendship is good which begins on sentiment and proceeds into all mutual convenience, and alternation of great benefits. Less good that which begins in commodity and proceeds to sentiment.

—Journal, October 27, 1837¹⁴

You must love me as I am. Do not tell me how much I should love you. I am content. I find my satisfactions in a calm, considerate reverence, measured by the virtues which provoke it. So love me as I am. When I am virtuous, love me; when I am vicious, hate me; when I am lukewarm, neither good nor bad, care not for me. But do not by your sorrow or your affection solicit me to be somewhat else than I by nature am.

—Journal, February 9–10, 1838¹⁵

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

—Journal, August 31, 1838¹⁶

I like the abandon of a saunter with my friend. It is a balsam unparalleled.

—Journal, September 5, 1838¹⁷

If it were possible to speak to the virtue in each of our friends in perfect simplicity, then would society instantly attain its perfection.

—Journal, October 12, 1838¹⁸

I have no right of nomination in the choice of my friends.

—Journal, August 1, 1839¹⁹

To be sure, if we outgrow our early friendships there is no help, and undoubtedly where there is inequality in the intellect we must resign them, but true society is so rare that I think I could not afford to spare from my circle a poet as long as he can offer so indisputable a token as a good verse of his relation to what is highest in Being.

—Emerson to Samuel Gray Ward, October 3, 1839²⁰

Fear when you friends say to you what you have done well, and say it through. But when they cannot say it, when they stand beside you with uncertain, timid looks of respect and yet half dislike, inclined to suspend their judgment of you for years to come, then you may begin to hope and to trust.

—Journal, November 9–12, 1839²¹

I dare not look for a friend to me who have never been one.

—Journal, November 13, 1839²²

In this country we need whatever is generous and beautiful in character more than ever because of the general mediocrity of thought produced by the arts of gain. With a few friends who can yield us the luxury of sincerity and of a manly resistance too, one can face with more courage the battle of every day—and these friends, it is a part of my creed, we always find; the spirit provides for itself. If they come late, they are of a higher class.

—Emerson to Samuel Gray Ward, November 26, 1839²³

You would have me at advantage, O friend; you would come to face me by having first wronged me. You would cheat me of the majesty which belongs to every human being.

—Journal, November 15, 1839²⁴

When once and again the regard and friendship of the noble-minded is offered me, I am made sensible of my disunion with myself. The head is of gold, the feet are of clay.

—Journal, November 27, 1839²⁵

I do not wish to dissect a real rose or a friend.

—Emerson to Margaret Fuller, December 12, 1839²⁶

I am very happy lately in adding one or two new friends to my little circle. . . . A new person is always to me a great event, and will not let me sleep.

—Emerson to Thomas Carlyle, December 12, 1839²⁷

Certainly we discover our friends by the very highest tokens, and these not describable, often not even intelligible, but not the less sure to that augury which is within the intellect and therefore higher. This is to me the most attractive of all topics, and, I doubt not, whenever I get your full confession of faith, we shall be at one on the matter. Because the subject is so high and sacred, we cannot walk straight up to it; we must saunter if we would find the secret. Nature’s roads are not turnpikes but circles, and the instincts are the only sure guides. I am glad if you have so much patience as you say, it is the only sure method that can be trusted. If men are fit for friendship I think they must see their mutual sympathy across the unlikeness and even apathy of to-day. But I see that I am writing sentences and no letter, and as I wish you to like me, I will not add another word.

—Emerson to Samuel Gray Ward, January 17, 1840²⁸

I am a worshipper of Friendship, and cannot find any other good equal to it.

—Emerson to John Sterling, May 29, 1840²⁹

We are never so fit for friendship as when we cease to seek for it, and take ourselves to friend.

—Journal, June 24, 1840³⁰

I think we must give up this superstition of company to spend weeks and fortnights. Let my friend come and say that he has to say, and go his way. Otherwise we live for show. That happens continually in my house, that I am expected to play tame lion by readings and talkings to the friends. The rich live for show: I will not.

—Journal, before July 6, 1840³¹

We pretend to our friends that we do not need direct communication—neither actions, nor gifts, nor conversation—to keep their influence whole. But it is a pretence.

—Journal, July 6, 1840³²

I rode with Margaret Fuller to the plains. She taxed me, as often before, so now more explicitly, with inhospitality of Soul. She and Caroline Sturgis would gladly be my friends, yet our intercourse is not friendship, but literary gossip. I count and weigh, but do not love. They make no progress with me, but however often we have met, we still meet as strangers. They feel wronged in such relation and do not wish to be catechised and criticised. I thought of my experience with several persons which resembled this: and confessed that I would not converse with the divinest person more than one week. Margaret insisted that it was no friendship which was thus so soon exhausted, and that I ought to know how to be silent and companionable at the same moment. She would surprise me,—she would have me say and do what surprised myself. I confess to all this charge with humility unfeigned. I can better converse with George Bradford than with any other. Elizabeth Hoar and I have a beautiful relation, not however quite free from the same hardness and fences. Yet would nothing be so grateful to me as to melt once for all these icy barriers, and unite with these lovers. But great is the law. I must do nothing to court their love which would lose my own. Unless that which I do build up myself, endears me to them, our covenant would be injurious. Yet how joyfully would I form permanent relations with the three or four wise and beautiful whom I hold so dear, and dwell under the same roof or in a strict neighborhood. That would at once ennoble life. And it is practicable. It is easier than things which others do. It is easier than to go to Europe, or to subdue a forest farm in Illinois. But this survey of my experience taught me anew that no friend I have surprises, none exalts me. This then is to be set down, is it not? to the requirements we make of the friend, that he shall constrain us to sincerity, and put under contribution all our faculties.

—Journal, August 16, 1840³³

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better.

—“Circles” (1840)³⁴

If we, dear friends, shall arrive at speaking the truth to each other we shall not come away as we went. We shall be able to bring near and give away to each other the love and power of all the friends who encircle each of us, and that society which is the dream of each shall stablish itself in our midst, and the fable of Heaven be the fact of God.

—Journal, September 8, 1840³⁵

We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, and so we buy ice-creams.

—“Man the Reformer” (1841)³⁶

But who is fit for friendship? Not one. . . . What we now call friendship, like what we call religion and poetry, is but rudiments and gymnastics.

—Emerson to Caroline Sturgis, March 15, 1841³⁷

His friends were his study, and to see them loosened his talents and his tongue.

—“Ezra Ripley, D.D.” (October 1841)³⁸

That mood into which a friend can bring us is his dominion over us.

—“Spiritual Laws” (1841)³⁹

If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let him feel that the highest love has come to see him, in thee its lowest organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by secret self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimented him with gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a benediction.

—“Spiritual Laws” (1841)⁴⁰

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in.

—“Compensation” (1841)⁴¹

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

—“Forbearance”⁴²

Sometimes it seems as if we used friends as expedients much as we do stoves. We are very cold, miserably cold; we build a fire and get warm; but the heat leaves us where it found us. It has not forwarded our affair a single step; and so the friend when he has come and gone.

—“Prospects” (1842)⁴³

But in our experience, man is cheap and friendship wants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with our friends in their absence, but we do not; when deed, word, or letter comes not, they let us go.

—“The Transcendentalist” (1842)⁴⁴

They feel that they are never so fit for friendship as when they have quitted mankind and taken themselves to friend. A picture, a book, a favorite spot in the hills or the woods which they can people with the fair and worthy creation of the fancy, can give them often forms so vivid that these for the time shall seem real, and society the illusion.

—“The Transcendentalist” (1842)⁴⁵

It is sad to outgrow our preachers, our friends, and our books, and find them no longer potent.

—Journal, July 12, 1842⁴⁶

There is reality, however, in our relations to our friend, is there not?

Yes, and I hail the grander lights and hints that proceed from these, as the worthiest fruits of our being, thus far. . . .

Alas, my friend, you have no generosity; you cannot give yourself away. I see the law of all your friendships. It is a bargain. You tell your things, your friend tells his things, and as soon as the inventory is complete, you take your hats.

—Journal, September 1842⁴⁷

My companion should not be able to paralyze me, nor narrow, nor disturb my temper. When met meet, each should descend like a shower of rockets, like a shower of falling stars so rich with deeds, with thoughts, with so much accomplishment that it should be the festival of nature which all things symbolize; as now love is only the highest symbol of Friendship, as all other things seem lower symbols of it.

—Journal, 1842⁴⁸

I must thank the Quaker City, however, for a new conviction, that this whim called friendship was the brightest thought in what Eden or Olympus it first occurred. I think the two first friends must have been travellers.—I doubt you think my practice of the finest art to be bad enough, but friendship does not ever seem to me quite real in the world, but always prophetic; and if I wrote on the Immortality of the Soul, this would be my first topic. Yet is nothing more right than that men should think to address each other with truth and the highest poetry at certain moments, far as their ordinary intercourse is therefrom and buried in trifles. I will try if a man is a man. I will know if he feels that star as I feel it; among trees, does he know them and they him? Is he at the same time both flowing and fixed? Does he feel that Nature proceeds from him, yet can he carry himself as if he were the meanest particle? All and nothing? These things I would know of him, yet without catechism: he shall tell me them in all manner of unexpected ways, in his behavior and in his repose.

—Emerson to Samuel Gray Ward, January 24, 1843⁴⁹

Strict conversation with a friend is the magazine out of which all good writing is drawn.

—Journal, February 8, 1843⁵⁰

It is very funny to go in to a family where the father and mother are devoted to the children. You flatter yourself for an instant that you have secured your friend’s ear, for his countenance brightens; then you discover that he has just caught the eye of his babe over your shoulder, and is chirruping to him.

—Journal, February–March 1843⁵¹

It is a pathetic thing to meet a friend prepared to love you, to whom yet, from some inaptitude, you cannot communicate yourself with that grace and power which only love will allow.

—Journal, 1843⁵²

It is a great joy to find that we have underrated our friend, that he or she is far more excellent than we had thought.

—Journal, March 23, 1843⁵³

My friends are leaving the town, and I am sad at heart that they cannot have that love and service from me to which they seem by their aims and the complexion of their minds, and by their unpopularity, to have rich claims.

—Journal, May 1843⁵⁴

Persons are fine things, but they cost so much! for thee I must pay me.

—Journal, 1843⁵⁵

It is the grace of new friends to be frank, and of old friends to be reticent.

—Journal, 1843⁵⁶

We must not be parties in our dealing with our friends, but the judge.

—Journal, 1844(?)–45⁵⁷

Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas which they never pass or exceed.

—“Experience” (1844)⁵⁸

New actions are the only apologies and explanations of old ones which the noble can bear to offer or to receive. If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and has doubled his power to serve you, and ere you can rise up again will burden you with blessings.

—“Character” (1844)⁵⁹

I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding which can subsist, after much exchange of good offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap. For when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce. Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of the character, the most solid enjoyment.

—“Character” (1844)⁶⁰

Could we not pay our friend the compliment of truth, of silence, of forbearing? Need we be so eager to seek him? If we are related, we shall meet.

—“Character” (1844)⁶¹

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hope of the heart.

—“Character” (1844)⁶²

The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.

—“Gifts” (1844)⁶³

Is there then no friend?

—“Nature” (1844)⁶⁴

Love shows me the opulence of nature, by disclosing to me in my friend a hidden wealth, and I infer an equal depth of good in every other direction.

—“Nominalist and Realist” (1844)⁶⁵

        Friends to me are frozen wine;

        I wait the sun on them should shine.⁶⁶

        You shall not love me for what daily spends;

        You shall not know me in the noisy street,

        Where I, as others, follow petty ends;

        Nor when in fair saloons we chance to meet;

        Nor when I’m jaded, sick, anxious or mean.

        But love me then and only, when you know

        Me for the channel of the rivers of God

        From deep ideal fontal heavens that flow.⁶⁷

Friends have nothing to give each other; nothing to withhold; nothing to ask for, or that can be refused: such liberty would infer imperfect affinity. All that behooves them is clearness, or, not to miscall relations, Truth forevermore, and love after that.

—Journal, March–April 1845⁶⁸

When I am in the woods I am warm; when I am cold and wish sticks to burn I have arrived where no trees are. When I am listless, thoughts come crowding on my brain and each hinders the remembrance of the other. So do friends come when I would be alone, and come not when they would refresh me.

—Journal, 1845⁶⁹

Dear heart, take it sadly home to thee, that there will and can be no coöperation.

—Journal, after November 5, 1845⁷⁰

The other part of life is self-reliance. Love and it balance up and down, and the beam never rests. Thou wouldst fain not look out of the window, nor waste time in expecting thy friend. Thou wouldst be sought by him. Well, that is also in thy soul, and this is its law. The soul of man must be the servant of another. In its good estate, it is the servant of the Spirit of Truth. When it is abandoned to that dominion, it is great and sovereign, and draweth friends and lovers. When it is not so, it serveth a friend or lover.

—Journal, after November 5, 1845⁷¹

Live for friendship, live for love . . .

—“Ode Inscribed to W.H. Channing” (June 1846)⁷²

Health, south wind, books, old trees, a boat, a friend.

—Journal, 1847⁷³

I see that I shall not readily find better or wiser men than my old friends at home.

—Journal, October 1847⁷⁴

That which lures a solitary American in the woods with the wish to see England, is the moral peculiarity of the Saxon race,—its commanding sense of right and wrong, the love and devotion to that,—this is the imperial trait, which arms them with the sceptre of the globe. It is this which lies at the foundation of that aristocratic character, which certainly wanders into strange vagaries, so that its origin is often lost sight of, but which, if it should lose this, would find itself paralyzed; and in trade and in the mechanic’s shop, gives that honesty in performance, that thoroughness and solidity of work which is a national characteristic. This conscience is one element, and the other is that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship, that homage of man to man, running through all classes,—the electing of worthy persons to a certain fraternity, to acts of kindness and warm and stanch support, from year to year, from youth to age,—which is alike lovely and honorable to those who render and those who receive it; which stands in strong contrast with the superficial attachments of other races, their excessive courtesy and short-lived connection.

—“Speech at Manchester”⁷⁵

What has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us?

—“Uses of Great Men” (1850)⁷⁶

A man of 45 does not want to open new accounts of friendship. He has said “kitty kitty” long enough.

—Journal, 1850⁷⁷

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

—“Fate” (1851)⁷⁸

Another point of economy is to look for seed of the same kind as you sow, and not to hope to buy one kind with another kind. Friendship buys friendship . . .

—“Wealth” (January 1852)⁷⁹

The belief of some of our friends in their duration suggests one of those musty householders who keep every broomstick and old grate, put in a box every old tooth that falls out of their heads, preserve their ancient frippery of their juvenile wardrobe, and they think God saves all the old souls which he has used up. What does he save them for?

—Journal, June 1, 1852⁸⁰

Would you know a man’s thoughts,—look at the circle of his friends, and you know all he likes to think of. Well, is the life of the Boston patrician so desirable, when you see the graceful fools who make all his company?

—Journal, February–March 1854⁸¹

I remember the maxim which the French stole from our Indians,—and it was worth stealing,—“Let not the grass grow on the path of friendship!”

—Emerson to Thomas Carlyle, March 11, 1854⁸²

Friends do not shake hands. I talk with you, and we have marvelous intimacies, and take all manner of beautiful liberties. After an hour, it is time to go, and straightway I take hold of your hand, and find you a coarse stranger, instead of that musical and permeable angel with whom I have been entertained.

—Journal, 1854⁸³

Life is not long enough for art, nor long enough for friendship.

—“Address . . . at the Consecration of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, September 29, 1855”⁸⁴

The child quotes his father, and the man quotes his friend.

—“Quotation and Originality” (March 1859)⁸⁵

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

—“Domestic Life” (November 1859)⁸⁶

The youth aches for solitude. When he comes to the house he passes through the house. That does not make the deep recess he sought. “Ah! now I perceive,” he says, “it must be deep with persons; friends only can give depth.” Yes, but there is a great dearth, this year, of friends; hard to find, and hard to have when found: they are just going away; they too are in the whirl of the flitting world, and have engagements and necessities. They are just starting for Wisconsin; have letters from Bremen;—see you again, soon.

—“Considerations by the Way” (1860)⁸⁷

The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work. Friends, books, pictures, lower duties, talents, flatteries, hopes,—all are distractions which cause oscillations in our giddy balloon, and make a good poise and a straight course impossible.

—“Power” (1860)⁸⁸

When our friends die, we not only lose them, but we lose a great deal of life which in the survivors was related to them.

—Journal, May 1860⁸⁹

Of friendship. There is not only the unspeakable benefit of a reasonable creature to talk to, but also a certain increase of sanity, through testing one’s health by the other’s, and noting the accords and discords.

—Journal, May 1860⁹⁰

Friendship is an order of nobility; from its revelations we come more worthily into nature.

—“Education” (1863)⁹¹

Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.

—“Behavior” (1860)⁹²

’T is a French definition of friendship, rien que s’entendre, good understanding.

—“Behavior” (1860)⁹³

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall makes us do what we can. This is the service of a friend. With him we are easily great. There is a sublime attraction in him to whatever virtue is in us. How he flings wide the doors of existence! What questions we ask of him! what an understanding we have! how few words are needed! It is the only real society.

—“Considerations by the Way” (1860)⁹⁴

There is a pudency about friendship as about love, and though fine souls never lose sight of it, yet they do not name it.

—“Considerations by the Way” (1860)⁹⁵

We take care of our health; we lay up money; we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all,—friends?

—“Considerations by the Way” (1860)⁹⁶

He basked in friendships all the days of Spring.

—Journal, July 1861⁹⁷

The youth longs for a friend; when he forms a friendship he fills up the unknown parts of his friend’s character with all virtues of man.

—Journal, 1863⁹⁸

Friendship a better base for treating of the soul than Immortality. Then it affirms it inclusively.

—Journal, 1863⁹⁹

Dearest friends will know to-morrow, as the whole earth will know, whether I have kept faith with them.

—Journal, December 1863¹⁰⁰

Barriers of man impassable. They who should be friends cannot pass into each other. Friends are fictions founded on some single momentary experience.

—Journal, March 1864¹⁰¹

We want real relations of the mind and the heart; we want friendship; we want knowledge; we want virtue; a more inward existence to read the history of each other.

—“Social Aims” (December 1864)¹⁰²

The true friend must have an attraction to whatever virtue is in us.

—“Social Aims” (December 1864)¹⁰³

How the countenance of our friend still left some light after he had gone!

—“Clubs”¹⁰⁴

What is best in the ancient religions was the sacred friendships between heroes . . .

—“Remarks at the Meeting for Organizing the Free Religious Society” (May 1867)¹⁰⁵

Many times the reading of a book has made the fortune of the man,—has decided his way of life. It makes friends. ’T is a tie between men to have been delighted with the same book. Every one of us is always in search of his friend, and when unexpectedly he finds a stranger enjoying the rare poet or thinker who is dear to his own solitude,—it is like finding a brother.

—“Address at the Opening of the Concord Free Public Library”¹⁰⁶

There is so much, too, which a book cannot teach which an old friend can.

—“Concord Walks” (1876)¹⁰⁷

Walden

        If Thought unlock her mysteries,

            If Friendship on me smile,

        I walk in marble galleries,

            I talk with kings the while.¹⁰⁸