Proverb Lore: Many sayings, wise or otherwise, on many subjects, gleaned from many sourcesHulme, F. Edward (Frederick Edward)
History
Proverb Lore: Many sayings, wise or otherwise, on many subjects, gleaned from many sources
Hulme, F. Edward (Frederick Edward)
Proverbs -- History and criticism
"Soth to saie
Of him that loueth trew and well
Frendship is more than is cattell,
For frend in Court aie better is
Then penny in purse certis";
while one of our old proverbs declares, "As a man is friended, so the
law is ended." This seems to imply that in the case of the man who has
friends on the bench Justice will be a little blinder than usual, but it
is evident that an unknown and friendless culprit must necessarily start
under a disadvantage.
The following proverbs we see we have classed in our rough notes as
pertaining to "friends you have not proved,"[219:A] and this
classification may very well stand. It includes such sayings as "Friends
got without desert will be lost without cause," "A friend is never known
till one have need," "Before you make a friend eat a bushel of salt with
him." Heywood seems to have got very near to the root of the matter in
these lines of his:
"Many kinsfolke and few friends, some folke say:
But I find many kinsfolke and friend not one.
Folke say it hath been sayd many yeares since gone
Prove thy friend ere thou hast neede: but in deede
A friend is never knone till a man have neede.
Before I had neede my most present foes
Seemed my best friends, but thus the world goes."
The experience, we suppose, of all men, if ever this testing time really
comes, is a twofold surprise--how entirely some they had trusted failed
them, and how splendidly others came out of whom it was not expected.
Seneca declares that "Our happiness depends upon the choice of our
company," and we may, we suppose, take it that we all of us get about
such friends as we deserve. "Our friends are the mirror in which we see
ourselves." Other excellent adages pertaining to friendship are these:
"Be slow in choosing a friend, slower yet in changing";[219:B]
"Friendship multiplies joy and divides grief"; "Wherever you see your
friend trust yourself"; "The way to have a friend is to be one";
"Hearts may agree though heads differ"; "Wise and good men are friends,
others are but companions"; "Search thy friend for his virtues, thyself
for thy faults"; "Love sought is good, but given unsought is better";
"God divideth man into men, that so they may help each other"; "A man is
valued as he makes himself valuable." The Spaniards declare that "Eggs
of an hour, bread of a day, wine of a year, a friend of thirty years,
are best."
"The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel";
and in another passage Shakespeare writes of kindly
"Words of so sweet breath compounded,
As made the things more rich";
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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