Precept and Practice – JULY 26 – Friendship
Friendship is one of the greatest boons God can bestow on man. It is a union of our finest feelings, an uninterested binding of hearts, and a sympathy between two souls. It is an undefinable trust we repose in one another, a constant communication between two minds, and an unremitting anxiety for each other’s good. What, then, is the root, the cause of friendship? Sympathy. Sympathy conceives friendship; friendship love. Love is friendship. The tree that bears love bears also friendship.
(Hill)
The lightsome countenance of a friend giveth such an inward decking to the house where it lodgeth, as proudest palaces have cause to envy the gilding.
(Sir Philip Sidney.)
Happy is the house that shelters a friend.
(R. W. Emerson)
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From the Introduction to Precept and Practice
The kindly welcome given to my other little books, ‘Being and Doing’ and ‘Character and Conduct,’ must be my excuse for adding another collection of extracts to the number now in circulation.
The quotations are gathered from the books of many earnest thinkers, and deal with Life in all its length and breadth, with ourselves, our characters, our plain unvarnished faults and weaknesses, our often untoward circumstances, and with all that drags us down;- with our purposes, our religion, our love and friendships, and with all that uplifts us;- with our relation to others, our influence and responsibilities, and finally with those stages of our journey which bring us to the Road’s Last Turn and to the Silent Land.
CONSTANCE M. WHISHAW
Suffolk Vicar 