My friends! There are no friends. [ Aristotle ]
Frequent the company of your betters. [ Thackeray ]
We encourage one another in mediocrity. [ Lamb ]
A companion of fools shall be destroyed. [ Proverbs xiii. 20 ]
Friends are good, - good, if well chosen. [ De Foe ]
He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. [ Solomon ]
There's not a wind but whispers of thy name,
And not a flower that grows beneath the moon,
But in its hues and fragrance tells a tale
Of thee, my love. [ Barry Cornwall ]
Keep good company, and you shall be of the number. [ George Herbert ]
For my own part, I shall be glad to learn of noble men. [ William Shakespeare ]
Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me. [ William Shakespeare ]
Be not deceived; evil communications corrupt good manners. [ Bible ]
We make others judgment our own by frequenting their society. [ Thomas Fuller ]
Choose the company of your superiors whenever you can have it. [ Lord Chesterfield ]
There are likely to be short graces where the devil plays host. [ Lamb ]
A man - be the heavens ever praised! - is sufficient for himself. [ Carlyle ]
It is best to be with those in time that we hope to be with in eternity. [ Fuller ]
The company in which you will improve most will be least expensive to you. [ George Washington ]
If you always live with those who are lame, you will yourself learn to limp. [ From the Latin ]
It is a true proverb that if you live with a lame man you will learn to halt. [ Plutarch ]
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates. [ Denis Diderot ]
The soul, by an instinct stronger than reason, ever associates beauty with truth. [ Tuckerman ]
You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good. [ Lavater ]
No man can be provident of his time, who is not prudent in the choice of his company. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
If men wish to be held in esteem, they must associate with those only who are estimable. [ Bruyere ]
Whosoever formeth an intimacy with the enemies of his friends, does so to injure the latter.
O wise man! wash your hands of that friend who associates with your enemies. [ Saadi ]
It is meet that noble minds keep ever with their likes; for who so firm, that cannot be seduced? [ William Shakespeare ]
Costly followers are not to be liked, lest while a man maketh his train longer, he make his wings shorter. [ Bacon ]
It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught as men take diseases, one of another. [ William Shakespeare ]
It is good discretion not to make too much of any man at the first; because one cannot hold out that proportion. [ Bacon ]
I set it down as a maxim, that it is good for a man to live where he can meet his betters, intellectual and social. [ William M. Thackeray ]
No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint. [ Chesterfield ]
A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire, - not too near, lest he burn: nor too far off, lest he freeze. [ Diogenes ]
Those who are unacquainted with the world take pleasure in the intimacy of great men; those who are wiser dread the consequences. [ Horace ]
Associate with men of judgment, for judgment is found in conversation, and we make another man's judgment ours by frequenting his company. [ Thomas Fuller ]
We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself. [ Lamb ]
No company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health. [ Colton ]
No wonder we are all more or less pleased with mediocrity, since it leaves us at rest, and gives the same comfortable feeling as when one associates with his equals. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
What is companionship where nothing that improves the intellect is communicated, and where the larger heart contracts itself to the model and dimension of the smaller? [ Landor ]
Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others eyes. [ Emerson ]
Constant companionship is not enjoyable, any more than constant eating. We sit too long at the table of friendship, when we outsit our appetites for each other's thoughts. [ Bovee ]
There is no man who has not some interesting associations with particular scenes, or airs, or books, and who does not feel their beauty or sublimity enhanced to him by such connections. [ Sir A. Alison ]
It is expedient to have an acquaintance with those who have looked into the world; who know men, understand business, and can give you good intelligence and good advice when they are wanted. [ Bishop Horne ]
It is hard to mesmerize ourselves, to whip our own top; but through sympathy we are capable of energy and endurance. Concert fires people to a certain fury of performance they can rarely reach alone. [ Emerson ]
He who comes from the kitchen smells of its smoke; and he who adheres to a sect, has something of its cant; the college air pursues the student; and dry inhumanity him who herds with literary pedants. [ Lavater ]
He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank. [ Colton ]
A companion that feasts the company with wit and mirth, and leaves out the sin which is usually mixed with them, he is the man; and let me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. [ Izaak Walton ]
A frequent intercourse and intimate connection between two persons make them so like, that not only their dispositions are moulded like each other, but their very face and tone of voice contract a certain analogy. [ Lavater ]
For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor. [ Napoleon I ]
In all societies, it is advisable to associate if possible with the highest; not that the highest are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can at any time descend; but if we begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible. [ Colton ]
When we live habitually with the wicked, we become necessarily either their victim or their disciple; when we associate, on the contrary, with virtuous men, we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or, at least, lose every day something of our faults. [ Agapet ]
Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood. [ St. Augustine ]
Be very circumspect in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine equals thou shalt enjoy more pleasure; in the society of thy superiors thou shalt find more profit. To be the best in the company is the way to grow worse; the best means to grow better is to be the worst there. [ Quarles ]
It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke. [ Colton ]
Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admire, - they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly. [ Thackeray ]
As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them, and which, if you do otherwise, emit what is unpleasant and noxious, so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsatisfactory and unsafe. [ Landor ]
Association is the delight of the heart not less than of poetry. Alison observes that an autumn sunset, with its crimson clouds, glimmering trunks of trees, and wavering tints upon the grass, seems scarcely capable of embellishment. But if in this calm and beautiful glow the chime of a distant bell steal over the fields, the bosom heaves with the sensation that Dante so tenderly describes. [ Willmott ]