Friendship-Enmity

Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals. (Herman Melville)

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (Bible)

The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame. (Charles Caleb Colton)

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. (Baltasar Gracian)

The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not recognized itself. (Henry Miller)

He who lives by fighting with an enemy has an interest in the preservation of the enemy's life. (Nietzsche)

The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. (Emerson)

You want to hate somebody, if you can, just to keep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself from becoming a mere mush of good-nature. (Charles Dudley Warner)

Couldn't we even argue that it is because men are unequal that they have that much more need to be brothers ? (Charles du Bos)

At the heart of our friendly or purely social relations, there lurks a hostility momentarily cured but recurring by fits and starts. (Marcel Proust)

The response man has the greatest difficulty in tolerating is pity, especially when he warrants it. Hatred is a tonic, it makes one live, it inspires vengeance, but pity kills, it makes our weakness weaker. (Balzac)

A low capacity for getting along with those near us often goes hand in hand with a high receptivity to the idea of the brotherhood of men. (Eric Hoffer)