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Quotations about company
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Animals are a compromise between being alone and being with people.
Lillian M. Roberts (contemp.) American author, veterinarian
Riding for a Fall (1996)
O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company,
That fears his fellowship to die with us.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Henry V, Act 4, sc. 3 [Henry] (1599)
(Source)
Fond as we are of our loved ones, there comes at times during their absence an unexplained peace.
Other Authors and Sources
Anne Shaw, But Such Is Life (1931)
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It is beyond me.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) American writer, folklorist, anthropologist
“How It Feels to Be Colored Me”, The World Tomorrow (May 1928)
(Source)
We can have no better clue to a man’s character than the company he keeps.
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
The Discourses, Book 3, ch. 34 (1517) [tr. Thomson (1883)]
(Source)
Alt. trans.: "There is no better indication of a man's character than the company which he keeps."
No one can be happy in eternal solitude.
Anne Brontë (1820-1849) British novelist, poet [pseud. Acton Bell]
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, ch. 7 “The Excursion” [Helen] (1848)
(Source)
Solitude is naught and society is naught. Alternate them and the good of each is seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1838)
Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep, for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.
Edwin Paxton Hood (1820-1885) English nonconformist minister and author
Self-Formation (1858 ed.)
The more you join with people in their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Tom Sawyer Abroad, ch. 11 (1894)
A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
Charles Evans Hughes, Sr. (1862-1948) American statesman, politician, Supreme Court Justice (1910-1916, 1930-1941)
Address to the YMCA, New York
Quoted in The Homiletic Review (Nov 1907)
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.
A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina (1664-1718) Italian man of letters and jurist
(Attributed)
Sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde.
Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: This is the ideal life.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Mark Twain’s Notebook [ed. Paine (1935)]
Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Spectator #306 (6 Feb 1712)
The bonds that unite another person to ourself exist only in our mind. Memory as it grows fainter relaxes them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we cheat other people and we exist alone. Man is the only creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary he is lying.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) French author
Remembrance of Things Past “The Sweet Cheat Gone” (1913-27)
Shared joyse are doubled; shared sorrows are halved.
No good thing is pleasant to possess without friends to share it.
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC-AD 65) Roman statesman, philosopher, playwright [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
Moral Letters to Lucilius [Epistulae morales ad Lucilium], letter 6 “On Sharing Knowledge,” sec. 4 [tr. Gummere (1918)]
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Following the Equator, ch. 48 (Epigraph) (1897)
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American diplomat, essayist, poet
Among My Books, “Dryden” (1870)
It is a consolation to the wretched to have companions in misery.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 995
Fellowship in woe doth woe assuage.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
“The Rape of Lucrece,” l. 790 (1594)
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!Omar Khayyám (1048-1123) Persian poet, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer
Rubáiyát, 12 [tr. FitzGerald, 4th ed. (1879)]
Alternate trans:Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness - And Wilderness is Paradise enow. [FitzGerald, 11, 1st ed. (1859)]Should our day's portion be one mancel loaf, A haunch of mutton and a gourd of wine Set for us two alone on the wide plain, No Sultan's bounty could evoke such joy.A gourd of red wine and a sheaf of poems — A bare subsistence, half a loaf, not more — Supplied us two alone in the free desert: What Sultan could we envy on his throne? [Graves & Ali-Shah, 11-12 (1967)]Yes, Loved One, when the Laughing Spring is blowing, With Thee beside me and the Cup o’erflowing, I pass the day upon this Waving Meadow, And dream the while, no thought on Heaven bestowing. [Garner, 1.20 (1888)]
Society is not comfort
To one not sociable.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Cymbeline, Act 4, sc. 2, l. 12 (1623)
I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, ch. 26 (1759)
(Source)
