The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity; as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.
Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, § 365 (1820)
(Source)
togetherness
The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet.
Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium, Part 2 “Home Life,” “Parents and Children” (1989)
(Source)
No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have a speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will.
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still—
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
“The Master Speed” (1934)
(Source)
Collected in A Further Range (1937). Frost wrote the poem for his daughter's wedding, and the final line is the epitaph on his wife's portion of their gravestone.
And remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.
Emily Kimbrough (1899-1989) American author and journalist
The Innocents from Indiana, ch. 17 (1950)
(Source)
At the very end of the book, a note from the protagonist's mother, about the protagonist having failed the entrance examination to Bryn Mawr.
I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom, or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see.
Lemony Snicket (b. 1970) American author, screenwriter, musician (pseud. for Daniel Handler)
The Beatrice Letters (2006)
Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to do it rightly is an art like any other.
Freya Stark (1893-1993) Franco-British explorer, travel writer [Freya Madeline Stark]
The Freya Stark Story (1953)
(Source)
The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
