There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Interpretation
True friendship requires trust, and trust is built on honesty and integrity.
This quote emphasizes the fundamental components of a genuine friendship, which are confidence and integrity. It suggests that for a friendship to thrive, both parties must have a foundational trust in each other, and that trust can only be established and maintained through integrity and honesty in their actions and words.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of relationships, one might use this quote to highlight the role of trust.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal
When I do retire, I will miss the trips with the team, the jokes with my teammates, the habits: having breakfast with them, playing with them, all the little things.
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
As hard as it is and as tired as I am, I force myself to get dinner at least once a week with my girlfriends, or have a sleepover. Otherwise my life is just work.
I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
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