Celebrating Friendship in February
By Barbara Gwanmesia

This month is another of those months for me and this column, when I go foraging for truths that will bring reflection and auspicious understanding to the heart. February is a month that has become the home of love and for lovers. Fortunately, a growing awareness of the true essence of love - friendship and care - is now becoming more and more the ‘think’ of the day. I am totally in agreement with this line of thinking, so I went looking for the wisdom in the word and nature of friendship. Here are some of the stuff I fell upon. Be blessed by them.

Author/Compiler: Bob Stenson

• A dog has many friends because he wags his tail instead of his tongue.
• A false friend and a shadow attend only when the sun shines.
• A friend is one who knows all about you and loves you just the same.
• A friend who is not in need could be a friend indeed.
• Always hold your head up, but keep your nose at the friendly level.
• Always put your best foot forward--but don't step on other people's toes.
• Be friendly and you will never want for friends.
• Fortune makes friends; misfortune tries them.
• Go often to your friend's home for weeds choke up the unused path.
• Heated arguments cool friendships. 
• If you want to keep your friends don't give them away.
• Strangers are friends you haven't met yet.
• The most solid friendships are often made in mutual adversity.
• To have a true friend, you must be a true friend.
• To love your enemies is fine, but perhaps you should treat your friends even better.
• When in doubt, do the friendliest thing.
• You can't use your friends and have them too.
• Your good fortune sometimes makes false friends; poor fortune points them out. 

Compliler: Simran Khurana

William Penn: A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.
Euripides: One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
John Dryden: It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
Laurence J. Peter: You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.
Johann Kaspar Lavater: You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.
George: Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
Plutarch: Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.
Proverb: The best mirror is an old friend.
Logan Pearsall Smith: The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend.
Jacques Delille: Chance makes our parents, but choice makes our friends.
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette: It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanism of friendship.
William James: We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities; it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can't tolerate.
George Ade: A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.
Francis Bacon: There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.
Honore de Balzac: Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.

Richard Barnfield
He that is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need:
If thou sorrow, he will weep;
If you wake, he cannot sleep;
Thus of every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear a part.

Marcus Tullius Cicero: What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.
Joan Crawford: If you have an ounce of common sense and one good friend you don't need an analyst.
Norman Douglas: To find a friend one must close one eye - to keep him, two.
Anonymous: Search not for a friend in time of need, for a true friend shall find thee.

I hope these words will lighten the friendship path of someone out there and make this month a month of true love celebrations, albeit in the quiet of your heart.

Oh, and by the way, if you think you do not have a friend… you are mistaken. You do have one… who is generally unseen.