Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

A sympathetic heart is like a spring of pure water bursting forth from the mountain side.

A sympathetic heart is like a spring of pure water bursting forth from the mountain side.

For I no sooner in my heart divin'd
My heart, which by a secret harmony
Still moves read more

For I no sooner in my heart divin'd
My heart, which by a secret harmony
Still moves with thine, joined in connection sweet.

Pity and need
Make all flesh kin. There in no caste in blood.

Pity and need
Make all flesh kin. There in no caste in blood.

It [true love] is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, read more

It [true love] is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.

Harmony of aim, not identity of conclusion, is the secret of sympathetic life.

Harmony of aim, not identity of conclusion, is the secret of sympathetic life.

A heart at leisure from itself,
To soothe and sympathise.

A heart at leisure from itself,
To soothe and sympathise.

Never elated while one man's oppress'd;
Never dejected while another's blessed.

Never elated while one man's oppress'd;
Never dejected while another's blessed.

Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
read more

Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentany as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.