See Also: LOVE, SOCIABILITY

1. An acquaintanceship, if all goes well, can linger in the memory like an appealing chord of music, while a friendship, or even a friendship that deteriorates into an enemyship, so to put it, is like a whole symphony, even if the music is frequently unacceptable, broken, loud, and in other ways painful to hear —William Saroyan
2. Became like old friends, the kind who can’t leave each other on deathbeds —Thomas McGuane
3. Comradeship … burned and flamed like dry straw on fire —Stephen Longstreet
4. Early friends drop out, like milk teeth —Graham Greene
5. Every man is like the company he won’t keep —Euripides

   An ironic twist on, “A man is known by the company he keeps” and, “Tell me the company you keep and I’ll tell you who you are.”

6. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys recorded by art or life —Simone Weil
7. Friendship … should, like a well-stocked cellar, be … continually renewed —Samuel Johnson
8. A friendship that like love is warm; a love like friendship steady —Thomas Moore
9. Friendship with Cape was like climbing a ladder. You had to wait awhile on each rung before he invited you to climb the next —Robert Campbell
10. Friends … slipping from his orbit like bees from a jaded flower —Beryl Markham
11. He who helps a friend in woe is like a fur coat in the snow —Russian proverb
12. I keep my friends as misers do their treasure —Pietro Aretino

    Aretino’s simile dating back to the sixteenth century, was followed by this explanation: “Because of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship.”

13. Ill company is like a dog who dirts those most whom he loves best —Jonathan Swift
14. In their friendship they were like two of a litter that can never play together without leaving traces of tooth and claw, wounding each other in the most sensitive places —Colette
15. It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife —Samuel Johnson
16. Life without a friend is like life without sun —Spanish proverb
17. Life without a friend is death with a vengeance —Thomas Fuller
18. Life without a friend is death without a witness —John Ray’s Proverbs
19. The light of friendship is like the light of phosphorous, seen plainest when all around is dark —Robert Crowell
20. Like old friends they wear well —Slogan, Meyer gloves
21. The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired —Robert Southey
22. My friendship [with Vita Sackwille-West] is over. Not with a quarrel, not with a bang, but as a ripe fruit falls —Virginia Woolf, March 11, 1935 diary entry

    See Also: BEGINNINGS/ENDINGS

23. A new friend is like new wine; you do not enjoy drinking it until it has matured —Ben Sira
24. A new friend is a new wine —The Holy Bible/Apocrypha
25. Their association together possessed a curiously unrelenting quality, like the union of partners in a business rather than the intimacy of friends —Anthony Powell
26. Went through our friendships like epsom salts, draining us, no apologies, no regrets —Rosa Guy
27. Without a friend the world is a wilderness —John Ray’s Proverbs

(See also LOVE.)

close as the bark to the tree Intimate, close; interdependent, symbiotically related, mutually sustaining. The phrase is used particularly of the closeness between husbands and wives. Though occasionally used to indicate physical proximity, the expression usually carries implications that such is indicative of a spiritual or psychological intimacy or dependency.

The “bark and the tree” as symbolic of “husband and wife” was in print as early as the mid-16th century. The analogy assumes that spouses interrelate in the interdependent, mutually nourishing patterns characteristic of the relationship between a tree and its bark. See also go between the bark and the tree, MEDDLESOMENESS.

eat [someone’s] salt To share someone’s food and drink, to partake of someone’s hospitality. Among the ancient Greeks to eat another’s salt was to create a sacred bond of friendship between host and guest. No one who had eaten another’s salt would say anything against him or do him any harm. Salt, as it is used in this phrase, symbolizes hospitality, probably because it once was of considerable value, (cf. the etymology of salary). The first OED citation given for this expression is dated 1382.

hand in glove See CONSPIRACY.

hobnob To be chummy, familiar, or intimate with; also, hob and nob. This expression originated as hab-nab ‘have or have not,’ ‘give or take.’ Shakespeare employed this early sense in Twelfth Night:

The ‘give or take’ sense of this expression was subsequently extended to include the exchange of toasts as a sign of comradeship. Consequently, the phrase evolved its contemporary figurative meaning of being on friendly or familiar terms.

the mahogany The dining room table, as symbolic of sociability, conviviality, friendship, conversation, etc. This popular 19th-century British colloquial term usually appeared in phrases such as around the mahogany, over the mahogany, or with one’s feet under the mahogany.

Currently mahogany is a colloquial term for a bar.

rub shoulders To mingle or socialize; to hobnob. This expression is derived from the bumping and grazing of bodies against each other at social gatherings. The phrase quite often describes the mingling of persons of diverse background and social status at cocktail parties, political gatherings, and the like.

thick as thieves Intimate, familiar, friendly; close, tight. This expression is thought to derive from the French ils s’entendent comme larrons en foire ‘as thick as thieves at a fair,’ where thick means ‘crowded, densely arranged.’ When at a fair was dropped from the expression, the figurative jump to thick ‘close, intimate’ occurred; Theodore Hook used the truncated form in The Parson’s Daughter (1833):

Pickpockets, cutpurses, and their kind frequented fairs and other large gatherings where the prospects of gain and escape were both high.