Suspicion is the cancer of friendship. – Petrarch

The friend within the man is that part of him which belongs to you and opens to you a door which never, perhaps, is opened to another. Such a friend is true, and all he says is true; and he loves you even if he hates you in other mansions of his heart. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, translated from French b

To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time. – Cornelia Otis Skinner

Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow