by Coleridge · Cluster: Friendship · Tears
Abstract
A gnomic epigram (after Logau) on friendship, that friends should be weighed not counted, and the boaster of many friends never had one.
Connections
Themes & Concepts: Friendship, Paradox Forms & Genres: Epigram Historical References: Classical Antiquity
Testo integrale / Full text
Friends should be weigh’d, not told; who boasts to have won
A multitude of friends, he ne’er had one.
First published in Morning Post, Dec. 26, 1801. Included in Essays,
&c., iii. 978. First collected in 1893. Adapted from Friedrich von
Logan’s Sinngedicht (Lessing’s edition, Bk. II, No. 65).
‘Freunde muss man sich erwählen
Nur nach Wägen, nicht nach Zählen.’
Cf. also Logan, Book II, No. 30.