Toasts, celebration & friendship

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And never brought to mind?Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And auld lang syne!Chorus.—For auld lang syne, my dear,For auld lang syne.We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,For auld lang syne.

May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.

And let your best be for your friend. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.

I can no other answer make but thanks,And thanks, and ever thanks; and oft good turnsAre shuffled off with such uncurrent pay.

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you.

I count myself in nothing else so happyAs in a soul rememb’ring my good friends;And as my fortune ripens with thy love,It shall be still thy true love’s recompense.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,Such seems your beauty still.

My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world."

But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Ring out wild bells to the wild sky,The flying cloud, the frosty light:The year is dying in the night;Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.Ring out the old, ring in the new,Ring, happy bells, across the snow:The year is going, let him go;Ring out the false, ring in the true.

I shot an arrow into the air,It fell to earth, I knew not where;For, so swiftly it flew, the sightCould not follow it in its flight.I breathed a song into the air,It fell to earth, I knew not where;For who has sight so keen and strong,That it can follow the flight of song?Long, long afterward, in an oakI found the arrow, still unbroke;And the song, from beginning to end,I found again in the heart of a friend.

I heard the bells on Christmas DayTheir old, familiar carols play,And wild and sweetThe words repeatOf peace on earth, good-will to men!

For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.

Some say that ever ’gainst that season comesWherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,The bird of dawning singeth all night long;And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

The time draws near the birth of Christ:The moon is hid; the night is still;The Christmas bells from hill to hillAnswer each other in the mist.Four voices of four hamlets round,From far and near, on mead and moor,Swell out and fail, as if a doorWere shut between me and the sound:Each voice four changes on the wind,That now dilate, and now decrease,Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.