Confidant

“ And when the story comes round to your friend or companion, whose confidence you have betrayed, you will, to your great chagrin and mortification, be discarded. A delicate sense of propriety will lead you to avoid prying too closely into the affairs of others. You will never do it from mere curiosity. But if any of your friends so far make you a confidant as to lead you to suppose that they need your sympathy or aid, you may, in a delicate manner, inquire farther, in order to ascertain what aid you can render. ”

“ The person of facile confidence, whose secrets have been blazed abroad more than once by trusted friends, makes yet another and another safe confidant—quite safe this time; one of whose fidelity there is no doubt—and learns when too late that one panier percé is very like another panier percé. ”

“ Beware of making confidants of your servants. Dignity not properly understood very readily degenerates into pride, which enters into no friendships, because it cannot bear an equal, and is so fond of flattery as to grasp at it even from servants and dependants. The most ultimate confidants, therefore, of proud people, are valets-de-chambre and waiting-women. Show the utmost humanity to your servants; make their situation as comfortable to them as possible: but if you make them your confidants, you spoil them, and debase yourselves. ”

“ For this confidence is not only an essential condition to their advancement in virtue, but also one of their principal safeguards against deception and intrigue.
The heart of woman, especially at your age, feels an imperative need of making a confidant of some one, and if that one is not her mother, it will be some friend who, perhaps, will not possess greater experience nor more wisdom or force than herself, and consequently, instead of giving the proper counsel, will add evil to evil by the fatal help of encouragement in a course that should be abandoned. ”

“ Men liked him, which was much to his credit. Those near his own age often made him a confidant in such matters as their ambitions and loves. His elders saw to it that he was asked not only to the things their wives and sisters gave but to week-ends in the family bosom as well. ”

“ The only reason for making choice of such confidants, must be the certainty that they will not venture to blame or contradict inclinations, which you are conscious no true friend would encourage. But this is a meanness into which I trust you are in no danger of falling. I rather hope you will have the laudable ambition of spending your time chiefly with those, whose superior talents, education, and politeness, may continually improve you, and whose society will do you honour. ”

“ Picture a sovereign worn out with state affairs, intrigues, and ceremonies, possessed of a confidante always the same, always calm, always rational, equally able to instruct and to soothe, with the intelligence of a confessor and the winning gentleness of a woman. ”

“ Now let this subject never be mentioned or alluded to again between us, my dear. We have subjects enough of conversation; we need not have recourse to pernicious sentimental gossipings. There is great difference between wanting a confidante, and treating a friend with confidence. ”

“ He told me all about them—or at any rate all about some of them—pouring out his confidences with an astonishing absence of reserve. Next to the intimate and trusted friend, the perfect stranger is the best of all possible confidants. ”

“ Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances’ secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.”
“How do you know?—how can you guess all this, sir?”
“I know it well; ”

“ I know it is hard to place proper limits on being taken into all our friends' confidence, and taking them into all ours.
Most frequently we make confidants from vanity, a love of talking, a wish to win the confidence of others, and make an exchange of secrets. ”

“ There are some who, when anything goes amiss with them, always seek the company of their confidants. These should seriously examine before God whether it is a necessary comfort in affliction or a support in weakness, or the too human satisfaction of justifying themselves, giving vent to their feelings, or getting blame and criticism for the Superior or some one else. ”

“ The ties of blood, and your being so much united in one common interest, form an additional bond of union to your friendship. If your brothers should have the good fortune to have hearts susceptible of friendship, to possess truth, honour, sense, and delicacy of sentiment, they are the fittest and most unexceptionable confidants. By placing confidence in them, you will receive every advantage which you could hope for from the friendship of men, without any of the inconveniences that attend such connexions with our sex. ”

“ If you choose to remain, well and good. I cannot help it. If, on the other hand, you decide to trust yourself to me, I swear, on the honour of a gentleman, to be worthy of the trust--to serve you truly and protect you to the last! ”

“ If, in the moment that your ill-judged confidence avowed you as the man you are, and robbed me of that friendship which I held sacred as my being—If in that bitter moment I concealed my knowledge of your guilt from an imperious principle of honor, it is not likely, that the years which time has added to my life, should have taught me perfidy—your secret still is safe. ”

“ For yourself, as I was saying, pray believe me that though from the roughness of my manner, being now unused to social intercourse, I seem to be ungracious and forbidding, I am grateful and mindful, and that in the tablets of my heart I have written you down as one in whom I could trust,—were it given to me to trust in men and women. ”

“ Let confidence begin early, move the lips first lisping for utterance, and continue in maturity, when the world’s folly that sometimes names itself experience shall try to teach disguise as prudence, and artifice as wisdom. Whatever we may think of the confessor, as an official person, confession is founded in the nature of things, and God bids us confess our faults one to another. Who ought to be confidential, if not those whose experience and destiny so unite their lives? I cannot even glance at the chief forms of this confidential relation. ”

“ There is more pride than you think in this puerile gentleness. Am I not your father, your best friend? Should I not force you to hear the truth when you are deceiving yourself and lead you back when you go astray? ”

“ They knew, sir, that confidence was not always returned, that we most willingly trust those whom we have longest known, and caress those with most fondness, whose inclinations we find by experience to correspond with our own, without regard to particular circumstances which may entitle others to greater regard, or higher degrees of credit, or of kindness. ”

“ I entreat you to believe that I respect, and love, and honour you sufficiently to be for a while so lifted up into your friendship that I may claim the privilege, without which friendship is but a form;—just as no freedom is more obnoxious than intrusion on confidence withheld, so no favour, I repeat, more precious than the confidence which a man of worth vouchsafes to him who invites it with no claim but the loyalty of his motives. ”

“ I shall certainly be guilty of a breach of confidence, but you will not love me less for it, because, compelled to choose between you two, and to deceive either one or the other, love has conquered friendship ”

“ I know all I possess in you, and, from all you have told me of your lover, I am well disposed towards him, and I believe him to be my friend. If a feeling of modesty does not deter you from shewing yourself tender, loving, and full of amorous ardour with me in his presence, how could I be ashamed, when, on the contrary, I ought to feel proud of myself? ”

“ If I had a friend whom I loved, whom I trusted faithfully and implicitly, whom I believed to be honest and true and single-hearted, I should--if such a crisis in the conflict of love and duty should unhappily arise in my life--take counsel from him. ”

“ However, as some circumstance might occur in which you might accuse me of not having acted towards you with all the sincerity that true love inspires, and that it has a right to demand, I have made up my mind to confide to you a secret which concerns my friend, although I am aware that he relies entirely upon my discretion. ”

“ Gentleness and confidence were certainly the right thing, as from a charming woman to her husband, but the fine tissue of reassurance woven by this lady’s hands and flung over her companion as a light, muffling veil, formed precisely a wrought transparency through which she felt her father’s eyes continually rest on herself. ”

“ Aye, now, I begin to understand; ten to one you mean my worthy friend, who, in pure goodness of heart, makes people's fortunes for them—their everlasting fortunes, as the phrase goes—only charging his one small commission of confidence. ”

“ Moreover, if you would consent to trust me to sentence myself and allow me to suffer the penalty that I prefer, I would gladly fasten myself to your tunic, my noble friend, so that I might never for a moment leave your side but be with you always and closely attached to you wherever you are, like those two-bodied beings invented in the myths. ”

“ This gear, I suppose, will pluck down your flesh.
Nay, soft, thou shalt have a little more pain,
For somewhat shorter now I will tie thy rein.
Enter Trust and Consolation.
Trust. Most blessed and happy, I say, are the just,
Even because they restrain their own inclination;
Thou, therefore, that hast made thy treasure of trust,
Behold, I have brought thee here Consolation.
Just. Now blessed be God of his mercy and grace,
With all my heart and soul I do you embrace.
Con. Consolation is my name, even as Trust hath said,
Which is joy or comfort in this life transitory ”

“ If we would but confess, friend to friend, if we would be but honest, man to man, we should not want confessors or confessionals.
If our doubts and difficulties are self-made, if they can be removed by wiser and better men, why not give to our brother the opportunity of helping us? ”

“ Speak without obscurity or affectation. The first is a mark of pedantry, the second a sign of folly. A wise man will speak always clearly and intelligibly.
64. To betray a confidence is to make yourself despicable. Many things are said among friends which are not said under a seal of secrecy, but are understood to be confidential, and a truly honorable man will never violate this tacit confidence. It is really as sacred as if the most solemn promises of silence bound your tongue; more so, indeed, to the true gentleman, as his sense of honor, not his word, binds him. ”

“ But this retiring somewhat within herself--this ceasing from the outward, demonstrative signs of trust and affection--was physical only: for the boy and girl grew daily nearer and dearer to each other; grew daily more trustful and confidential with each other; and daily became more and more identified in interest, thought, and feeling. ”

“ Such an attitude will engender a tangible confidence that may be drawn upon to weather temperamental contests that might otherwise prove to be serious obstacles in building up a mutual respect and trust and which is essential to peace and happiness. He will look for your word of cheer, and he will willingly tell you more and more of his inmost thoughts and ambitions, and unconsciously he will rely upon your judgment, your womanly intuition, your help, in every move he makes. ”

“ I looked at this strong and honest man, this man idolizing an image that he had enshrined in his soul, and I thought to tell him that, with my forehead touching the ground, I had worshiped his sister, but no, it was too delicate a confidence—I would keep it to myself. ”

“ And if I stood before you, now, as you know me—egotistic, sceptical, calm—and told you that you are the only being in whom I have ever felt complete confidence, whose word and thought I felt to be one; that you exercise more power over me than any other ever did or shall; that life in your companionship might gain the unity I long for ”

“ Your whole character and happiness rests upon the belief that you see life clearly and judge rightly the fellow-beings whom you know. Those you doubt ought to be doubted and those you trust ought to be trusted! ”

“ We will treat her as a coadjutor, which, by the way, she says she is not, and by the trust we place in her, secure [Pg 282] that discretionary use of our confidence which she shows with so much spirit in regard to her own. ”

“ So let me now just say a word in regard to the blessedness of thus living in an atmosphere of continual dependence on, and reference to, God, about great things and little things. Whenever a man is living by trust, even when the trust is mistaken, or when it is resting upon some mere human, fallible creature like himself, the measure of his confidence is the measure of his tranquillity. ”

“ It is confidence, therefore, in their Saviour and God that gives peace and tranquillity to the souls of the just. To know Him, to love Him, to trust Him, to dwell in His presence and to please Him, throughout all the vicissitudes and evils of life, are the objects of their constant actions and the highest aspirations of their fervid souls. ”

“ Yes, Herr Baron, the important things are neatness and honesty and practicality. And in marriage it is the same. For 'honesty is the best policy,' and one's word is his word and one must be able to have confidence. ”