Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth
Written byGeorge Washington1732–1799 · First U.S. President & Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army
This one is real, and unusually well documented for a Washington quotation. He wrote it from Newburgh, New York, on 15 January 1783, in an unsolicited letter of advice to his nephew Bushrod Washington, who was then studying law in Philadelphia. Jared Sparks’s edition of Washington’s writings prints the letter in volume VIII, with this sentence on page 374, and the manuscript transcription published in Founders Early Access gives the same words from the Papers of George Washington at the Library of Congress.
“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth” George Washington, letter to Bushrod Washington, Newburgh, 15 January 1783: "Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation." Genuine — printed in Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington, vol. VIII (Boston: Ferdinand Andrews, 1838), p. 374.
Can you use it?
✓ Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of George Washington — First U.S. President & Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. Theme: "Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Source
Letter to Bushrod Washington
Written
Newburgh, New York · 15 January 1783
Printed in
The Writings of George Washington, ed. Jared Sparks, vol. VIII (Boston: Ferdinand Andrews, 1838), pp. 372–375; quotation on p. 374
Manuscript
Papers of George Washington, Library of Congress
It is easy to make acquaintances, but very difficult to shake them off, however irksome and unprofitable they are found, after we have once committed ourselves to them. The indiscretions, which very often they involuntarily lead one into, prove equally distressing and disgraceful. Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
Letter to Bushrod Washington, 15 January 1783
Text as printed in Sparks’s edition, vol. VIII, pp. 373–374. The Founders Early Access transcription of the manuscript keeps Washington’s ampersand — “undergo & withstand” — and does not capitalise “true friendship,” where Sparks sets a full stop and a capital. Modern quotation usually splices the two clauses with a semicolon.
Checked the manuscript against the editors’ transcription: Founders Early Access, from the University of Virginia Press ↗, gives the same passage from the Papers of George Washington at the Library of Congress, and notes the letter was written from Newburgh to a nephew then studying law in Philadelphia.
Cross-checked Wikiquote’s George Washington page ↗, which lists the line in its sourced 1780s section — not among the misattributed or disputed entries — citing the letter to Bushrod Washington of 15 January 1783. Quote Investigator has no article on this quotation.
Traced the metaphor, which did not start with Washington: Wikiquote records William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham ↗ saying “Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom” in a speech of 14 January 1766, citing Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
✓Public domain
Washington wrote the letter in 1783 and died in 1799, so the text itself has long been in the public domain in the United States. The edition consulted here — Sparks’s volume VIII, published at Boston in 1838 and entered for copyright by Sparks in 1835 — is likewise far outside any surviving term.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The quote is real — the way it travels is not
The attribution here is right: this is Washington, in a letter anyone can read. What goes wrong is downstream. The sentence gets trimmed, its second clause gets amputated, its source vanishes, and the metaphor at its centre is often presented as Washington’s invention when an earlier speaker had already used it.
~
Wording“Friendship is a plant of slow growth…” Trimmed
✓The full sentence is on the page, inside a lecture about law school, cheap company and gaming: Sparks’s vol. VIII, p. 374 ↗ — “Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.”
Context
An uncle’s letter, not an aphorism
In January 1783 Washington was at Newburgh, New York — the Continental Army’s headquarters, which he occupied from 1 April 1782 until 19 August 1783, through the long restless wait between the fighting and the peace. From there he wrote to his nephew Bushrod Washington, then studying law in Philadelphia, opening with something close to an apology: the young man would be surprised, perhaps, at receiving a letter from him, but if it answered its purpose he would not think the time misspent.
What follows is less a philosophy of friendship than a budget lecture. Bushrod’s father had written about the difficulty of sending him money, and Washington — suspecting both thin funds and free spending — set out his advice as a list: keep the object that took you to Philadelphia in view, choose your company carefully, give in proportion to your purse, do not confuse fine clothes with fine men, and above all avoid gaming, which he calls the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity and the father of mischief. The friendship line is the second item on that list, arriving straight after a warning that acquaintances are easy to make and very hard to shake off.
It is easy to make acquaintances, but very difficult to shake them off.
Who Bushrod was, and how the letter ends
Sparks’s edition attaches a footnote to the name: Bushrod was the favourite nephew of General Washington, the man to whom he left the estate at Mount Vernon, and who was for many years one of the associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. On that evidence the advice was not wasted.
The closing is pure uncle. Washington anticipates the reply — that the young man’s conduct has already anticipated the advice, and not one of the cases applies to him — says he would be heartily glad of it, and adds that pursuing the right walk of life will be the sure road to his favour, “as merit rarely goes unrewarded.”
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1732–1799 · First U.S. President & Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army
George Washington (1732–1799) commanded the Continental Army through the American Revolutionary War and served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797. He is also one of the most heavily counterfeited names in the quotation trade, so it is worth saying plainly that this line is not one of the fakes. It comes from his private correspondence, where the plain, list-making, faintly stern voice of this letter is the voice he actually used with family.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this source
Washington, George. “To Bushrod Washington, Newburg, 15 January 1783.” In The Writings of George Washington; Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, edited by Jared Sparks, vol. 8, 372–75. Boston: Ferdinand Andrews, 1838. Quotation at p. 374.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth’?” Last verified 6 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/be-courteous-to-all-but-intimate-with-few-and-let-those-few/