friendship quptes

Abraham Lincoln: 

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

Albert Camus: 

Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

Alice Walker: 

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Anaïs Nin: 

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Ann Richards: 

I've always said that in politics, your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill you.

Anna Garlin Spencer: 

The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed. Perhaps it should be added that either the man or the woman thus deeply bound in lifelong friendship who seeks marriage must find a still rarer man or woman to wed, to make such a three cornered comradeship a permanent success.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh: 

If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.

Aristotle: 

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Audre Lorde: 

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Ben Jonson: 

True friendship consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and value.

Bertrand Russell: 

A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.

Blaise Pascal: 

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back. 

C.S. Lewis: 

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one."

Charlie Daniels: 

A brief candle; both ends burning 
An endless mile; a bus wheel turning 
A friend to share the lonesome times 
A handshake and a sip of wine 
So say it loud and let it ring 
We are all a part of everything 
The future, present and the past 
Fly on proud bird 
You're free at last.
written en route to the funeral for his friend, Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd.


Cicero: 

It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity.

Confucius: 

Silence is the true friend that never betrays.

Cornelia Otis Skinner: 

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. 
The Ape in Me, 1959


David Hume: 

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

Deng Ming-Dao: 

Those truly linked don't need correspondence. When they meet again after many years apart, Their friendship is as true as ever.

Don Marquis: 

There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of pleasure in a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him, understood him. At these moments something fine and spiritual passes between two friends. These are the moments worth living.

E. B. White: 

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.
Charlotte, "Charlotte's Web"


E.M. Forster: 

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

E.R. Bulwer-Lytton: 

It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief: enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best.

Ecclesiasticus 6:14: 

A faithful friend is a strong defense: and he that hath found such an one hath found a treasure.

Edgar Watson Howe: 

When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.

Eleanor Roosevelt: 

Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world.

Elie Wiesel: 

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.

Elizabeth Foley: 

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox: 

All love that has not friendship for its base,
Is like a mansion built upon the sand.

Emily Dickinson: 

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you -- Nobody -- too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you know!

Emily Dickinson: 

Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen -- 
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs -- between --

This entry continued ...
Epicurus: 

It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.
3rd century BCE 


Francis David: 

We need not think alike to love alike.

Friedrich Nietzsche: 

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

George Eliot: 

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

George Eliot: 

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?

George Santayana: 

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different. 
Persons and Places: The Middle Span, 1945


George Santayana: 

The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend.
The Life of Reason, 1905-1906


George Washington: 

Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

Gore Vidal: 

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

Henri Nouwen: 

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

Henry David Thoreau: 

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

Henry David Thoreau: 

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?

Henry Ward Beecher: 

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.

Indira Gandhi: 

You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.

It's a Wonderful Life: 

Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.

Jane Austen: 

Friendship is the finest balm for the pangs of despised love.

Jane Austen: 

Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.

Jessamyn West: 

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

Katherine Mansfield: 

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.

La Rochefoucauld: 

A true friend is the most precious of all possessions and the one we take the least thought about acquiring.

Louisa May Alcott: 

"Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.

Marcel Proust: 

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Margaret Guenther: 

[W]e all need friends with whom we can speak of our deepest concerns, and who do not fear to speak the truth in love to us.

Mark Twain: 

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Mark Twain: 

The holy passion of friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring in nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Mark Twain: 

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Marlene Dietrich: 

It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: 

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.

Martin Luther King, jr.: 

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends

May Sarton: 

Though friendship is not quick to burn,
It is explosive stuff.

Maya Angelou: 

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

Norman Douglas: 

To find a friend one must close one eye; To keep him, two.

Oscar Levant: 

I have no trouble with my enemies. But my goddam friends,...they are the ones that keep me walking the floor nights.

Rabindranath Tagore: 

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.

Rachel Carson: 

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

Rachel Naomi Remen: 

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, adapted: 

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.

Robert Frost: 

When a friend calls to me from the road 
And slows his horse to a meaning walk, 
I don't stand still and look around 
On all the hills I haven't hoed, 
And shout from where I am, What is it? 
No, not as there is a time to talk. 
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, 
Blade-end up and five feet tall, 
And plod: I go up to the stone wall 
For a friendly visit.

Robert Louis Stevenson: 

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

Robert Louis Stevenson: 

We are all travelers in the wilderness of the world, and the best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

Robert McAfee Brown: 

How does one keep from "growing old inside"? Surely only in community. The only way to make friends with time is to stay friends with people…. Taking community seriously not only gives us the companionship we need, it also relieves us of the notion that we are indispensable.

Rollo May: 

There is an energy field between humans. And, when we reach out in passion, it is met with an answering passion and changes the relationship forever.

Samuel Coleridge: 

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Samuel Johnson: 

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

Samuel Johnson: 

Always set high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Sarah Orne Jewett: 

Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.

Seneca: 

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.

Shel Silverstein: 

Friendship 
I've discovered a way to stay friends forever -- 

There's really nothing to it. 

I simply tell you what to do 

And you do it!

Shusha Guppy: 

The verb "to love" in Persian is "to have a friend." "I love you" translated literally is "I have you as a friend," and "I don't like you" simply means "I don't have you as a friend."

Simone Weil: 

The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?"

Simone Weil: 

Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it.

Sir Francis Bacon: 

There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.

Sir Francis Bacon: 

We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.

Song of Solomon: 

This is my beloved and this is my friend.

Thomas Jefferson: 

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.

Toni Morrison: 

I'm a controversial figure. My friends either dislike me or hate me. 
speech, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, 1978


Unknown: 

Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Unknown: 

Love is blind, but friendship closes its eyes.

W. Somerset Maugham: 

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

Warren G. Harding: 

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

William Blake: 

The bird a nest
  the spider a web
  the human friendship.

William Blake: 

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

Zora Neale Hurston: 

It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.