Friendship Quotes

We have collected and put the best friendship quotes about the meaning of life from around the world. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.

Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between people. Friendship is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an association. Friendship has been studied in academic fields such as communication, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. Various academic theories of friendship have been proposed, including social exchange theory, equity theory, relational dialectics, and attachment styles.

Those who hold their friends in good esteem and treat them with respect gain many defenders and supporters against their enemies. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Having faithful friends is just as important as satisfying the vital necessities of life. Being among a secure and peaceful circle of friends means finding safety against many hazards and dangers. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Wise people, upon seeing that a friendship has become damaged, immediately remove the cause of discontent and restore good relations. Even wiser are those who strive to avoid or prevent disagreement with their friends in the first place. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Love and good relations between friends continue as long as they understand each other, practice self-denial, and make sacrifices within permissible limits. Friendship between those who cannot renounce their interests and preferences for the sake of their friends cannot endure. – M. Fethullah Gulen

We are loyal and faithful to our friends to the extent we share their troubles as well as their joys. If we cannot weep when our friends weep and rejoice when they rejoice, we cannot be regarded as faithful friends. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Those who maintain a friendship with one who has fallen on hard times are true, loyal friends. Those who do not support their friends during their misfortune have nothing to do with friendship. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Those who tend to disagree and struggle with their friends have few friends. One who desires to have faithful and numerous friends should not disagree with them on trivial matters. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Friendship pertains to one’s heart and its sincerity. Those who think they can gain another’s friendship through deception and hypocrisy only deceive themselves. Even if some simple-minded people are taken in by their hypocrisy and flattery, they will not be able to sustain a long-lasting friendship. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Sometimes the sun appears in an atom, a flood in a drop, and a book in a sentence. For such a profundity, the eye (meaning sight) is as important as the word. – M. Fethullah Gulen

A best friend can tell you things you don’t want to tell yourself.

A best friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you for the way you are today.

A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.

A friend is one who overlooks your broken fence and admires the flowers in your garden.

A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words. – Shania Twain

A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.

A friend is what the heart needs all the time.

A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails. – Donna Roberts

A friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face. – Maya Angelou

A friend who understands your tears is much more valuable than a lot of friends who only know your smile. – Sushan R. Sharma

A good friend is like a four-leaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have.

A good friend will help you move. But best friend will help you move a dead body. – Jim Hayes

A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they’re not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they’re not so bad. – Arnold Glasow

A person who always disturbs you is a person who loves you.

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out. – Walter Winchell

A real friend is the one who walks with you when everyone walks out.

A relationship with a best friend is like sugarcane… You can crush it, shred it, grind it, squeeze it and it’s still sweet.

A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship. – Markus Zusak

A sweet friendship refreshes the soul.

A true friend is someone who is there for you when they would rather be someplace else. – Len Wein

A true friend is someone who never gets tired of listening to your pointless dramas over and over again. – Lauren Conrad

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked. – Bernard Meltzer

A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down. – Arnold H. Glasgow

A true friend’s silence hurts more than an enemy’s rough words.

An old friend will help you move. A good friend will help you move a dead body. – Jim Hayes

Anyone can make you smile or cry, but it takes someone special to make you smile when you already have tears in your eyes.

Anything is possible when you have the right people there to support you. – Misty Copeland

As your best friend, I’ll always pick you up when you call after I finish laughing.

Be a friend to thyself, and others will be so too. – Thomas Fuller

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm & constant. – Socrates

Best friend: the one that you can mad only for a short period of time because you have important stuff to tell them. – Unknown

Best friend: the one you can only get mad at for a short period because you have important stuff to tell them.

Best friends don’t care if your house is clean. They care if you have wine.

Best friends know how crazy you are and still choose to be seen with you in public. – Unknown

Bests Friends. They know how crazy you are and still choose to be seen with you in public.

Completely different but best friends.

Day after day she is passing, and autumn is coming, trees have fallen from trees a long time ago, a little sadder than last summer, my youth will pass like a calm river.

Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to level yourself up. – Thomas J. Watson

Every new friend is a new adventure… the start of more memories. – Patrick Lindsay

Everything is empty, and the park and bench and the school chalk no longer say that you only know how sad we would go down and go no more.

Fake friends are like shadows, they follow you in the sun but leave you in the dark.

Friend come and go, but enemies remain and build up.

Friends and good manners will carry you where money won’t go. – Margaret Walker

Friends are angels who lift us up when our wings forget how to fly.

Friends are chocolate chips in the cookie of life.

Friends are God’s way of taking care of us.

Friends are like rainbows, always there to cheer you up after a storm.

Friends are like walls, sometimes you lean on them, and sometimes it’s good just knowing they’re there.

Friends are medicine for a wounded heart and vitamins for a hopeful soul.

Friends are people who know you really well and like you anyway. – Greg Tamblyn

Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer. – Ed Cunningham

Friends buy you food. Best friends eat your food.

Friends buy you food. Best friends eat your food. – Unknown

Friends come and go, like the waves of the ocean, but the true ones stay like an octopus on your face.

Friends give you a shoulder to cry on. But best friends are ready with a shovel to hurt the person that made you cry.

Friends give you a shoulder to cry on. But best friends are ready with a shovel to hurt the person that made you cry. – Unknown

Friends offer free therapy. – Unknown

Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth. – Herman Melville

Friendship is a single soul living in two bodies.

Friendship is all about trusting each other, helping each other, loving each other, and being crazy together. – O Henry

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity. – Khalil Gibran

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one. – C.S. Lewis

Friendship is having those conversations with your best friend and thinking if anyone heard you, you would be put in a mental hospital.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept. – Samuel Butler

Friendship is like peeing in your pants. Everyone can see it, but only you can feel a warm feeling inside. – Robert Bloch

Friendship is one mind in two bodies.

Friendship is one mind in two bodies. – Mencius (c.371-289)

Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world. – John Evelyn

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything. – Muhammad Ali

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together. – Woodrow Wilson

Friendship is the purest love.

Friendship is when people know all about you but like you anyway.

Friendship isn’t about whom you have known the longest… it’s about who came, and never left your side. – Mikaela Tiu

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

Friendship must be built on a solid foundation of alcohol, sarcasm, inappropriateness and shenanigans. – Unknown

God made up best friends because he knew our mom couldn’t handle us as sisters. – Unknown

Good friends are like stars, you can’t always see them but you know they’re there.

Good friends are like stars. You don’t always see them, but you know they’re always there.

Good friends discuss their sex lives. Best friends talk about poop. – Unknown

Good friends don’t let you do stupid things… alone. – Unknown

Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side. Our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad about that. – Ally Condie

Having those weird conversations with your friend and thinking “if anyone heard us, we’d be put in a mental hospital. – Unknown

Hold a true friend with both your hands. – Nigerian Proverb

I am tired of false friends, wrong people, overworked promises, and nights spent thinking of where I made a mistake.

I bet dying vultures have lots of awkward moments with their friends. – Guy Endore – Kaiser

I can never imagine my life without my friends.

I don’t know what I would have done so many times in my life if I hadn’t had my girlfriends. – Reese Witherspoon

I don’t know what’s tighter: our jeans or our friendship. – Unknown

I don’t like to commit myself to heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places. – Mark Twain

I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. – Plutarch

I don’t need a psychiatrist to prod into my personal life and make me tell them all my secrets, I have my friends for that.

I hate it when friends change just because they meet new people.

I have lost friends, some by death… others by sheer inability to cross the street. – Virginia Woolf

I hope we’re friend until we die. Then I hope we stay ghost friends and walk through walls and scare the shit out of people. – Unknown

I hope we’re good friends until we die, then I hope we can stay ghost friends, walk through walls, and scare people.

I love making friends. I usually prefer to make them out of plaster and give them funny-looking hats.

I made my Facebook name, ‘Benefits‘ so when you add me now it says, ‘you’re friends with benefit.‘

I think we’ll be friend forever because we’re too lazy to find new friends. – Unknown

I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light. – Helen Keller

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

If friendship is your weakest point, then you are the strongest person in this world.

If you can survive 11 days in cramped quarters with a friend and come out laughing, your friendship is the real deal. – Oprah Winfrey

If you die before me, and you’re at those pearly gates, ask if you can bring a friend.

If you have crazy friends, you have everything you’ll ever need.

If you have friends who are as weird as you, then you have everything. – Unknown

If you have one true friend, you have more than your share. – Thomas Fuller

If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you. – Winnie the Pooh

If you love a friend, let them go. If they come back with coffee, it was meant to be.

In my friend, I find a second self.

In the cookie of life, friends are chocolate chips. – Salman Rushdie

In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the sea of ​​some faces, I still miss you.

It does not matter where you are, but who you are with.

It is a blessing to have a bunch of friends like you.

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch? – A. A. Milne

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

It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter. – Marlene Dietrich

It’s a blessing to have a friend like you!

It’s a sad thing to have no friends, but it’s an even more sad thing to have no enemies.

It’s not that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but it’s your best friends who are your diamonds. – Gina Barreca

It’s not what we have in life, but who we have in our life that matters.

It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter. – Marlene Dietrich

I’d take a bullet for you. Not in the head. But like in the leg or something. – Unknown

I’d walk through fire for my best friend. Well, not fire, that would be dangerous. But a super humid room…but not too humid because. you know…my hair.

I’ve always said that in politics, your enemies can’t hurt you, but your friends will kill you. – Ann Richards

Laughing is one of the best exercises. It’s like running inside your mind. You can do it almost anywhere and it’s even better with a friend.

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

Life is nothing without friends. Life without friendship is like the sky without the sun.

Life was meant for good friends and great adventures.

Life without friends is just like an empty desert.

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down. – Oprah Winfrey

Make a friend when you don’t need one.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Maybe our girlfriends are our soulmates and guys are just people to have fun with. – Sex and the City

Me and my best friends can communication with just facial expressions. – Unknown

Most of us don’t need a psychiatric therapist as much as a friend to be silly with. – Robert Brault

My circle is small, but the love is enormous and genuine. It gets no better. – Alex Elle

My imaginary friend thinks he has problems.

My life is so much more special because of you, Friend. What a blessing!

My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet. She’s now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia. – Dame Edna Everage

Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried. – Charles Caleb Colton

Never let you friends be lonely…. Disturb them all the time. – Unknown

No man has shared his joy with his friend, and that he did not rejoice even more, as no man shared his grief with a friend, and he was no less grieving.

No one will ever be as entertained by us as us.

One friend in a storm is worth more than a thousand friends in sunshine. – Matshona Dhliwayo

One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends is that three out of four murders are committed by people who know the victim. – George Carlin

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives. – Euripides

One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention. – Clifton Fadiman

One sure way to lose another woman’s friendship is to try to improve her flower arrangements. – Marcelene Cox

One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human. – George Santayana

Only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty. – Sicilian Proverb

Our phones fall, we panic. Our friends fall, we laugh.

People change. Friends sometimes become strangers, but the memories will never change.

Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer. – Jean de la Fontaine

Real friends don’t get offended when you insult them. They smile and call you something even more offensive. – Unknown

Real friendship is when you friend comes over to your house and then you both just take a nap. – Unknown

Show me a genuine case of platonic friendship, and I shall show you two old or homely faces. – Austin O’ Malley

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. – Virginia Woolf

Some souls just understand each other upon meeting. – N.R. Hart

Sometimes me think, ‘What is friend?’ Then me say, ‘Friend is someone to share the last cookie with.’ -Cookie Monster

Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher. – Oprah Winfrey

Tears in the eye, sorrow in my heart all my days are sad now.

Thank you for still being my friend, despite the fact that you are completely aware of every terrifying, raunchy, explicit detail of my life. – Unknown

That’s when I realized what a true friend was. Someone who would always love you—the imperfect you, the confused you, the wrong you—because that is what people are supposed to do. – R.J.L.

The alphabet begins with ABC, numbers begin with 123, music begins with do-re-mi, and friendship begins with you and me.

The great thing about new friends is that they bring new energy to your soul. – Shanna Rodriguez

The highest sign of friendship is to be even with the lowest of itself.

The imaginary friends I had as a kid dropped me because their friends thought I didn’t exist. – Aaron Machado

The language of friendship is not words but meanings. – Henry David Thoreau

The mirror is my best friend, because when I cry it never laughs. – Charlie Chaplain

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

The most memorable people in life will be the friends who loved you when you weren’t very lovable. – Aidan Chambers

The only rose without thorns is friendship. – Madeleine de Scudery

The wise man learns more from his enemies than the fool does from his friends. – Baltasar Gracián

There are friends, there is family, and then there are friends that become family.

There is no distance too far between friends, for friendship gives wings to the heart.

There is nothing better than a friend unless it is a friend with chocolate. – Linda Grayson

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. – Jane Austen

There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends. – Sylvia Plath

There’s a point in every true friendship where friends stop being friends and become sisters.

There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met. – Jim Henson

There’s nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing. – Jennifer Aniston

This the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected. – Charles Lamb

True friends are always together in spirit. – L.M. Montgomery

True friends are never apart, maybe in distance but never by heart.

True friends are never apart, maybe in distance but never in heart.

True friends aren’t the ones who make your problems disappear. They are the ones who won’t disappear when you’re facing problems. – Shubam Shaw

True friends don’t judge each other, they judge other people together. – Emilie Saint-Genis

True friends in trouble are familiar.

True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable. – David Tyson

True friendship isn’t about being inseparable, it’s being separated and nothing changes.

Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget.

Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud. – Maya Angelou

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is a conversation. – Oscar Wilde

We are best friends. Always remember that if you fall , I will pick you up… after I finish laughing. – Unknown

We are going to be best friends forever, besides, you already know too much.

We will always be friends until we’re old and senile. Then we will be new friends. – Unknown

We’ll be best friends forever because you already know too much. – Unknown

We’ll be the old ladies causing trouble in the nursing homes. – Unknown

We’ve been friends for so long, I can’t remember which one of us is the bad influence. – Unknown

We’ve gone our separate ways and I know it’s for the best, but sometimes I wonder, will I ever have a friend like you again.

You and I are more than friends. We’re like a really small gang. – Unknown

You are the sister I got to choose.

You can always tell a real friend: when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job. – Laurence J. Peter

You don’t have to be crazy to be my friend. I’ll train you. – Unknown.

You don’t have to be crazy to hang out with me.. I’ll train.

You had me at, “We’ll make it look like an accident.

Quotes From Wikiquote

• Friends are born, not made.
  • Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Ch. VII.

• One friend in a life time is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
  • Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Ch. XX.
• The friendships of the world are oft
  Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure;
  Ours has severest virtue for its basis,
  And such a friendship ends not but with life.
  • Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act III, scene 1.

• Stay is a charming word in a friend’s vocabulary.
  • Amos Bronson Alcott, Concord Days (1872), p. 124.
  • This quote is often misattributed to Alcott’s daughter Louisa May Alcott.

• He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
  • Ali, A Hundred Sayings.
• A friend is he whose absence also proves the friendship.
• If you intend to cut yourself off from a friend leave some scope for him from your side by which he may resume friendship if it occurs to him some day.
• A stranger is he who has no friend.
  • Ali, Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 31: Advice to one of his sons after returning from the Battle of Siffin, at the Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project.

• Your friends are three and your enemies arc (also) three. Your friends are: your friend, your friend’s friend and your enemy’s enemy. And your enemies are: your enemy, your friend’s enemy and your enemy’s friend.
  • Ali, Nahj al-Balagha, Hadith n. 295, at the Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project.

• What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
  • Aristotle, from Braude’s Second Encyclopedia of stories, quotations, and anecdotes.

• Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
  • Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics Book VII, 1238.a20.

• Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book I, 1096.a16.

• Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book VIII, 1155.a5.

• When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.
  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book VIII, 1155.a26.

• The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person’s good, wishes it for that person’s own sake.
  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book IX, 1168.b1
  • Variants: My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
    The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

• I’ve always said there’s no hope without endeavor. Hope has no meaning unless we are prepared to work to realize our hopes and dreams but in order to that we do need to have friends. We need those who believe in us. Friends are those who believe in us and who want to help us whatever it is that we are trying to achieve.
  • Aung San Suu Kyi, Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Acceptance Speech by Aung San Suu Kyi, Strasbourg, 22 October 2013.

• Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
  • Richard Bach, Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977).

• Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things, — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
  • Francis Bacon, Apothegms, No. 97

• I get by with a little help from my friends.
  • The Beatles, With a Little Help from My Friends.

• No friend’s a friend till [he shall] prove a friend.
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, The Faithful Friends (c. 1608), Act III, scene 3, line 50.

• For no one, in our long decline,
  So dusty, spiteful and divided,
  Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
  Or loved them half as much as I did.
  • Hilaire Belloc, “Dedicatory Ode,” Sonnets and Verse (1923), p. 70, stanza 3.

• From quiet homes and first beginning,
  Out to the undiscovered ends,
  There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
  But laughter and the love of friends.
  • Hilaire Belloc, “Dedicatory Ode,” Sonnets and Verse (1923), p. 74, stanza 22.

• You do retain the song we set,
  And how it rises, trips and scans?
  You keep the sacred memory yet,
  Republicans? Republicans?
  • Hilaire Belloc, “Dedicatory Ode,” Sonnets and Verse (1923), p. 76, stanza 36. Republicans was the name of the friends’ club.

• That is almost the definition of any friendship that is worthwhile — that we don’t care a damn how you behave yourself.
  • E. C. Bentley and H. Warner Allen, Trent’s Own Case (1936), Chapter XV.

• BEFRIEND, v.t. To make an ingrate.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic’s Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

• FRIENDSHIP, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic’s Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

• Nicht aus dem schweren Boden der Erde,

sondern aus freiem Gefallen

und freiem Verlangen des Geistes,

der nicht des Eides und des Gesetzes bedarf,

wird der Freund dem Freunde geschenkt.

Not from the heavy soil of the earth,

but from the spirit’s choice and free desire, needing no oath of legal bond,

is friend bestowed on friend.

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Der Freund, published in Widerstand und Ergebung, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft (1952), p. 269

• We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
  • James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), “19 September 1777”.

• I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God.
  • Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1642), Part II, Section V.

• Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate, but to engross his sorrows, that, by making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them; for in mine own reason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot entreat without myself, and within the circle of another.
  • Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1642), Part II, Section V.

• Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.
  • Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada, (verse 202), translator: Narada Maha Thera

• There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.
  • Edward Bulwer-Lytton, What Will He Do With It? (1858), Book II, Chapter XIV.

• Love is only chatter,
  Friends are all that matter.
  • Gelett Burgess, A Gage of Youth: Lyrics from The Lark and Other Poems (1901), “Willy and the Lady”, p. 46.

• Non nobis solum nati sumus ortusque nostri partem patria vindicat, partem amici.
  • We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us.
  • Cicero, De Officiis Book I, section 22.

• Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.
  • Cicero, De Amicitia – On Friendship (44 B.C.).

• Amicus est tamquam alter idem.
  • A friend is, as it were, a second self.
  • Cicero, De Amicitia, XXI. 80. (Adapted).

• Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
  Friendship is a sheltering tree;
  Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
  Of friendship, love, and liberty,
  Ere I was old!
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Youth and Age, st. 2 (1823-1832) and Duty Surviving Self-Love (1826).

• True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
  • Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon (1820).

• Ah, child. What are we without friends? Just severed heads rolling across the sands.
  • Glen Cook, Severed Heads, in Marion Zimmer Bradley (ed.) Sword and Sorceress (1984), p. 49

• Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
  • Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, The Godfather Part II (1974), (character of “Michael Corleone”); this has often become attributed to Sun Tzu and sometimes to Niccolò Machiavelli or Petrarch, but there are no published sources yet found which predate its use in the second Godfather film, where Corleone states: My father taught me many things here — he taught me in this room. He taught me — keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

• When the daylight’s gone, & you’re on your own
  And you need a friend, just to be around
  I will comfort you, I will take your hand
  And I’ll pull you through, I will understand
  And you know thatI’ll be at your side
  There’s no need to worry
  Together, we’ll survive
  Through the haste & hurry
  I’ll be at your side, if you feel like you’re alone
  And you’ve nowhere to turn
  I’ll be at your sideIf life’s standing still, and your soul’s confused
  And you cannot find what road to choose
  […]
  I will turn around
  And you know that
  I ‘ll be at your side
  • The Corrs, At Your Side.

• I would not enter on my list of friends
  (Though graced with polish’d manners and fine sense,
  Yet wanting sensibility) the man
  Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
  • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book VI, line 560.

• She that asks
  Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all,
  And hates their coming.
  • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book II, line 642.

• The blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one’s deepest as well as one’s most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
  • Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life (1859); since the 1930s this has also been published in many paraphrased forms, often uncredited to Craik, including:
    A friend is one
    To whom one may pour out all
    The contents of one’s heart
    Chaff and grain, together,
    Knowing that the gentlest of hands
    Will take and sift it,
    Keep what’s worth keeping
    And blow the rest away.

• I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts.
  • Psalm 119:63.

• Le sort fait les parents, le choix fait les amis.
  • Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends.
  • Jacques Delille, Malheur at Pitié (1803), Canto I.

• We ought to esteem him alone an agreeable and good-natured man, who, in his daily intercourse with others, behaves in such a manner as friends usually behave to each other. For as a person of that rustic character appears, wherever he comes, like a mere stranger: so, on the contrary, a polite man, wherever he goes, seems as easy as if he were amongst his intimate friends and acquaintances.
  • Giovanni Della Casa, Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, pp. 42-43

• Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them.
  • Diogenes of Sinope Stobaeus, iii. 13. 44

• Es gibt wenig aufrichtige Freunde. Die Nachfrage ist auch gering.
  • There are very few honest friends—the demand is not particularly great.
  • Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, D. Scrase and W. Mieder, trans. (Riverside, California: 1994), p. 71

• Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.”
  • Ecclesiastes 4:9-10.

• But a companion and a friend shall be turned to an enemy.
  • Ecclesiastes 37:2.

• Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
  • George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book III.

• Friend more divine than all divinities.
  • George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book IV.

• A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, in “Friendship” in Essays (1841), First series.

• Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (1841), Of Experience.

• The only way to have a good friend is to be one.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (1841), Of Friendship.

• The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude (1870), Ch. V: “Domestic Life”.

• The wise man … needs no bribe or feast or palace to draw friends to him. He is supremely fair. He angles with himself and with no other bait.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal entry December 26, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 360-361, also in “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 243

• Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.
  • Epicurus, Number 28 of the 40 “Sovran Maxims” (or “Sovereign Maxims), or “Principal Doctrines” as translated by Robert Drew Hicks

• There are three faithful friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack (1734).

• Thou canst not joke an Enemy into a Friend; but thou may’st a Friend into an Enemy.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack (1739).

• ‘Tis great Confidence in a Friend to tell him your Faults, greater to tell him his.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack (1751).

• A friendship that can be ended didn’t ever start.
  • Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Oeuvres poétiques.

• Do not befriend an evil man and no evil will overtake you.
  • Genesis Rabbah 22, Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 72

• Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
  • Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923).

• I love everything that’s old, — old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (1771), Act I, reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th edition (1919).

• He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack;
  For he knew, when he pleas’d, he could whistle them back.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation (1774), line 107.

• Hazer de los amigos maestros, penetrando el útil del aprender con el gusto del conversar.
  • Make your friends your teachers and blend the usefulness of learning with the pleasure of conversation.
  • Baltasar Gracián, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, § 11 (Christopher Maurer trans.)

• If displeased with any man, do all you can to prevent his seeing it, for otherwise he will become estranged. And occasions often arise when he might and would have served you had you not lost him by showing your dislike. Of this I have had experience to my own profit. For once and again I have felt ill-disposed towards some one who not being aware of my hostility has afterwards helped me when I needed help and proved my good friend.
  • Francesco Guicciardini, Counsels and Reflections, 324.

• Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
  • Jean Hérault, sieur de Gourville as quoted in Considérations sur l’esprit et les moeurs (1788) by Gabriel Sénac de Meilhan; a similar remark “May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.” has become attributed to Voltaire, since at least 1908, but without sourcing

• Friendship is often outgrown; and his former child’s clothes will no more fit a man than some of his former friendships.
  • Sir Arthur Helps, in ‘Unreasonable Claims in Social Affections and Relations’, Chapter IX, Friends in Council (First Series) (1847).

• Friends . . old friends. . .

One sees how it ends.

A woman looks

Or a man tells lies,

And the pleasant brooks

And the quiet skies,

Ruined with brawling

And caterwauling,

Enchant no more

As they did before;

And so it ends

with friends.

• • William Ernest Henley, part XLI, from Life and Death (Echoes) (1888)

• The difficulty is not so much to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.
  • Henry Home, Lord Kames, in “Friendship”, Introduction to the Art of Thinking (1761).
  • This quote is often misattributed to Homer.

• The finest friendships are between those who can do without each other.
  • Elbert Hubbard, in ‘Exclusive Friendships’, Love, Life & Work (1906).

• Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.
  • Elbert Hubbard, The Motto Book (1907).

• Your friend is that man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
  • Elbert Hubbard, The Note Book (1927).

• Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God’s best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of going out of one’s self and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.
  • Thomas Hughes, in Katherine Frances Jelf, George Edward Jelf: A Memoir (London: Skeffington & Son, 1909), p. 10.

• One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and more symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
  • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932).

• I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.
  • Helen Keller

• Chi si trova senz’ amici, e come un corpo senz’ anima.
  • A man without friends is like a body without a soul.
  • Italian Proverb, in Cassell’s Book of Quotations, p. 884

• It is nothing against the validity of a friendship that the parties to it have not a mutual resemblance. There must be a basis of agreement, but the structure reared upon it may contain a thousand disparities.
  • Henry James, Confidence (1879), Ch. II.

• I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people’s lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.
  • William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (1911).

• Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
  • Jesus, in John 15:13.

• Yes’m, old friends is always best, ‘less you can catch a new one that’s fit to make an old one out of.
  • Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Ch. 12.

• Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success — yours or his.
  • Franklin P. Jones, in Saturday Evening Post (29 November 1953).

• Got a lot of haters and a lot of homies; some friends and some phony.
  • Michael Jones, “Still Tippin'” (2005), Who Is Mike Jones? (2005).

• Choose your friends, then treat them as friends; do not regard them like slaves or servants, but associate with them frankly and simply and generously; not saying one thing of them and thinking something else.
  • Julian, Myth at the end of Julian’s oration to the cynic Heracleios, as translated in The Emperor Julian : Paganism and Christianity (1879) by Gerald Henry Rendall, Ch. VI : Julian’s Personal Religion, p. 138.

• The absolute condition for friendship is unity in a life-view. If a person has that, he will not be tempted to base his friendship on obscure feelings or on indefinable sympathies. As a consequence, he will not experience these ridiculous shifts, so that one day he has a friend and the next day he does not. He will not fail to appreciate the significance of the indefinable sympathies, because, strictly speaking, a person is certainly not a friend of everyone with whom he shares a life-view but neither does he stop with only the mysteriousness of the sympathies. A true friendship always requires consciousness and is therefore freed from being infatuation. The life-view in which one is united must be a positive view.
  • Søren Kierkegaard Either/Or Part II, Hong p. 319 (1843).

• There is nothing in the world more trustworthy than a friend one is sure will betray everything confided to him, nothing more trustworthy if only one is careful about what is confided to him. it is unsafe to ask a friend to tell this or that, but if one confides to him under the pledge of secrecy something one wishes to come out, then one can be absolutely sure, for then it must come out. Furthermore, it is a rare good fortune if in turn such a friend has a friend, and in turn this friend has a girlfriend-then it travels with the speed of lightening.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way, Hong p. 245.

• Friendship … flourishes not so much by kindnesses as by sincerity.
  • Étienne de la Boétie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Part 3

• Friendship … receives its real sustenance from an equality that, to proceed without a limp, must have its two limbs equal.
  • Étienne de la Boétie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Part 3

• Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, although frequently neither acknowledges the fact to himself.
  • Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time.

• Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
  • C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960)

• A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart’s. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back — it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it.
  The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined. One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes. Perfect poise on the beat is what gives good dancing its sense of ease, of timelessness, of the eternal.
  • Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea.

• Come back! ye friendships long departed!
  That like o’erflowing streamlets started,
  And now are dwindled, one by one,
  To stony channels in the sun!
  Come back! ye friends, whose lives are ended,
  Come back, with all that light attended,
  Which seemed to darken and decay
  When ye arose and went away!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christus (1872), Part II, The Golden Legend, I.

• O friend! O best of friends! Thy absence more
  Than the impending night darkens the landscape o’er!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christus (1872), Part II, The Golden Legend, I.

• You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the friendship between us,
  Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily broken!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), Part VI, Priscilla, line 22.

• Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship
  Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), Part VI, Priscilla, line 72.

• “I sometimes think that ‘friend’ is just a word I use for all the people I haven’t murdered yet.”
  • Scott Lynch, A Year and a Day in Old Theradane, in George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois (eds.) Rogues (2014), p. 258

• I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness. … A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from whence spring murders and rapine; for these as a rule injure the whole community, while the executions carried out by the prince injure only one individual. And of all princes, it is impossible for a new prince to escape the name of cruel, new states being always full of dangers. … Nevertheless, he must be cautious in believing and acting, and must not inspire fear of his own accord, and must proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence does not render him incautious, and too much diffidence does not render him intolerant. From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain ; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours; they offer you their blood, their goods, their life, and their children, as I have before said, when the necessity is remote; but when it approaches, they revolt. And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined, for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is merited but is not secured, and at times is not to be had. And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligation which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.
  • Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513), Ch. 17, as translated by Luigi Ricci (1903)
  • Variant translations of portions of this passage:
  • From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
  • He ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable.
  • The prince who relies upon their words, without having otherwise provided for his security, is ruined; for friendships that are won by awards, and not by greatness and nobility of soul, although deserved, yet are not real, and cannot be depended upon in time of adversity.

• What find you better or more honourable than age? Take the preheminence of it in everything, — in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree.
  • Shackerley Marmionin The Antiquary, reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th edition (1919).

• I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles.
  • Nelson Mandela on friendship, From his unpublished autobiographical manuscript written in 1975. Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation

• Multiplex workplace friendships—those in which a personal, affective relationship coincides with a business relationship, namely, with coworkers within one’s organization—are a widespread organizational phenomenon (Ingram & Zou, 2008). Indeed, a recent Gallup study determined that 30% of employees report having a best friend at work (Rath, 2006), and studies show that a sizeable number of employees describe their coworkers as both colleagues and friends (e.g., Gersick, Bartunek, & Dutton, 2000; Lonkila, 1998). Importantly, multiplex workplace friendships have implications for key employee and organizational outcomes through the provision of moral and material support, work and nonwork advice, and quality information exchanges (Kram & Isabella, 1985; Rawlins, 1992; Sias, 2005; Sias & Cahill, 1998; Winstead, Derlega, Montgomery, & Pilkington, 1995). For instance, employees who report having friends at work have higher levels of productivity, retention, and job satisfaction, and are seven times more likely to be engaged in their work than their “friendless” counterparts (Rath, 2006).
  • Jessica R. Methot, Jeffery A. Lepine, Nathan P. Podaskoff, Jessica Siegel, “Are Workplace Friendships a Mixed Blesing? Exploring Tradeofffs of Multiplex Relationships and Their Associations With Job Perofrmance”, Personnel Psychology 2016, 69, p. 312.

• Multiplex workplace friendships are exhausting because they create feelings of responsibility and obligation, and because they require investments of attention and energy toward their maintenance. Thus, although there are positive effects of multiplex workplace friendships on job performance, they should be offset somewhat by the effect of exhaustion, which reflects reduced energy and attention that could otherwise be applied to core job performance‐related activities (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; LePine, Podsakoff, & LePine, 2005).
  • Jessica R. Methot, Jeffery A. Lepine, Nathan P. Podaskoff, Jessica Siegel, “Are Workplace Friendships a Mixed Blesing? Exploring Tradeofffs of Multiplex Relationships and Their Associations With Job Perofrmance”, Personnel Psychology 2016, 69, pp. 316-317.

• Further, we expect individuals with larger multiplex workplace friendship networks will perform effectively because emotional support provides a mechanism to minimize distress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Emotional support is a form of support that is not related to work tasks themselves; rather, it is a “backstage resource” that allows employees to indirectly manage their work demands (Lazega & Pattison, 1999). More specifically, rather than being a source of work‐related communication, emotional support comprises communication regarding good things at work, bad things at work, and nonwork topics (Beehr, Jex, Stacy, & Murray, 2000), and having access to an outlet that allows the discussion of non work‐related topics and concerns fulfills socio emotional needs (Cobb, 1976; Cohen & Wills, 1985). Thus, emotional distress can be effectively managed with emotional support, decreasing the saliency of emotional distractions and, ultimately, allowing employees the opportunity to address work tasks. Along these lines, both AbuAlRub (2004) and Beehr et al. (2000) found a positive association between emotional support and job performance. Taken together, we theorize that access to emotional support will decrease attention paid to emotional distractions and increase productive work time, which will positively impact job performance.
  • Jessica R. Methot, Jeffery A. Lepine, Nathan P. Podaskoff, Jessica Siegel, “Are Workplace Friendships a Mixed Blesing? Exploring Tradeofffs of Multiplex Relationships and Their Associations With Job Perofrmance”, Personnel Psychology 2016, 69, p. 327-328.

• The ubiquity of multiplex workplace friendships warrants a deeper investigation of their effects on individuals’ performance at work. Indeed, McEvily and colleagues (2014) argue that “the more we attempt to disentangle formal [interaction] and informal [interaction] in an effort to understand their unique effects, the less we learn about how they actually operate” (p. 333) and call for investigations “where multiplexity of interactions is not just a possibility, but rather is an essential and defining feature” (p. 335) of theory and research. Here, we address this issue by exploring how and why multiplex workplace friendships uniquely influence performance.
  • Jessica R. Methot, Jeffery A. Lepine, Nathan P. Podaskoff, Jessica Siegel, “Are Workplace Friendships a Mixed Blesing? Exploring Tradeofffs of Multiplex Relationships and Their Associations With Job Perofrmance”, Personnel Psychology 2016, 69, p. 338.

• Feelings are contagious. “Each happy friend a person has increases that person’s probability of being happy by 9 percent and each unhappy friend decreases it by 7 percent,” says Nicholas A. Christakis, a co-author of “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives.”
  Males with depressed roommates may end up feeling a bit blue themselves, according to Daniel Eisenberg, an assistant professor of public health at the University of Michigan who recently led a survey of 1,600 freshmen at two universities — a public one in the Midwest and a private one in the Northeast — on the issue. He found no such carryover for female students.
  This mood contagion seems to occur when the student keeps his feelings bottled up, Dr. Eisenberg says. And it’s only a mild case; roommates typically don’t develop their friends’ more serious conditions.
  “It’s not like you catch a mental-health cold,” he says. “People are resilient. They have a lot of coping strategies.”
  • Abigail Sullivan Moore, “The Science of Roommates”, The New York Times, (July 23, 2010)

• If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.
  • A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner(1928), Chapter 10.

• A real friendship should not fade as time passes, and should not weaken because of space separation.
  • John Newton, Ph.D., Complete Conduct Principles for the 21st Century (2000), p. 138. ISBN 0967370574.

• A more appropriate adjective for measuring the degree of a friendship should be “good” – how good, rather than “close” – how close. A good friend is not necessarily close; a close friend is not necessarily good.
  • John Newton, Ph.D., Complete Conduct Principles for the 21st Century (2000), p. 45. ISBN 0967370574.

• Mitfreude, nicht Mitleiden, macht den Freund.
  • Fellowship in joy, not sympathy in sorrow, is what makes friends.
    • Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-too Human, § 499

• 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.
  • Anaïs Nin, Diary entry (March 1937).

• When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to 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.
  • Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude (1996).

• But remember! when it comes to friends, it’s not how much time you spend with them, just how you spend it!
  • Eiichiro Oda, “Mr. 2 Bon Clay” in One Piece.

• We were at the age when a friend’s conversation seems like oneself talking, when one shares a life in common the way I still think, bachelor though I am, some married couples are able to live.
  • Cesare Pavese, The Beach.

• Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love.
  • Charles Péguy, “The Search for Truth”, Basic Verities (1943), trans. Anne and Julien Green.

• Al amigo todo, al enemigo ni justicia.
  • Everything for a friend, not even justice for an enemy.
  • Juan Domingo Perón, as quoted in Dictatorship, Democracy, and Globalization: Argentina and the Cost of Paralysis, 1973-2001 (2009) by Klaus Friedrich Veigel

• Although many scholars and practitioners have assumed that workplace friendships lead to desirable organizational outcomes, a growing body of research suggests important complexities and downsides associated with workplace friendships. This suggests a need to better understand how and when workplace friendships may lead to harmful outcomes, especially in light of organizational and technological shifts that are changing the way employees connect. Drawing on theories of close relationships, social exchange, and boundary management, we present a theoretical framework that highlights how the four defining features of friendship (informality, voluntariness, communal norms, and socio-emotional goals) are in tension with four fundamental elements of organizational life (formal roles, involuntary constraints, exchange norms, and instrumental goals). We also highlight how mutual self-disclosure and perceived similarity develop and deepen friendships but also lead to downsides for individuals, groups, and organizations. We articulate how specific features of a focal friendship clique (e.g., closeness, maturity, and status of members) may amplify or buffer negative aspects and how social media affect friendship formation and tensions. Our theoretical framework should inform new theory and research on positive relationships at work, boundary management of professional and personal identities, and how changes to work and technology affect workplace relationships.
  • Pillemer, Julianna; Rothbard, Nancy (2018-02-15). “Friends Without Benefits: Understanding the Dark Sides of Workplace Friendship”. Academy of Management Review: amr.2016.0309. doi:10.5465/amr.2016.0309. ISSN 0363-7425.

• For all are friends in heaven, all faithful friends;
  And many friendships in the days of time
  Begun, are lasting here, and growing still.
  • Robert Pollok, The Course of Time (1827), Book V, line 336.

• Friends given by God in mercy and in love;
  My counsellors, my comforters, and guides;
  My joy in grief, my second bliss in joy;
  Companions of my young desires; in doubt
  My oracles; my wings in high pursuit.
  Oh! I remember, and will ne’er forget
  Our meeting spots, our chosen sacred hours;
  Our burning words, that utter’d all the soul,
  Our faces beaming with unearthly love;—
  Sorrow with sorrow sighing, hope with hope
  Exulting, heart embracing heart entire.
  • Robert Pollok, The Course of Time (1827), Book V, line 315.

• What ill-starr’d rage
  Divides a friendship long confirm’d by age?
  • Alexander Pope, Dunciad (1728 to 1743), Book III, line 173.

• Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
  Make use of ev’ry friend—and ev’ry foe.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), line 214.

• Ah, friend! to dazzle let the vain design;
  To raise the thought and touch the heart be thine.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle II, line 248.

• Our triumphs seem hollow unless we have friends to share them, and our failures are made bearable by their understanding.
  • James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (1999), p. 183.

• I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire.
  • Ayn Rand, Anthem (1937).

• “You are my friend,” said the alien, nothing about his voice out of the ordinary. “And from all that is possible, I wish you the best.”
  • Robert Reed, Hatch (2007) in Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (eds.) The New Space Opera (mass market paperback edition, ISBN 978-0-06-135041-2), p. 59

• Although organizational research on workplace friendships is well established, it has been criticized for its predominately postpositivistic outlook, which largely focuses on how workplace friendships can be linked to improving organizational outcomes such as efficiency and performance. As a consequence, other aspects of the lived experiences of work and friendship are obscured, in particular how these friendships are important in their own right and how they function as social and personal relationships.
  • Nick Rumens, “Researching workplace friendships: Drawing insights from the sociology of friendship”, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Volume: 34 issue: 8, page(s): 1149-1167, (September 22, 2016).

• A friend in need is a friend indeed.
  • Scots proverb, as published in Beauties of Allan Ramsay: Being a Selection of the Most Admired Pieces of that Celebrated Author, viz. The Gentle Shepherd; Christ’s Kirk on the Green; The Monk, and the Miller’s Wife; with his valuable collection of Scots Proverbs (1815), “Scots Proverbs” Ch. 1; also quoted in Pure Morning, a song by Placebo

• Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.
  • John Selden, in “Friends” in Table Talk (1689).

• The ending inevitably matches the beginning: the person who starts being friends with you because it pays him will similarly cease to be friends with you because it pays him.
  • Seneca, Letters, 9 (Robin Campbell trans.)

• Keep thy friend
  Under thy own life’s key.
  • William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well (1600s), Act I, scene 1, line 75.

• We still have slept together,
  Rose at an instant, learn’d, play’d, eat together;
  And wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans,
  Still we went coupled and inseparable.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act I, scene 3, line 75.

• Most friendship is feigning.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Song, Act II, scene 7, line 181.

• Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
  Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
  But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
  Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 3, line 59.

• For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
  And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
  Directly seasons him his enemy.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 2, line 217.

• Out upon this half-fac’d fellowship!
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act I, scene 3, line 208.

• Call you that backing of your friends? A plague upon such backing! give me them that will face me.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act II, scene 4, line 165.

• Where you are liberal of your loves and counsels
  Be sure you be not loose; for those you make friends
  And give your hearts to, when they once perceive
  The least rub in your fortunes, fall away
  Like water from ye, never found again
  But where they mean to sink ye.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), Act II, scene 1, line 126.

• As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
  That visit my sad heart.
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act II, scene 1, line 290.

• A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,
  But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act IV, scene 3, line 86.

• To wail friends lost
  Is not by much so wholesome — profitable,
  As to rejoice at friends but newly found.
  • William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost (c. 1595-6), Act V, scene 2, line 759.

• When did friendship take
  A breed for barren metal of his friend?
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act I, scene 3, line 134.

• I would be friends with you and have your love.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act I, scene 3, line 139.

• Two lovely berries moulded on one stem:
  So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart.
  • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595-96), Act III, scene 2, line 211.

• Friendship is constant in all other things,
  Save in the office and affairs of love:
  Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues;
  Let every eye negotiate for itself,
  And trust no agent.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act II, scene 1, line 182.

• Words are easy, like the wind;
  Faithful friends are hard to find.
  • Attributed to William Shakespeare, Passionate Pilgrim. In Notes and Queries, June, 1918, p. 174, it is suggested that the lines are by Barnfield, being a piracy from Jaggard’s publication (1599), a volume containing little of Shakespeare, the majority being pieces by Marlowe, Raleigh, Barnfield, and others.

• I am not of that feather to shake off
  My friend when he must need me.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 1, line 100.

• Friendship’s full of dregs.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 2, line 240.

• For by these
  Shall I try friends: you shall perceive how you
  Mistake my fortunes; I am wealthy in my friends.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act II, scene 2, line 191.

• The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act II, scene 3, line 110.

• Do I not most effectually destroy my enemies, in making them my friends?
  • Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, reported in The Sociable Story-Teller (Boston: James French, 1846), p. 15.
  • This quote is often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln.

• A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;
  he who finds one finds a treasure.
  A faithful friend is beyond price,
  no sum can balance his worth.
  • Sirach 6:14-15 (New American Bible).

• A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity.
  • Proverbs 17:17 (NRSV).

• A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
  • Proverbs 18:24 (New International Version).

• Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.
  • Proverbs 27:6 (NASB).

• Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.
  • John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 22

• What matter that the man stands for much I cannot love—the moment he touches the realms of truth he enters my world and is my friend.
  • John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 89

• If you should die before me, ask if you could bring a friend.
  • Stone Temple Pilots in “Still Remains” on Purple (1994).

• That my friend should be well is our wish, and that our enemies should be gone! May those friendly to you reach their goal as a ship does a friendly harbour! May your enemy, like the flood waters of a river, return to his city.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection XI at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

• Confidence is the only bond of friendship.
  • Publilius Syrus Maxim 34

• Many a time,… from a bad beginning great friendships have sprung up.
  • Terence, Eunuchus, Act V, scene 2, 34, line 873.

• It is a maxim of old that among themselves all things are common to friends.
  • Terence, Adelphoe (The Brothers), Act V, scene 3, line 18 (803).

• Friendship is not for merriment but for stern reproach when friends go astray.
  • Tiruvalluvar, Tirukkural: 784.

• If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.
  • Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims, E. Lee, trans. (1903), p. 175

• Les méchants n’ont que des complices; les voluptueux ont des compagnons de débauche; les intéressés ont des associés; les politiques assemblent des factieux; le commun des hommes oisifs a des liaisons; les princes ont des courtisans; les hommes vertueux ont seuls des amis.
  • The wicked have only accomplices, the voluptuous have only companions in debauchery; self-seekers have only associates; politicians have only their factions; the generality of idle men has only connections; princes have only courtiers; virtuous men alone possess friends.
  • Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, “Amitié”

• Old friends are the great blessing of one’s latter years—half a word conveys one’s meaning. They have memory of the same events, and have the same mode of thinking.
  • Horace Walpole, in a letter from Strawberry Hill, May 27, 1776, to Sir Horace Mann, 1st Baronet, as quoted in Greenwood, Alice Drayton, ed (1914). Select Letters of Horace Walpole. London: G. Bell & Sons. p. 320.

• True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
  • George Washington, Letter to Bushrod Washington (15 January 1783).

• Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Ch. 1.

• Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature — it requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist — to sympathise with a friend’s success.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891).

• I have lost friends, some by death […] others through sheer inability to cross the street.
  • Virginia Woolf, The Waves (1931), Ch. 7.

• Others because you did not keep

That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;

Yet always when I look death in the face,

When I clamber to the heights of sleep,

Or when I grow excited with wine,

Suddenly I meet your face.

• William Butler Yeats, “A Deep-sworn Vow”

• You that would judge me, do not judge alone
  This book or that, come to this hallowed place
  Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon,
  Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace,
  Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,
  And say my glory was I had such friends.
  • William Butler Yeats, The Municipal Gallery Re-Visited.

• And friend received with thumps upon the back.
  • Edward Young, Love of Fame (1725-28), Satire I.

• A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night II, line 571.

• A foe to God was ne’er true friend to man,
  Some sinister intent taints all he does.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 704.

• Death is mighty, and is no one’s friend.
  • Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light (1967).

• If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
  • Zig Ziglar as quoted in The Power of Respect : Benefit from the Most Forgotten Element of Success (2009) by Deborah Norville, p. 65

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)

• Give me one friend, just one, who meets
  The needs of all my varying moods.
  • Esther M. Clark, “A Plea,” lines 1 and 2, Verses by a Commonplace Person (1906).

• The happiest business in all the world is that of making friends,And no investment on the street pays larger dividends,For life is more than stocks and bonds, and love than rate percent,And he who gives in friendship’s name shall reap what he has spent.
  • Anne S. Eaton, “The Business of Friendship,” lines 1–4. Seth Parker, Fireside Poems, p. 34 (1933).

• Never Explain—your Friends do not need it and your Enemies will not believe you anyway
  • Elbert Hubbard, The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard, opposite p. 176 (1927).

• 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.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Maria Cosway, October 12, 1786. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 10, p. 449–50 (1954).

• Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends—those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work—who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even, hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter now?—now when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail—if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise councils may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.
  • Abraham Lincoln, speech delivered at the close of the Republican state convention, which named him the candidate for the United States Senate, Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 2, p. 468–69 (1953).

• When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, “I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends.”
  • Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).

• Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,
  And say my glory was I had such friends.
  • William Butler Yeats, “The Municipal Gallery Revisited,” lines 54–55, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, ed. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, p. 604 (1957). Senator George McGovern quoted these words of Yeats’s in his concession speech following the 1972 presidential election.

Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), “Friends”, p. 296-300; “Friendship”, p. 300-302.

• Great souls by instinct to each other turn,
  Demand alliance, and in friendship burn.
  • Joseph Addison, The Campaign, line 102.

• The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break.
  • George Bancroft, History of the United States, William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians.

• It is better to avenge a friend than to mourn for him.
  • Beowulf, VII.

• Friend, of my infinite dreams
  Little enough endures;
  Little howe’er it seems,
  It is yours, all yours.
  • Arthur Benson, The Gift.

• Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul,
  Sweet’ner of life, and solder of society.
  • Robert Blair, The Grave, line 87.

• Let my hand,
  This hand, lie in your own—my own true friend;
  Aprile! Hand-in-hand with you, Aprile!
  • Robert Browning, Paracelsus, scene 5.

• Hand
  Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship,
  And great hearts expand
  And grow one in the sense of this world’s life.
  • Robert Browning, Saul, Stanza 7.

• We twa hae run about the braes,
  And pu’d the gowans fine.
  • Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne.

• Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
  And never brought to mind?
  Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
  And days o’ lang syne?
  • Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne. Burns refers to these words as an old folk song. Early version in James Watson’s Collection of Scottish Songs (1711).

• Should old acquaintance be forgot,
  And never thought upon.
  • From an old poem by Robert Ayton of Kincaldie

• Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
  Though they return with scars.
  • Allan Ramsay’s Version. See his Tea-Table Miscellany (1724). Transferred after to Johnson’s Musical Museum. See S. J. A. Fitzgerald’s Stories of Famous Songs.

• His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony,
  Tam lo’ed him like a vera brither—
  They had been fou for weeks thegither!
  • Robert Burns, Tam o’ Shanter.

• Ah! were I sever’d from thy side,
  Where were thy friend and who my guide?
  Years have not seen, Time shall not see
  The hour that tears my soul from thee.
  • Lord Byron, Bride of Abydos (1813), Canto I, Stanza 11.

• Friendship is Love without his wings!
  • Lord Byron, L’Amitié est l’Amour sans Ailes, Stanza 1.

• In friendship I early was taught to believe;
  * * * * * *
  I have found that a friend may profess, yet deceive.
  • Lord Byron, lines addressed to the Rev. J. T. Becher, Stanza 7.

• ‘Twas sung, how they were lovely in their lives,
  And in their deaths had not divided been.
  • Thomas Campbell, Gertrude of Wyoming, Part III, Stanza 33.

• Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe;
  Bold I can meet—perhaps may turn his blow;
  But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
  Save, save, oh! save me from the candid friend.
  • George Canning, The New Morality.

• Oh, how you wrong our friendship, valiant youth.
  With friends there is not such a word as debt:
  Where amity is ty’d with band of truth,
  All benefits are there in common set.
  • Lady Carew, Marian.

• Greatly his foes he dreads, but more his friends,
  He hurts me most who lavishly commends.
  • Charles Churchill, The Apology, line 19.

• Friends I have made, whom Envy must commend,
  But not one foe whom I would wish a friend.
  • Charles Churchill, Conference, line 297.

• Amicus est tanquam alter idem.
  • A friend is, as it were, a second self.
  • Cicero, De Amicitia, XXI. 80. (Adapted).

• You must therefore love me, myself, and not my circumstances, if we are to be real friends.
  • Cicero, De Finibus. Yonge’s translation.

• Secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia, et adversas partiens communicansque leviores.
  • Friendship makes prosperity brighter, while it lightens adversity by sharing its griefs and anxieties.
  • Cicero, De Amicitia, VI.

• Vulgo dicitur multos modios salis simul edendos esse, ut amicitia munus expletum sit.
  • It is a common saying that many pecks of salt must be eaten before the duties of friendship can be discharged.
  • Cicero, De Amicitia, XIX.

• Friendship is a sheltering tree.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Youth and Age.

• Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.
  • Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, p. 80.

• Soyons amis, Cinna, c’est moi qui t’en convie.
  • Let us be friends, Cinna, it is I who invite you to be so.
  • Pierre Corneille, Cinna, V. 3.

• The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
  And proves by thumps upon your back
  How he esteems your merit,
  Is such a friend, that one had need
  Be very much his friend indeed
  To pardon or to bear it.
  • William Cowper, On Friendship, 169.

• As we sail through life towards death,
  Bound unto the same port—heaven,—
  Friend, what years could us divide?
  • Dinah Craik, Thirty Years, A Christmas Blessing.

• Then come the wild weather, come sleet or come snow,
  We will stand by each other, however it blow.
  • Simon Dach, Annie of Tharaw. Longfellow’s trans, line 7.

• Le sort fait les parents, le choix fait les amis.
  • Chance makes our parents, but choice makes our friends.
  • Jacques Delille, Pitié

• Les amis—ces parents que l’on se fait soi-même.
  • Friends, those relations that one makes for one’s self.
  • Eustache Deschamps, L’Ami.

• “Wal’r, my boy,” replied the captain; “in the Proverbs of Solomon you will find the following words: ‘May we never want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him!’ When found, make a note of.”
  • Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, Volume I, Chapter XV.

• What is the odds so long as the fire of souls is kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the wing of friendship never moults a feather?
  • Charles Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop, Chapter II.

• Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.
  • Charles Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop, Chapter VII.

• The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
  • Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby(1838–1839), Chapter 3.

• For friendship, of itself a holy tie,
  Is made more sacred by adversity.
  • John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Part III, line 47.

• Be kind to my remains; and O defend,
  Against your judgment, your departed friend.
  • John Dryden, Epistle to Congreve, line 72.

• The poor make no new friends;
  But oh, they love the better still
  The few our Father sends.
  • Helen Blackwood, Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye, Lament of the Irish Emigrant.

• Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable unto him. A new friend is as new wine: when it is old thou shalt drink it with pleasure.
  • Ecclesiasticus, IX. 10.

• The fallying out of faithful frends is the reunyng of love.
  • Richard Edwards, The Paradise of Dainty Devices, No. 42, Stanza 1.

• Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
  • George Eliot, Mr. Gilfil’s Love-Story, Chapter VII.

• Friendships begin with liking or gratitude—roots that can be pulled up.
  • George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876), Book IV, Chapter XXXII.

• So, if I live or die to serve my friend,
  ‘Tis for my love —’ tis for my friend alone,
  And not for any rate that friendship bears
  In heaven or on earth.
  • George Eliot, Spanish Gypsy.

• To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life.
  • Sarah Stickney Ellis, Pictures of Private Life, Second Series, The Pains of Pleasing, Chapter IV.

• A day for toil, an hour for sport,
  But for a friend is life too short.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Considerations by the Way.

• 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, Essays, Behavior.

• The highest compact we can make with our fellow is, — Let there be truth between us two forevermore. * * * It is sublime to feel and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him; we need not reinforce ourselves or send tokens of remembrance; I rely on him as on myself; if he did thus or thus, I know it was right.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Behavior.

• I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Of Friendship

• The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Of Friendship

• There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Of Friendship

• A sudden thought strikes me—Let us swear an eternal friendship.
  • John H. Frere, The Rovers, Act I.

• Friendship, like love, is but a name,
  Unless to one you stint the flame.
  • John Gay, The Hare with Many Friends.

• To friendship every burden’s light.
  • John Gay, The Hare with Many Friends.

• Who friendship with a knave hath made,
  Is judg’d a partner in the trade.
  • John Gay, Old Woman and Her Cats.

• ‘Tis thus that on the choice of friends
  Our good or evil name depends.
  • John Gay, Old Woman and Her Cats, Part I.

• An open foe may prove a curse,
  But a pretended friend is worse.
  • John Gay, Shepherd’s Dog and the Wolf, line 33.

• Wer nicht die Welt in seinen Freunden sieht
  Verdient nicht, dass die Welt von ihm erfahre.
  • He who does not see the whole world in his friends, does not deserve that the world should hear of him.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso, I. 3. 68.

• And what is friendship but a name,
  A charm that lulls to sleep;
  A shade that follows wealth or fame,
  And leaves the wretch to weep?
  • Oliver Goldsmith, Edwin and Angelina, or The Hermit, Stanza 19.

• Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
  Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
  Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.
  • Thomas Gray, The Bard, Stanza 3.

• A favourite has no friend.
  • Thomas Gray, On a Favourite Cat Drowned, Stanza 6.

• We never know the true value of friends. While they live, we are too sensitive of their faults; when we have lost them, we only see their virtues.
  • J. C. and A. W. Hare, Guesses at Truth.

• Friendship closes its eye, rather than see the moon eclipst; while malice denies that it is ever at the full.
  • J. C. and A. W. Hare, Guesses at Truth.

• Friendship is Love, without either flowers or veil.
  • J. C. and A. W. Hare, Guesses at Truth.

• Devout, yet cheerful; pious, not austere;
  To others lenient, to himself sincere.
  • J. M. Harvey, On a Friend.

• Before you make a friend eat a bushel of salt with him.
  • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651).

• For my boyhood’s friend hath fallen, the pillar of my trust,
  The true, the wise, the beautiful, is sleeping in the dust.
  • George Stillman Hillard, On Death of Motley.

• Fast as the rolling seasons bring
  The hour of fate to those we love,
  Each pearl that leaves the broken string
  Is set in Friendship’s crown above.
  As narrower grows the earthly chain,
  The circle widens in the sky;
  These are our treasures that remain,
  But those are stars that beam on high.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Songs of Many Seasons, Our Classmate, F. W. C., 1864.

• A generous friendship no cold medium knows,
  Burns with one love, with one resentment glows;
  One should our interests and our passions be,
  My friend must hate the man that injures me.
  • Homer, The Iliad, Book IX, line 725. Pope’s translation.

• Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspir’d.
  • Homer, The Iliad, Book XVI, line 267. Pope’s translation.

• Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici;
  Expertus metuit.
  • To have a great man for an intimate friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.
  • Horace, Epistles, I. 18. 86.

• True friends appear less mov’d than counterfeit.
  • Horace, Of the Art of Poetry, line 486. Wentworth Dillon’s translation.

• The new is older than the old;
  And newest friend is oldest friend in this:
  That, waiting him, we longest grieved to miss
  One thing we sought.
  • Helen Hunt Jackson, My New Friend.

• If a man does not make new acquaintances, as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.
  • Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Johnson (1755).

• Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven,
  The noble mind’s delight and pride,
  To men and angels only given,
  To all the lower world denied.
  • Samuel Johnson, Friendship, An Ode.

• The endearing elegance of female friendship.
  • Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Chapter XLVI.

• To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.
  • Samuel Johnson, Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV. March 20, 1782.

• True happiness
  Consists not in the multitude of friends,
  But in the worth and choice. Nor would I have
  Virtue a popular regard pursue:
  Let them be good that love me, though but few.
  • Ben Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels, Act III, scene 2.

• ‘Tis sweet, as year by year we lose
  Friends out of sight, in faith to muse
  How grows in Paradise our store.
  • John Keble, Burial of the Dead, Stanza 11.

• One faithful Friend is enough for a man’s self, ’tis much to meet with such an one, yet we can’t have too many for the sake of others.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688), Chapter V.

• In Friendship we only see those faults which may be prejudicial to our friends. In love we see no faults but those by which we suffer ourselves.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688), Chapter V.

• Love and friendship exclude each other.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688), Chapter V.

• Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can never taste.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688), Chapter V.

• Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
  Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling?
  • Charles Lamb, The Old Familiar Faces.

• * The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Joseph Gillespie (13 July 1849).

• I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Reply to Missouri Committee of Seventy (1864).

• Alas! to-day I would give everything
  To see a friend’s face, or hear a voice
  That had the slightest tone of comfort in it.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Judas Maccabæus, Act IV, scene 3, line 32.

• My designs and labors
  And aspirations are my only friends.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Masque of Pandora, Tower of Prometheus on Mount Caucasus, Part III, line 74.

• Ah, how good it feels!
  The hand of an old friend.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, New England Tragedies; John Endicott, Act IV, scene 1.

• Quien te conseja encobria de tus amigos.
  Engañar te quiere assaz, y sin testigos.
  • He who advises you to be reserved to your friends wishes to betray you without witnesses.
  • Juan Manuel, Prince of Villena in Tales of Count Lucanor (1575).

• Nulla fides regni sociis omnisque potestas
  Impatiens consortis erit.
  • There is no friendship between those associated in power; he who rules will always be impatient of an associate.
  • Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia. I. 92.

• Let the falling out of friends be a renewing of affection.
  • John Lyly, Euphues.

• Women, like princes, find few real friends.
  • George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, Advice to a Lady, Stanza 2.

• A true friend is forever a friend.
  • George MacDonald, The Marquis of Lossie (1877).

• Friends are like melons. Shall I tell you why?
  To find one good, you must a hundred try.
  • Claude Mermet, Epigram on Friends.

• My fair one, let us swear an eternal friendship.
  • Molière, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Act IV, scene 1.

• The wiser a man becomes the more numerous are the men whom he dislikes, only if he is really wise, he does not tell anyone of his dislikes, unless he finds it necessary to cement a friendship with a man (or a woman) by talking about a mutual enemy. There is no stronger bond of friendship than a common enemy.
  • F. Frankfort Moore, A Trial Marriage, p. 9

• Oh, call it by some better name,
  For Friendship sounds too cold.
  • Thomas Moore, Oh, call it by some better Name.

• Forsooth, brethren, fellowship is heaven and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship’s sake that ye do them.
  • William Morris, Dream of John Ball, Chapter IV.

• We have been friends together
  In sunshine and in shade.
  • Caroline E. S. Norton We Have Been Friends.

• Vulgus amicitias utilitate probat.
  • The vulgar herd estimate friendship by its advantages.
  • Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto, II. 3. 8.

• Scilicet ut fulvum spectatur in ignibus aurum
  Tempore in duro est inspicienda fides.
  • As the yellow gold is tried in fire, so the faith of friendship must be seen in adversity.
  • Ovid, Tristium, I. 5. 25.

• Cætera fortunæ, non mea, turba fuit.
  • The rest of the crowd were friends of my fortune, not of me.
  • Ovid, Tristium, I. 5. 34.

• Prosperity makes friends and adversity tries them.
  • Idea found in Plautus, Stich, IV. 1. 16. Ovid, Epigram ex Ponto, II. 3. 23. Ovid, Trist. I. 9. 5. Ennius, Cic. Amicit, Chapter XVII. Metastasio, Olimpiade, III. 3. Johann Gottfried Herder, Denksprüche. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Secret in Words, Act III, scene 3. Menander, Ex Incest. Comoed, p. 272. Aristotle, Ethics VIII. 4. Euripides, Hecuba, line 1226.

• Quod tuum’st meum’st; omne meum est autem tuum.
  • What is thine is mine, and all mine is thine.
  • Plautus, Trinummus, II. 2. 47.

• There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.
  • Alexander Pope, reported in Johnson’s Lives of the Poets; Life of Pope.

• Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear,
  (A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear.)
  • Alexander Pope, Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford.

• A man that hath friends must show himself friendly; and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
  • Proverbs, XVIII. 24.

• Faithful are the wounds of a friend.
  • Proverbs, XXVII. 6.

• Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.
  • Proverbs, XXVII. 17.

• Mine own familiar friend.
  • Psalms. XLI. 9.

• Our triumphs seem hollow unless we have friends to share them, and our failures are made bearable by their understanding.
  • James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 1986.

• There is no treasure the which may be compared unto a faithful friend;
  Gold soone decayeth, and worldly wealth consumeth, and wasteth in the winde;
  But love once planted in a perfect and pure minde indureth weale and woe;
  The frownes of fortune, come they never so unkinde, cannot the same overthrowe.
  • Roxburghe Ballads. The Bride’s Good-Morrow. Ed. by John Payne Collier.

• Idem velle et idem nolle ea demum firma amicitia est.
  • To desire the same things and to reject the same things, constitutes true friendship.
  • Sallust, Catilina, XX. From Catiline’s Oration to his Associates.

• Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.
  • 2 Samuel. 1:23.

• Dear is my friend—yet from my foe, as from my friend, comes good:
  My friend shows what I can do, and my foe what I should.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Votive Tablets, Friend and Foe.

• Amicitia semper prodest, amor etiam aliquando nocet.
  • Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures.
  • Seneca the Younger, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, XXXV.

• To hear him speak, and sweetly smile
  You were in Paradise the while.
  • Sir Philip Sidney, Friend’s Passion for his Astrophel. Attributed also to Spenser and Roydon.

• Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
  • Sydney Smith, in Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855) , p. 257; “Let us swear an eternal friendship. Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. The Rovers”.

• Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.
  • Sydney Smith, Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855), “Of Friendship”.

• For to cast away a virtuous friend, I call as bad as to cast away one’s own life, which one loves best.
  • Sophocles, Œdipus Tyrannis. Oxford translation. Revised by Buckley.

• For whoever knows how to return a kindness he has received must be a friend above all price.
  • Sophocles, Philoctetes. Oxford translation. Revised by Buckley.

• ‘Tis something to be willing to commend;
  But my best praise is, that I am your friend.
  • Thomas Southerne, To Mr. Congreve on the Old Bachelor, last lines.

• It’s an owercome sooth fo’ age an’ youth,
  And it brooks wi’ nae denial,
  That the dearest friends are the auldest friends,
  And the young are just on trial.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, Underwoods, It’s an Owercome Sooth.

• I thought you and he were hand-in-glove.
  • Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation (c. 1738), Dialogue II.

• Amici vitium ni feras, prodis tuum.
  • Unless you bear with the faults of a friend you betray your own.
  • Syrus, Maxims.

• Amicum lædere ne joco quidem licet.
  • A friend must not be injured, even in jest.
  • Syrus, Maxims.

• Secrete amicos admone, lauda palam.
  • Reprove your friends in secret, praise them openly.
  • Syrus, Maxims.

• A good man is the best friend, and therefore soonest to be chosen, longer to be retained; and indeed, never to be parted with, unless he cease to be that for which he was chosen.
  • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.

• Choose for your friend him that is wise and good, and secret and just, ingenious and honest, and in those things which have a latitude, use your own liberty.
  • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.

• When I choose my friend, I will not stay till I have received a kindness; but I will choose such a one that can do me many if I need them; but I mean such kindnesses which make me wiser, and which make me better.
  • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.

• Friendship is like rivers, and the strand of seas, and the air, common to all the world; but tyrants, and evil customs, wars, and want of love, have made them proper and peculiar.
  • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.

• Nature and religion are the bands of friendship, excellence and usefulness are its great endearments.
  • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.

• Some friendships are made by nature, some by contract, some by interest, and some by souls.
  • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.

• O friendship, equal-poised control,
  O heart, with kindliest motion warm,
  O sacred essence, other form,
  O solemn ghost, O crowned soul!
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), LXXXV.

• Then came your new friend: you began to change—
  I saw it and grieved.
  • Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), IV, line 279.

• Ego meorum solus sum meus.
  • Of my friends I am the only one I have left.
  • Terence, Phormio, IV. 1. 21.

• Fidus Achates.
  • Faithful Achates (companion of Æneas).
  • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), VI. 158.

• God save me from my friends, I can protect myself from my enemies.
  • Attributed to Claude Louis Hector de Villars on taking leave of Louis XIV

• True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation.
  • George Washington, Social Maxims, Friendship.

• A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends; and that the most liberal professions of good-will are very far from being the surest marks of it.
  • George Washington, Social Maxims, Friendship, Actions, not Words.

• I have friends in Spirit Land,—
  Not shadows in a shadowy band,
  Not others but themselves are they,
  And still I think of them the same
  As when the Master’s summons came.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Lucy Hooper.

• Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.
  • William Wycherley, The Plain Dealer, Prologue.

• Friendship’s the wine of life: but friendship new * * * is neither strong nor pure.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night II, line 582.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• I consider beyond all wealth, honor, or even health, is the attachment due to noble souls; because to become one with the good, generous, and true, is to be, in a manner, good, generous, and true yourself.
  • Dr. Thomas Arnold, p. 254.

• The friendship of high and sanctified spirits loses nothing by death but its alloy; failings disappear, and the virtues of those whose faces we shall behold no more appear greater and more sacred when beheld through the shades of the sepulchre.
  • Robert Hall, p. 254.

• Character is so largely affected by associations that we cannot afford to be indifferent as to who and what our friends are. They write their names in our albums, but they do more, they help make us what we are. Be therefore careful in selecting them; and when wisely selected, never sacrifice them.
  • M. Hulburd, p. 255.

• Friendship is a cadence of divine melody melting through the heart.
  • Charles Mildway, p. 255.

• A good man is the best friend, and therefore soonest to be chosen, longest to be retained, and indeed never to be parted with, unless he cease to be that for which he was chosen.
  • Jeremy Taylor, p. 254.