Quotes about friends

A friend is someone you can be alone with and have nothing to do and not be able to think of anything to say and be comfortable in the silence.

— Sheryl Condie

Have no friends not equal to yourself.

— Confucius

In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who come out together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.

— Cyril Connolly

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

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 is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

— Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts or measure words, but pouring all right out just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful friendly hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and, with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away.

— Dinah Mulock Craik

What is a friend? I will tell you it is someone with whom you dare to be yourself.

— Frank Crane

A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself.

— Frank Crane

A good motto is: Use friendliness but do not use your friends.

— Frank Crane

Thank You Friend I never came to you, my friend, and went away without some new enrichment of the heart; More faith and less of doubt, more courage in the days ahead. And often in great need coming to you, I went away comforted indeed. How can I find the shining word, the glowing phrase that tells all that your love has meant to me, all that your friendship spells? There is no word, no phrase for you on whom I so depend. All I can say to you is this, God bless you precious friend.

— Grace Noll Crowell

A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.

— Fr. Jerome Cummings

Do not save your loving speeches for your friends till they are dead. Do not write them on their tombstones, speak them rather now instead.

— Anna Cummins

Then come the wild weather, come sleet or come snow, we will stand by each other, however it blow.

— Simon Dach

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend -- or a meaningful day.

— Dalai Lama

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

— Charles R. Darwin

Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends.

— Jacques Delille

Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.

— Dhammapada

Many merry Christmases, friendships, great accumulation of cheerful recollections, affection on earth, and Heaven at last for all of us.

— Charles Dickens

A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.

— Readers Digest

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Norman Douglas

Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to a family and clan, whose blood is in your own veins. Love between a man and a woman is founded on the mating instinct and is not free from desire and self-seeking. But to have a friend and to be true under any and all trials is the mark of a man!

— Charles Alexander Eastman

Friendship is genuine when two friends can enjoy each others company without speaking a word to one another.

— George Ebers

Never exaggerate your faults, your friends will attend to that.

— Robert C. Edwards

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

— George Eliot

Friendships begin with liking or gratitude roots that can be pulled up.

— George Eliot

Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.

— T. S. Eliot

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 Ellis

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of all things which wisdom provides to make life entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

— Epicurus

We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need.

— Epicurus

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.

— Euripides

Life has no blessing like a prudent friend.

— Euripides

Friends show their love in times of trouble...

— Euripides

I hate it in friends when they come too late to help.

— Euripides

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

... I remember you and recall you without effort, without exercise of will; that is, by natural impulse, indicated by a sense of duty, or of obligation. And that, I take it, is the only sort of remembering worth the having. When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy -- that it is built upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.

— Douglas Fairbanks

Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.

— Francois FeNelon

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.

— Henry Ford

Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.

— Sam Walter Foss

Friendships begun in this world will be taken up again, never to be broken off.

— St. Francis De Sales

There are three faithful friends, an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

— Benjamin Franklin

Friends and neighbors, the taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing abatement.

— Benjamin Franklin

When all is said and done, friendship is the only trustworthy fabric of the affections. So-called love is a delirious inhuman state of mind: when hot it substitutes indulgence for fair play; when cold it is cruel, but friendship is warmth in cold, firm ground in a bog.

— Miles Franklin

Give me work to do, Give me health, Give me joy in simple things, Give me an eye for beauty, A tongue for truth, A heart that loves, A mind that reasons, A sympathy that understands. Give me neither malice nor envy, But a true kindness And a noble common sense. At the close of each day Give me a book And a friend with whom I can be silent.

— S. M. Frazier

Friends make pretence of following to the grave but before one is in it, their minds are turned and making the best of their way back to life and living people and things they understand.

— Robert Frost

If you have one true friend you have more than your share.

— Thomas Fuller

There is a scarcity of friendship, but not of friends.

— Thomas Fuller

Purchase not friends by gifts; when thou ceasest to give, such will cease to love.

— Thomas Fuller

A good friend is my nearest relation.

— Thomas Fuller

My friend is he who will tell me my faults in private.

— Ibn Gabirol

The good man is the friend of all living things.

— Mahatma Gandhi

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

— Mahatma Gandhi

An open foe may prove a curse, but a pretended friend is worse.

— John Gay

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.

— David Tyson Gentry

Your friend is your needs answered.

— Kahlil Gibran

Your friend is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

— Kahlil Gibran

Let your best be for your friend...

— Kahlil Gibran

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

— Kahlil Gibran

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

— Kahlil Gibran

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

— Kahlil Gibran

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

— Arnold H. Glasgow

Everybody needs one essential friend.

— Dr. William Glasser

Friendship is to have the latchkey of another's mind.

— Edgar Godospeed

In comradeship is danger countered best.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

— Oliver Goldsmith

Never have a companion that casts you in the shade.

— Baltasar Gracian

Have friends. 'Tis a second existence.

— Baltasar Gracian

Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.

— Baltasar Gracian

The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.

— Ulysses S. Grant

Friendship is neither a formality nor a mode: it is rather a life.

— David Grayson

There is an electricity about a friendship relationship. We are both more relaxed and more sensitive, more creative and more reflective, more energetic and more casual, more excited and more serene. It is as though when we come in contact with our friend we enter into a different environment. ANDREW M. GREELEY

— Andrew M. Greeley

Do not choose for your friends and familiar acquaintance those that are of an estate or quality too much above yours...You will hereby accustom yourselves to live after their rate in clothes, in habit, and in expenses, whereby you will learn a fashion and rank of life above your degree and estate, which will in the end be your undoing.

— Matthew Hale

A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity.

— Robert Hall

Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence. Friendship needs no words -- it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

— Dag Hammarskjold

Friendship needs no words...

— Dag Hammarskjold

There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend.

— Katherine Hathaway

Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Friends are the sunshine of life.

— John Hay

Friendship is a horizon -- which expands whenever we approach it.

— E.R. Hazlip

I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

— William Hazlitt

Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.

— William Hazlitt

The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.

— William Hazlitt

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please --that is, as they please or displease us.

— William Hazlitt

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.

— William Hazlitt

There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they? Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding or good nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you complain of: on the contrary, they have probably many points of attraction; but they have one that neutralizes all these --they care nothing about you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach; and when you leave them, it is with a feeling that they can do just as well without you. This is not sullenness, nor indifference, nor absence of mind; but they are intent solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in society as in a solitude.

— William Hazlitt

There is no friend as loyal as a book

— Ernest Hemingway

Never deceive a friend.

— Hipparchus