Quotes about friends

Ones oldest friend is the best.

— Titus Maccius Plautus

What is thine is mine, and all mine is thine.

— Titus Maccius Plautus

If I cannot understand my friend's silence, I will never get to understand his words.

— John Enoch Powell

Friends will keep you sane, Love could fill your heart, A lover can warm your bed, But lonely is the soul without a mate.

— David Pratt

A friend you have to buy won't be worth what you pay for him.

— George D. Prentice

The time to make friends is before you need them.

— Proverb

Short judgments make long friends.

— Proverb

It is prosperity that gives us friends, adversity that proves them.

— Proverb

A friend is someone who doesn't like the same people you do.

— Proverb

Be slow in choosing a friend, but slower in changing him.

— Proverb

Broken friendships can be soldered, but never sound.

— Proverb

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

— Arabian Proverb

A friend is known when needed.

— Arabian Proverb

Do not tell a friend anything you would conceal from an enemy.

— Arabian Proverb

With true friends... even water drunk together is sweet enough.

— Chinese Proverb

A man should choose a friend who is better than himself. There are plenty of acquaintances in the world; but very few real friends.

— Chinese Proverb

Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.

— Czech. Proverb

No one is rich enough to do without a neighbor.

— Danish Proverb

Your friendship is your needs answered.

— Danish Proverb

The road to a friend's house is never long.

— Danish Proverb

You may poke a man's fire after you've known him for seven years.

— English Proverb

Friends are like fiddle strings, they must not be screwed too tight.

— English Proverb

Who ceases to be a friend never was one.

— Greek Proverb

These can never be true friends: Hope, dice, a prostitute, a robber, a cheat, a goldsmith, a monkey, a doctor, a distiller.

— Indian Proverb

For the friendship of two, the patience of one is required.

— Indian Proverb

The good fellow to everyone is a good friend to no one.

— Jewish Proverb

A friend you have to buy; enemies you get for nothing.

— Jewish Proverb

Hold a true friend with both your hands.

— Nigerian Proverb

To keep a new friend, never break with the old.

— Russian Proverb

Tell me who's your friend and I'll tell you who you are.

— Russian Proverb

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

— Sicilian Proverb

An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship.

— Spanish Proverb

Who seeks a faultless friend remains friendless.

— Turkish Proverb

Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.

— Pythagoras

It's funny, isn't it? How your best friend can just blow up like that?

— Monty Python

That friendship will not continue to the end which is begun for an end.

— Francis Quarles

True friendship is never serene.

— Marie De Rabutin-Chantal

Real friends are those who, when you've made a fool of yourself, don't feel that you've done a permanent job.

— Erwin T. Randall

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

— G. Randolf

Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also. He attracts and follows.

— Jean Paul Richter

We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.

— Jean Paul Richter

I would rather have a million friends than a million dollars.

— Edward Vernon Rickenbacker

Friendship is a very simple word, very commonly used. The word friend is almost used on a daily basis. Yet, the depth and meaning of friendship certainly go beyond the simple and the common. Throughout history friendship has been a favorite theme for many writers. The following passages highlight what others have said about friendship in the past.

— Dorothy Riera

Strangers are just friends I haven't met yet.

— Will Rogers

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

— Eleanor Roosevelt

How rare and wonderful is that flash of a moment when we realize we have discovered a friend.

— William E. Rothschild

Men are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them; and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things.

— John Ruskin

To like and dislike the same things, this is what makes a solid friendship.

— Sallust

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.

— George Santayana

Good friends are good for your health.

— Irwin Sarason

One who looks for a friend without faults will have none.

— Hasidic Saying

Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure.

— Jewish Saying

Friends show me what I can do, foes teach me what I should do.

— Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

You can't eat your friends and have them too.

— Budd Schulberg

If you have no friends to share or rejoice in your success in life -- if you cannot look back to those whom you owe gratitude, or forward to those to whom you ought to afford protection, still it is no less incumbent on you to move steadily in the path of duty; for your active excretions are due not only to society; but in humble gratitude to the Being who made you a member of it, with powers to save yourself and others.

— Sir Walter Scott

Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.

— John Selden

Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures.

— Seneca

Those that are a friend to themselves are sure to be a friend to all.

— Seneca

Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find.

— William Shakespeare

A friend should bear a friend's infirmities, But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.

— William Shakespeare

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.

— William Shakespeare

The 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-hatched unfledged comrade.

— William Shakespeare

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

— George Bernard Shaw

But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

— George Bernard Shaw

I can't forgive my friends for dying; I don't find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.

— Logan Pearsall Smith

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.

— Sydney Smith

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

— Socrates

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.

— Robert Southey

Friendship is one of the sweetest joys of life. Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of their trial had they not found a friend.

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A friend is a present you give to yourself.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

No man is useless while he has a friend.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget. And a man who has a few friends, or one who has a dozen (if there be any one so wealthy on this earth), cannot forget on how precarious a base his happiness reposes; and how by a stroke or two of fate --a death, a few light words, a piece of stamped paper, a woman's bright eyes --he may be left, in a month, destitute of all.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another's little lapses.

— David Storey

I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred --that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt. If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

Friendship can only exist between persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the conventions of society are born with different interests and different points of view.

— J. August Strindberg

I have a friend who tells a tale With statements parenthetical; To start at the beginning must To her seem quite heretical; For her accounts of happenings Are full of disconnection s; She starts them in the middle, And proceeds in all directions.

— Erica H. Stux

The ideal friendship is to feel as one while remaining two.

— Anne Sophie Swetchine

Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.

— Jonathan Swift

Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.

— Jonathan Swift

Reprove your friends in secret, praise them openly.

— Publilius Syrus

We die as often as we lose a friend.

— Publilius Syrus

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.

— Publilius Syrus

Join the company of lions rather than assume the lead among foxes.

— The Talmud

Man has three friends on whose company he relies. First, wealth which goes with him only while good fortune lasts. Second, his relatives; they go only as far as the grave, leave him there. The third friend, his good deeds, go with him beyond the grave.

— The Talmud

Friendship's the privilege of private men; for wretched greatness knows no blessing so substantial.

— Nahum Tate

He makes no friends who never made a foe.

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

Many a time from a bad beginning great friendships have sprung up.

— Terence

Those who forgets their friends to follow those of a higher status are truly snobs.

— William M. Thackeray

It is not what you give your friend, but what you are willing to give him that determines the quality of friendship.

— Mary Dixon Thayer

Verily, great grace may go with a little gift; and precious are all things that come from a friend.

— Theocritus

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.

— Henry David Thoreau

We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.

— Henry David Thoreau

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

— Henry David Thoreau

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then

— Henry David Thoreau

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

— Henry David Thoreau

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

— Henry David Thoreau

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau