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Friendship Quotes and Quotations
 And we find at the end of a perfect day, The soul of a friend we've made.  Love is like the wild-rose briar; Friendship is like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose briar blooms, But which will bloom most constantly? Life without a friend is death without a witness. Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods. We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower, that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known that immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language holds its peace in impotence. The great difference between voyages rests not in ships but in the people you meet on them. Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything. It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it. Friendship is the bread of the heart. There is no hope or joy except in human relations. I feel the need of relations and friendship, of affection, of friendly intercourse. ... I cannot miss these things without feeling, as does any other intelligent man, a void and a deep need. Your wealth is where your friends are. - Plautus Today a man discovered gold and fame, Another flew the stormy seas; Another set an unarmed world aflame, One found the germ of a disease. But what high fates my path attend for I-today-I found a friend. Though Love be deeper, Friendship is more wide. That is the best-to laugh with someone because you think the same things are funny. Can you understand how cruelly I feel the lack of friends who will believe in me a bit? To have a good friend is one of the highest delights of life; to be a good friend is one of the noblest and most difficult undertakings. The two most important things in life are good friends and a strong bull pen. There is no wilderness like a life without friends; friendship multiplies blessings and minimizes misfortunes; it is a unique remedy against adversity, and it soothes the soul. There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship. Man's best support is a very dear friend. - Cicero A cheer, then, for the noblest breast That fears not danger's post; And like the lifeboat, proves a friend, When friends are wanted most. I know what things are good: friendship and work and conversation. Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious. No medicine is more valuable, none more efficacious, none better suited to the cure of all our temporal ills than a friend to whom we may turn for consolation in time of trouble, and with whom we may share our happiness in time of joy. My only sketch, profile, of heaven is a large blue sky, and larger than the biggest I have seen in June-and in it are my friends-every one of them. If I don't have friends, then I ain't nothing. Brotherhood is the very price and condition of man's survival. One thing everybody in the world wants and needs is friendliness. A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our roof tight and our clothing sufficient, but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all-friends. There is no physician like a true friend. There is nothing meritorious but virtue and friendship. The bird, a nest; the spider, a web; man, friendship. True happiness ... arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions. It was such a joy to see thee. I wish I could tell how much thee is to my life. I always turn to thee as a sort of rest. Today a man discovered gold and fame, Another flew the stormy seas; Another set an unarmed world aflame, One found the germ of a disease. But what high fates my path attend: For I-today-I found a friend. Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together. Friends are an aid to the young, to guard them from error; to the elderly, to attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action; to those in the prime of life, to assist them to noble deeds. Friendship is the allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the discharge of our oppression, the sanctuary of our calamities, the counselor of our doubts, the clarity of our minds, the emission of our thoughts, the exercise and improvement of what we dedicate. Of all the things which wisdom provides to make life entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship. - Epicurus There's nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter, and the love of friends. 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. The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef, love, like being enlivened with champagne. One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are. Oh Dear! How unfortunate I am not to have anyone to weep with! The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship. If you want an accounting of your worth, count your friends. A man with few friends is only half-developed; there are whole sides of his nature which are locked up and have never been expressed. He cannot unlock them himself, he cannot even discover them; friends alone can stimulate him and open him. Tis the human touch in the world that counts-the touch of your hand and mine-Which means far more to the sinking heart than shelter or bread or wine For shelter is gone when the night is o'er, and bread lasts only a day But the touch of the hand and the sound of the voice Live on in the soul always. Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. Friends are the sunshine of life. - John Hay My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation. The support of one's personality is friends. A part of one's self and a real foundation and existence. No greater burden can be born by an individual than to know none who cares or understands. My life seems to have become suddenly hollow, and I do not know what is hanging over me. I cannot even put the shadow that has fallen on me into words. At least into written words. I would give a great deal for a friend's voice. A true friend is the best possession. It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help. - Epicurus Friends Make Life Bearable But I have certainty enough, For I am sure of you. Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness! Plant a seed of friendship; reap a bouquet of happiness. Our happiness in this world depends on the affections we are able to inspire. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates. If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee. Friends are the family we choose for ourselves. I think togetherness is a very important ingredient to family life. It's a cliche and we use it too much but I think for a husband and wife, the way to stay close is to do things together and share. Jimmy and I were always partners. He [Winston Churchill] has a future and I have a past, so we should be all right. Parents are friends that life gives us; friends are parents that the heart chooses. [My father] was generous with his affection, given to great, awkward, engulfing hugs, and I can remember so clearly the smell of his hugs, all starched shirt, tobacco, Old Spice, and Cutty Sark. Sometimes I think I've never been properly hugged since. Both within the family and without, our sisters hold up our mirrors: our images of who we are and of who we can dare to become. Sisters define their rivalry in terms of competition for the gold cup of parental love. It is never perceived as a cup which runneth over, rather a finite vessel from which the more one sister drinks, the less is left over for the others. The desire to be and have a sister is a primitive and profound one that may have everything or nothing to do with the family a woman is born to. It is a desire to know and be known by someone who shares blood and body, history and dreams. Where there is lasting love, there is a family. Is solace anywhere more comforting than in the arms of sisters? Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes. [Families] are made to make you forget yourself occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed. The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come. Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit in the porches and sing them on mild evenings. The family is the building block for whatever solidarity there is in society. Who ran to help me when I fell And would some pretty story tell Or kiss the place to make it well? My mother. All love that has not friendship for its base, Is like a mansion built upon the sand. One can find traces of every life in each life. Friendship is an art, and very few persons are born with a natural gift for it. The art of friendship has been little cultivated in our society. We flatter those we scarcely know, We please the fleeting guest, And deal full many a thoughtless blow To those who love us best. Good friendships are fragile things and require as much care as any other fragile and precious thing. Remember that you are all people and that all people are you. Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies ... and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia. The only way to have a friend is to be one. Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable. Beware of the danger signals that flag problems: silence, secretiveness, or sudden outburst. To accept a favor from a friend is to confer one. There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first... when you learn to live for others, they will live for you. 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 getting out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another. Don't ask of your friends what you yourself can do. Half the secret of getting along with people is consideration of their values; the other half is tolerance in one's own views. A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably. Confidence is the foundation of friendship. If we give it, we will receive it. There is a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time. Actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends. One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession. Any man will usually get from other men what he is expecting from them. If he is looking for friendship, he will likely receive it. If his attitude is that of indifference, it will beget indifference. And if a man is looking for a fight, he will in all likelihood be accommodated in that. There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of pleasure in a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him, understood him, interested ourself in his welfare. At these moments something fine and spiritual passes between two friends. These moments are the moments worth living. He does good to himself who does good to his friend. - Erasmus A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not endured with patient resignation. When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. Loyalty is what we seek in friendship. - Cicero True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable. If two friends ask you to judge a dispute, don't accept, because you will lose one friend; on the other hand, if two strangers come with the same request, accept, because you will gain one friend. Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking. There can be no friendship when there is no freedom. Friendship loves the free air, and will not be fenced up in straight and narrow enclosures. You will find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others?...Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy. Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will live. Those who cannot give friendship will rarely receive it, and never hold it. It is not the services we render them, but the services they render us, that attaches people to us. We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them. It is foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife. Give and take makes good friends. A quarrel between friends, when made up, adds a new tie to friendship, as ... the callosity formed 'round a broken bone makes it stronger than before. No real friendship is ever made without an initial clashing which discloses the metal of each to each. Nothing wounds a friend like a want of confidence. The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere with ours. No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it, he must serve it too. 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. Friendship is a plant which must be often watered. A friend should bear his friend's infirmities. No man is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, his fondness of himself. You win the victory when you yield to friends. The condition which high friendship demands is the ability to do without it. Women can form a friendship with a man very well; but to preserve it, a slight physical antipathy most probably helps. Love your friends as if they would some day hate you. Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another. Friendship is the pleasing game of interchanging praise. The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain, to show them that we love them, not when we feel like it, but when they do. If you want to be listened to, you should put in time listening. "Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary. 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. The way to make a true friend is to be one. Friendship implies loyalty, esteem, cordiality, sympathy, affection, readiness to aid, to help, to stick, to fight for, if need be. ... Radiate friendship and it will return sevenfold. The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear. A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they're not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they're not so bad. Politeness is an inexpensive way of making friends. The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. Sometimes we owe a friend to the lucky circumstance that we give him no cause for envy. Friendship requires great communication. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command. We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us. You can make more friends in two months by becoming more interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you. We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them. Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil. Tis the sole remedy against misfortune, the very ventilation of the soul. It is easier to visit friends than to live with them. The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness. The chain of friendship, however bright, does not stand the attrition of constant close contact. Fond as we are of our loved ones, there comes at times during their absence an unexplained peace. - Ann Shaw Friendship increases in visiting friends, but not in visiting them too often. Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path. I am quite sure that no friendship yields its true pleasure and nobility of nature without frequent communication, sympathy and service. I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine. The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. Friends are lost by calling often and calling seldom. A hedge between keeps friendships green. Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another. My friend and I have built a wall Between us thick and wide: The stones of it are laid in scorn And plastered high with pride. When my friends lack an eye, I look at them in profile. 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. A friend is one who withholds judgment no matter how long you have his unanswered letter. The best rule of friendship is to keep your heart a little softer than your head. Who seeks a faultless friend remains friendless. Unless you bear with the faults of a friend you betray your own. Probably no man ever had a friend he did not dislike a little; we are all so constituted by nature that no one can possibly entirely approve of us. Love your friend with his fault. It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality. Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings. To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him ... two. It is easier to forgive an enemy than a friend. Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love. We shall never have friends if we expect to find them without fault. It is well there is no one without fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to a different species. The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another's little lapses. To be social is to be forgiving. It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them. It is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them. The man who trusts other men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them. It should be part of our private ritual to devote a quarter of an hour every day to the enumeration of the good qualities of our friends. When we are not active we fall back idly upon defects, even of those whom we most love. Friendship admits of difference of character, as love does that of sex. Between friends there is no need of justice. What I cannot love, I overlook. Treat your fiends as you do your picture, and place them in their best light. Friendships aren't perfect and yet they are very precious. For me, not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release. A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget. Being considerate of others will take you and your children further in life than any college or professional degree. Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much. It pleases him who gives and receives and thus, like mercy, is twice blessed. Truth is a rough, honest, helter-skelter terrier, that none like to see brought into their drawing rooms. - Ouida Friendship cannot live with ceremony, nor without civility. Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Friends are like a pleasant park where you wish to go; while you may enjoy the flowers, you may not eat them. Friendship is honey, but don't eat it all. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell him. It's important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to our friendship that we are not. Don't tell your friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you. There are worse words than cuss words; there are words that hurt. Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth. Flattery makes friends, truth enemies. Before a secret is told, one can often feel the weight of it in the atmosphere. A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run. - Ouida It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction. If we all told what we know of one another, there would not be four friends in the world We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good if we talked ... not just pitter-patter, but real talk. We shouldn't be so afraid, because most people really like this contact; that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable. If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships. The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy. So often the truth is told with hate, and lies are told with love. Give me the avowed, the erect and manly foe, Bold I can meet, perhaps may turn the blow; But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save, oh save me from the candid friend! A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling. Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet. Friendship will not stand the strain of very much good advice for very long. There is not so good an understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness. A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still. |