quotations about friendship
Be a friend, and thou shalt have friends.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Friendship is not an obsolete sentiment. It is as true now as in Aristotle's time that no one would care to live without friends, though he had all other good things. It is still necessary to our life in its largest sense.
HUGH B. BLACK
Friendship
The Friend does not count his Friends on his fingers; they are not numerable.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Friendship
For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
Though most of the friendships of the world ill deserve the name of friendships; yet a man may make use of them on occasion, as of a traffic whose returns are uncertain, and in which 'tis usual to be cheated.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
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.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
The Son of a Servant
This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
ELIE WIESEL
From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences
Friendship extends about four city blocks.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Lonesome creates diseases that friendship cures.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Friendship can be really tested only in bad times.
DONALD TRUMP
Playboy, Mar. 1990
Friendships are a reflection of who you are and what you need. While we are constantly evolving, there comes a time when we know what the make-and-breaks are in friendship. And once you know what your deal breakers are, naturally you will begin to seek out friendships that fit. Unfortunately, we also know that some friendships will get left behind.
SA'IYDA SHABAZZ
"This Is Why Some Friendships End--And Others Last", Scary Mommy, February 19, 2019
While friendship itself has an air of eternity about it, seeming to transcend all natural limits, there is hardly any emotion so utterly at the mercy of time. We form friendships, and grow out of them. It might almost be said that we cannot retain the faculty of friendship unless we are continually making new friends.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
The Friendship of Christ
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Friendship", Essays
Friendship has been called the sweetener of life. It is a compound made up of truth and kindness, prudence and piety.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
The language of Friendship is not words but meanings.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Friendship
It is never easier to forget friends than when we imagine they have forgotten us--friendship, like love, requires reciprocal assurance of continuity.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
[It] is the juvenal period of life when friendships are formed, and habits established, that will stick by one.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Alexander Hamilton, Sep. 1, 1796