quotations about friendship
A real friendship ought to introduce each person to unexpected weirdness in the other.
JARON LANIER
You Are Not a Gadget
The soil of friendship is worn out with constant use.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Friendship's eye is often blind.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The company of just and righteous men is better than wealth and a rich estate.
EURIPIDES
Aegeus [fragment]
The language of Friendship is not words but meanings.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Friendship
We should thank God that He did not give us the power of hearing through walls; otherwise there would be no such thing as friendship.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Those who would have Friendship confined to the narrowest compass, have notions of it the most sublime: Tho' number, if practicable, may be highly useful.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
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
The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
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
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
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 can exist between persons of different sexes, without any coarse or sensual feelings; yet a woman always looks upon a man as a man, and so a man will look upon a woman as a woman.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know.
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
Lonesome creates diseases that friendship cures.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
We often choose a friend as we do a mistress, for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Friendship can be really tested only in bad times.
DONALD TRUMP
Playboy, Mar. 1990