quotes, quotations and passages on friendship

friendship2 - friendship3

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.

unattributed

A workable and effective way to meet and overcome difficulties is to take on someone else's problems. It is a strange fact but you can often handle two difficulties--your own and somebody else's--better than you can handle your own alone. That truth is based on a subtle law of self-giving or outgoingness whereby you develop a self-strengthening in the process. Norman Vincent Peale

So long as we love, we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no person is useless while he or she has friends. Robert Louis Stevenson

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 going out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another. Thomas Hughes 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

It is the steady and merciless increase of occupations, the augmented speed at which we are always trying to live, the crowding of each day with more work than it can profitably hold, which has cost us, among other things, the undisturbed enjoyment of friends. Friendship takes time, and we have no time to give it. Agnes Repplier (1894)

A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily,
adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously,
and continues a friend unchangeably.

William Penn

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Oh, the miraculous energy that flows between two people who care
enough to get beyond surfaces and games, who are willing to take
the risks of being totally open, of listening, of responding with
the whole heart. How much we can do for each other!

Alex Noble

The most I can do for my friends is simply to be their friend. I have no
wealth to bestow upon them. If they know that I am happy in loving them,
they will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?

Henry David Thoreau

Of all the gifts that wise Providence
grants us to make life full and happy,
friendship is the most beautiful.

Epicurus

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people
than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.

Dale Carnegie

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be
well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship
is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the
shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

George Washington

We rejoice in the joys of our friends as much as we do our own,
and we are equally grieved at their sorrows. Wherefore the wise
people will feel toward their friends as they do toward themselves,
and whatever labor they would encounter with a view to their own
pleasure, they will encounter also for the sake of their friends.

Cicero

But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly
on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish
thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort--the inexpressible
comfort of feeling safe with a person--having neither to weigh thoughts
nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff
and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep
what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
A Life for a Life

Silences make the real conversations between friends.
Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.

Margaret Lee Runbeck

No person is your friend who demands your silence,
or denies your right to grow.

Alice Walker

We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our room tight,
and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that they
shall not be wanting in the best property of all--friends?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself
he or she doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.

Laurence J. Peter

A genuine friend considers you just as another human being,
as a brother or sister, and shows affection on that level, regardless
of whether you are rich or poor, in a high position or low position.
That is a genuine friend.

the Dalai Lama

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks
degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.

Elie Wiesel

I want a warm and faithful friend,
To cheer the adverse hour;
Who ne'er to flatter will descend,
Nor bend the knee to power,--
A friend to chide me when I'm wrong,
My inmost soul to see;
And that my friendship prove as strong
For him as his for me.

John Quincy Adams

I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present
minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses.

Katherine Mansfield

Good friendships are fragile things and require as much care
as any other fragile and precious thing.

Randolph Bourne

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.

Aristotle

Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures,
and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Years and years of happiness only make us realize how lucky we are
to have friends that have shared and made that happiness a reality.

Robert E. Frederick

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
Shall I not call God, the beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I destroy my enemies by making them my friends.

Abraham Lincoln

One is taught by experience to put a premium on those
few people who can appreciate you for what you are.

Gail Godwin

Articles and book excerpts on friendship:

Being There, Coming through Janice Hain

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Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

Benjamin Franklin

To have a true friendship, you have to do more than exchange
Christmas cards or call each other once a year. There has to be
some continued support and attention; otherwise the relationship
is a sentimental attachment rather than a true friendship.

Dolores Kreisman

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two
greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.

William Hazlitt

friendship2 - friendship3

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they
can grow separately without growing apart.

Elizabeth Foley

Trouble is a sieve through which we sift our acquaintances.
Those too big to pass through are our friends.

Arlene Francis

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

They are closest to us who best understand what life means to us,
who feel for us as we feel for ourselves, who are bound to us
in triumph and disaster, who break the spell of our loneliness.

Henry Alonzo Myers

A friend is one who joyfully sings with you when you are on the
mountaintop, and silently walks beside you through the valley.

William A. Ward

Lavish love on others and receive it gratefully when it comes to you.
Cultivate friendship like a garden. It is the best love of all.

Helen Prejaean