quotations about friends
The young compliment their greatness on the number of their friends; the old, on the confidence of them.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The going away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A. but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables.
CHARLES LAMB
letter to William Wordsworth, Mar. 20, 1822
Friends are true twins in soul.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
A man's enemies are those he should endeavor first to make his friends.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
However bad a man, he will have some friends: however good, he will have some enemies.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Be a friend, and thou shalt have friends.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Tell me, why are the old friends kind,
And ever the tenderest, too?
Youth has no art, but an open mind,
And its love is sincere and true.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Tell Me"
New friends ... can often have a better time together than old friends.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
It is the duty of every individual, to be a friend to mankind, as it is his interest, that men should be friendly to him.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
RICHARD BACH
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Friends have all things in common.
PLATO
Phaedrus
The reason we have few friends in adversity, is, because we have no true ones in prosperity.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
It's safer to have a good enemy than a bad friend.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
A false Friend and a Shadow, attend only while the Sun shines.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1756
Who hath one friend, of straight and loyal mind,
But one, of all the million swarms of men,
Is strong, beyond the energy of ten,
Is rich, beyond the level of mankind.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"One Friend"
It is at all times more easy to make enemies than friends.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to George Washington Parke Custis, Nov. 28, 1796
Break not an ancient friendship; keep it hale;
Stir round its roots, that it be green of heart;
Let not the spirit of its growth depart:
It is a power to brave the strongest gale.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"Friendship"
A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face.
MAYA ANGELOU
Letter to My Daughter
Everybody is friends when things are bad enough.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Islands in the Stream
You cannot expect that a friend should be like the atmosphere, which confers all manner of benefits upon you, and without which indeed it would be impossible to live, but at the same time is never in your way.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd