quotations about friendship
Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Behavior"
This is the end of a beautiful friendship
It ended a moment ago
This is the end of a beautiful friendship
I know 'cause your eyes told me so
DUKE ELLINGTON
"A Beautiful Friendship"
Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success -- yours or his.
FRANKLIN P. JONES
Saturday Evening Post, November 29, 1953
True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
As the circle of friends is enlarged, the bonds of friendship are relaxed and weakened.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
HENRI NOUWEN
Out of Solitude
The true beauty of friendship is that it is bottomless.
ROGER & SALLY HORCHOW
The Art of Friendship
A friend is one who does not laugh when you are in a ridiculous position.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies--neighbors are kind enough for that--but to do the like office to our spirits.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Friendship
Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
The Prophet
Be a friend, and thou shalt have friends.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
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
Essays
A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being in all its height, variety and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Memoir
The Friend does not count his Friends on his fingers; they are not numerable.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Friendship
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
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]