quotations about friendship
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
My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather, not I, but the Deity in me and in them, both deride and cancel the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex and circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Whatever dissolves friendship should, at least, be equal in importance to that which formed it.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
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
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's eye is often blind.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Choose a friend as thou dost a wife, 'till Death separate you.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
The soil of friendship is worn out with constant use.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Friendship should be more than biting Time can sever.
T. S. ELIOT
Murder in the Cathedral
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
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
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
A real friendship ought to introduce each person to unexpected weirdness in the other.
JARON LANIER
You Are Not a Gadget
Friendship can be really tested only in bad times.
DONALD TRUMP
Playboy, Mar. 1990
Of what use the friendliest disposition even, if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant duties and relations? Friendship first, Friendship last.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Friendship
Letters of friendship require no study.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Major-General Knox, Jan. 5, 1785
If you're ever in a jam, here I am
If you're ever in a mess, S-O-S
If you ever feel so happy, you land in jail, I'm your bail.
It's friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship.
When other friendships have been forgot,
Ours will still be hot.
JUDY GARLAND
"Friendship"
The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Some friendships are formed by a commonality of interests and ideas: you both love judo or camping or making your own sausage. Other friendships are forged in alliance against a common enemy.
DAVID SEDARIS
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim