Abraham Lincoln:
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
Albert Camus:
Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.
Alice Walker:
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
Anaïs Nin:
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Ann Richards:
I've always said that in politics, your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill you.
Anna Garlin Spencer:
The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed. Perhaps it should be added that either the man or the woman thus deeply bound in lifelong friendship who seeks marriage must find a still rarer man or woman to wed, to make such a three cornered comradeship a permanent success.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh:
If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.
Aristotle:
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
Audre Lorde:
The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.
Ben Jonson:
True friendship consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and value.
Bertrand Russell:
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.
Blaise Pascal:
Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.
C.S. Lewis:
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one."
Charlie Daniels:
A brief candle; both ends burning
An endless mile; a bus wheel turning
A friend to share the lonesome times
A handshake and a sip of wine
So say it loud and let it ring
We are all a part of everything
The future, present and the past
Fly on proud bird
You're free at last.
written en route to the funeral for his friend, Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Cicero:
It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity.
Confucius:
Silence is the true friend that never betrays.
Cornelia Otis Skinner:
To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time.
The Ape in Me, 1959
David Hume:
Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
Deng Ming-Dao:
Those truly linked don't need correspondence. When they meet again after many years apart, Their friendship is as true as ever.
Don Marquis:
There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of pleasure in a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him, understood him. At these moments something fine and spiritual passes between two friends. These are the moments worth living.
E. B. White:
You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.
Charlotte, "Charlotte's Web"
E.M. Forster:
One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
E.R. Bulwer-Lytton:
It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief: enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best.
Ecclesiasticus 6:14:
A faithful friend is a strong defense: and he that hath found such an one hath found a treasure.
Edgar Watson Howe:
When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
