Quotes About Of Friendship

“One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.”

— Clifton Fadiman

“When we do the hard, intimate work of friendship, we bring a little more of the divine into daily life.”

— Shauna Niequist

“For the secret of friendship is a mutual admiration, and it is the realization or suspicion that that admiration is lessening on one side or the other that swiftly breaks the charm.”

— Randolph Bourne

“The only shadow thrown by a devoted friendship, Brendon, is the knowledge that it must some day come to an end ... Yet who would deny himself the glory of friendship, before the menace that it must sooner or later finish? A close amity and understanding, a discovery of kindred spirits, is the most precious experiences within the reach of mankind.”

— Eden Phillpotts

“At this point Alexander was visited by envoys from Syrmus, the King of the Triballians, and from the various other independent tribes along the Danube. The Celts from the Adriatic Sea also sent representatives - men of haughty demeanour and tall in proportion. All professed a desire for Alexander's friendship, and mutual pledges were given and received. Alexander asked the Celtic envoys what they were most afraid of in this world, hoping that the power of his own name had got as far as their country, or even further, and that they would answer, 'You, my lord.' However, he was disappointed; for the Celts, who lived a long way off in country not easy to penetrate, and could see that Alexander's expedition was directed elsewhere, replied that their worst fear was that the sky might fall on their heads. None the less, he concluded an alliance of friendship with them and sent them home, merely remarking under his breath that the Celts thought too much of themselves.”

— Xenophon

“Don't underestimate the power of friendship. Those bonds are tight stitches that close up the holes you might otherwise fall through.”

— Richelle E. Goodrich

“The staying awake was a great self-sacrificaing gesture of friendship, and wonderfully in keeping with our current mood of intense friendship and religious fervour. We were all in a state of shock. We engaged in a long Dostojevskyan conversations and drank one black coffee after another. It was sort of night typical of youth, the sort you only can look back on with shame and embarassment once you've grown up. But God knows, I must have grown up already by then, because I don't feel the slightest embarassment when I think back to it, just a terrible nostalgia.”

— Antal Szerb

“There are no friends; only moments of friendship.”

— Jules Renard

“Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.”

— Charles Lamb

“Absence is the enemy of love and the friend of friendship.”

— C.J. Langenhoven

“Chingachgook grasped the hand that, in the warmth of feeling, the scout had stretched across the fresh earth, and in that attitude of friendship these intrepid woodsmen bowed their heads together, while scalding tears fell to their feet, watering the grave of Uncas like drops of falling rain.”

— James Fenimore Cooper

“A single person is a manageable entity, whom you can either make friends with or leave alone. But half of a married couple is not exactly a whole human being: if the marriage is successful it is something a little more than that; if unsuccessful, a little less. In either case, a fresh complication is added to the already intricate business of friendship: as Clem had once remarked, you might as well try to dance a tarantella with a Siamese twin.”

— Jan Struther

“The myth of what we might term, simply, freedom-the myth that the less encumbered and entangled I am, or the less accountable and anchored I am to a particular relationship, the better able I am to find my truest self and secure real happiness. This myth is so ingrained in our imaginations, I suspect, that it may undergird and nurture all the other myths Myers mentions. And it's not hard to see how it strikes at the root of friendship. If your deepest fulfillment is found in personal autonomy, then friendship-or at least the close kind I want to recommend in these pages-is more of a liability than an asset.”

— Wesley Hill

“BRADBURY: Well, if you love people you criticize them, and if you don't love them you don't criticize them, you let them go to hell, don't you? To help any kind of friendship, your marriage, your children, you criticize because you love. And this works the same way. With your friends
let's say in writing
if you don't offer criticism to them and scare them on occasion ... In other words you say to a new writer, for gods sake write, because if you don't you will disappear. The world doesn't give a damn about you unless you do something. Those are the rules; I didn't make them. If you are lazy, if you don't get the work that you love done, the world won't care if you die tomorrow and go into the grave and are gone and forgotten forever.”

— Ray Bradbury

“There isno feeling sadder or more hopeless than the coolingof a friendship between two men. Between a man anda woman a delicate web of terms and conditions is always negotiated. Between men, on the other hand, the deep sense of friendship rests on its selflessness: we expect no sacrifices, no tenderness from each other, all we want is to preserve a pact wordlessly made between us. Perhaps I was really the guilty one, because I did not know you well”

— Sandor Marai

“What you could learn from me, you child, you have learned." "Oh no," cried Goldmund, "we didn't become friends to end it now! What sort of friendship would that be, that reached its goal after a short distance and then simply stopped? Are you tired of me? Have you no more affection for me?”

— Hermann Hesse

“It's so easy and convenient to buy our children gifts, but I encourage and challenge you to give them gifts that TRULY matter! The gift of unconditional love. The gift of encouragement. The gift of support. The gift of friendship. The gift of communication, understanding, and patience. The gift of guidance and support. The gift of quality time. And the gift of loving them for who THEY are. Material things are nice, but NOTHING compares to genuine love! Parenting should be taking seriously.”

— Stephanie Lahart

“A lot of the powerful religious leaders, from Jesus to Buddha to Tibetan monks, they're really talking about the same things: love and acceptable, and the value of friendship, and respecting yourself so you can respect others.”

— Jena Malone

“Friendship is more than talent. It is more than government. It is almost the equal of family. Never forget that. If you had built up a wall of friendship you wouldn't have to ask me to help. - Don Corleone”

— Mario Puzo

“The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.”

— William Shenstone

“The hard fact of friendship is that you need to make time for new friends by first stripping out the people who are using your energy in an unsatisfying way. You have to take that risk of being friendless to make room in your life for others who will be your new best friends”

— Maggie Stiefvater

“We felt tired to our bones but anointed by life in a durable, companionable way, for at least the present moment. We the living take every step in tandem with death, naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven, whether we can see that or not. We bear it by the grace of friendship, good mels, and if we need them, talking turkey heads.”

— Barbara Kingsolver

“That kind of friendship doesn't just materialize at the end of the rainbow one morning in a soft-focus Hollywood haze. For it to last this long, and at such close quarters, some serious work had gone into it. Ask any ice-skater or ballet dancer or show jumper, anyone who lives by beautiful moving things: nothing takes as much work as effortlessness.”

— Tana French

“The plan is, by a combination of fighting, bargaining and well-timed strokes of treachery, to acquire a ring of bases completely encircling one or other of the rival states, and then to sign a pact of friendship with that rival and remain on peaceful terms for so many years as to lull suspicion to sleep. During this time rockets loaded with atomic bombs can be assembled at all the strategic spots;”

— George Orwell

“To hell with women, anyway. To hell with you, Brett Ashley. Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on. I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays.”

— Ernest Hemingway

“Jesus once trusted Judas, appointing him treasurer of the disciples, and openly called him friend. But as so often happens when money is involved, years of friendship can quickly evaporate.”

— Bill O'Reilly

“If you love people you criticize them, and if you don't love them you don't criticize them, you let them go to hell, don't you? To help any kind of friendship, your marriage, your children, you criticize because you love.”

— Ray Bradbury

“A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' ...”

— Christopher Hitchens

“During times of disaster sorrow brings people together in a spirit of friendship, and influences man to recognize the blessings of becoming his brother's keeper.”

— Napoleon Hill

“You're supposed to trust friends. You have no reason to be his friend? That is part of the pleasure of friendship: trusting without absolute evidence and then being rewarded for that trust.”

— David Shore

“Love is the life of friendship.”

— James Howell

“Sometimes, with Cinnamon, it was like she fell into this "impress the guy" mode and forgot the primary rule of friendship, which was to make your bud look good in front of her boy. Not stupid.”

— Lauren Myracle

“A good scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science criticism is the height and measure of friendship.”

— Francis Crick

“Lovers and even some family members may come and go but the friendships that take root abide. Sometimes the best of what is true survives as if it had an independent will: The coals of friendship keep themselves alive until something happens to rekindle them.”

— Joan Frank

“Life, lift the full goblet
away with all sorrow
The circle of friendship what freedom would sever? To-day is our own, and a fig for to-morrow
Here's to the Fourth and our country forever.”

— Franklin P. Adams

“As widowers proverbially marry again, so a man with the habit of friendship always finds new friends.”

— George Santayana

“In all holiest and most unselfish love, friendship is the purest element of the affection. No love in any relation of life can be at its best if the element of friendship be lacking. And no love can transcend, in its possibilities of noble and ennobling exaltation, a love that is pure friendship.”

— Henry Clay Trumbull

“I'm 40 years old now and I have my friends from five years old up to 40, over 20 lifelong friends I have. And you can't keep that. You can't have that kind of friendship with people for 40 years from childhood friends if you're not an honorable person and if you're not a respectful person. And that's exactly what I am.”

— Tony Vlachos

“The culture of drink endures because it offers so many rewards: confidence for the shy, clarity for the uncertain, solace to the wounded and lonely, and above all, the elusive promises of friendship and love.”

— Pete Hamill

“Under the guidance of the Reich, Europe would speedily have become unified. Once the Jewish poison had been eradicated, unification would have been an easy matter. France and Italy, each defeated in turn at an interval of a few months by the two Germanic Powers, would have been well out of it. Both would have had to renounce their inappropriate aspirations to greatness. At the same time they would have had to renounce their pretensions in North Africa and the Near East; and that would have allowed Europe to pursue a bold policy of friendship towards Islam. (4th February 1945)”

— Adolf Hitler

“To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Friendship is definitely the most difficult detail on the globe to elucidate. It is really not something you understand at school. But if you have not realized the which means of friendship, you truly have not realized anything.”

— Muhammad Ali

“It is the first law of friendship that it has to be cultivated. The second is to be indulgent when the first law is neglected.”

— Voltaire

“I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Under the magnetism of friendship the modest man becomes bold; the shy, confident; the lazy, active; and the impetuous, prudent and peaceful.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

“To share poetry is one of the most intimate acts of friendship possible ...”

— Madeleine L'Engle

“What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not often transfigured and translated by love in each other's presence. I do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If we take matrimony at it's lowest, we regard it as a sort of friendship recognised by the police.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson