FRIENDSHIPFriendship is one of the sweetest joys of life. Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of their trial had they not found a friend.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892)
Anyone with a heart full of friendship has a hard time finding enemies.
Be a friend. You don’t need glory.
Friendship is a simple story.
Pass by trifling errors blindly,
Gaze on honest effort kindly,
Cheer the youth who’s bravely trying,
Pity him who’s sadly sighing;
Just a little labor spend
On the duties of a friend.
Edgar Albert Guest (1881–1959)
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity.
George Washington (1732–1799)
Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.
Sir Thomas Fuller (1608–1661)
Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God’s best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one’s self and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.
Thomas Hughes (1822–1896)
Cheerful company shortens the miles.
German Proverb
Convey thy love to thy friends, as an arrow to the mark, to stick there; not as a ball against the wall to rebound back to thee. That friendship will not continue to the end that is begun for an end.
Francis Quarles (1592–1644)
Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them and while their hearts can be thrilled by them.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887)
Don’t lead me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend.
Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887)
Fly with the eagles! Don’t run around with the Henny Pennys who are looking up chanting, “The sky is falling!” Your best friends should be individuals who are the “No problem, it’s just a little, temporary inconvenience” type.
Denis Waitley
Four things are the property of friendship: love and affection, security and joy. And four things must be tried in friendship: faith, intention, discretion, and patience. Indeed, as the sage says, all men would lead a happy life if only two tiny words were taken from them, mine and thine.
Saint Ailred of Rievaulx (1109–1167)
Friendship adds a brighter radiance to prosperity and lightens the burden of adversity by dividing and sharing it.
Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief.
Friendship flourishes at the fountain of forgiveness.
William Arthur Ward (1812–1882)
Friendship is a plant which must often be watered.
German Proverb
Friendship is a sheltering tree.
Friendship is a spiritual thing. It is independent of matter or space or time. That which I love in my friend is not that which I see. What influences me in my friend is not his body, but his spirit.
John Drummond (1851–1897)
Friendship is in loving rather than in being loved.
Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930)
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler (1612–1680)
Friendship is usually treated as a tough and everlasting thing which will survive all manner of bad treatment. But it may die in an hour of a single unwise word; its conditions of existence are that it should be dealt with delicately and tenderly. It is a plant and not a roadside thistle. We must not expect our friend to be above humanity.
Ouida (1839–1908)
Friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.
Saint Jerome (c. 374–c. 420)
Friendship without self-interest is rare and beautiful.
James Francis Byrnes (1879–1972)
Friendship, of itself a holy tie,
Is made more sacred by adversity.
John Dryden (1631–1700)
Friendships form among people who strengthen one another.
Franklin Owen
Go slowly to the entertainment of thy friends, but quickly to their misfortunes.
God evidently does not intend us all to be rich, or powerful, or great, but he does intend us all to be friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
He who ceases to be your friend never was a good one.
He who looks for advantage out of friendship strips it of all its nobility.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 b.c.–a.d. 65)
He who seeks a faultless friend is friendless.
Turkish Proverb
I am simply not mature enough to enter into true friendship unless I realize that I cannot judge the intention or motivation of another. I must be humble and sane enough to bow before the complexity and mystery of a human being.
John Powell
I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be. I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals. I pray for your desires that they may be great, rather than for your satisfactions, which may be so hazardously little. You are going forward toward something great. I am on the way with you, and therefore I love you.
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man, sir, must keep his friendships in constant repair.
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
If the world is cold, make it your business to build fires.
Horace Traubel
If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sake rather than for our own.
Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855)
It is best to be with those in time we hope to be with in eternity.
Sir Thomas Fuller (1608–1661)
Jesus wasn’t afraid to associate with anyone!
Billy Graham (1918– )
Life is partly what we make it and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.
Chinese Proverb
Like cuttlefish we conceal ourselves, we darken the atmosphere in which we move; we are not transparent. I pine for one to whom I can speak my first thoughts; thoughts which represent me truly, which are no better and no worse than I; thoughts which have the bloom on them, which alone can be sacred or divine.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
No camel route is long, with good company.
Turkish Proverb
No man is useless while he has a friend.
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (1850–1894)
No one is rich enough to do without a neighbor.
Danish Proverb
Rare as is true love, true friendship is still rarer.
François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
Real friends don’t care if your socks don’t match.
Real friends have a great time doing absolutely nothing together.
Real friends know that you have a good reason for being three days late picking them up at the bus station.
Real friendship is shown in times of trouble; prosperity is full of friends.
Euripides (c. 484–406 b.c.)
