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Friendship

relationship between people who have mutual affection for each other
(Redirected from Friends)

Friendship is a term which is used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more people. It can be taken to mean a supportive relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection.

The wicked have only accomplices, the voluptuous have only companions in debauchery; self-seekers have only associates; politicians have only their factions; the generality of idle men has only connections; princes have only courtiers; virtuous men alone possess friends. ~ Voltaire
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years. ~ Richard Bach
"Friends" redirects here, for the television series, see Friends (TV series).

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What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. ~ Aristotle
The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake. ~ Aristotle
We are friends now, and we will be much closer friends in the future. ~ Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Friends are those who believe in us and who want to help us whatever it is that we are trying to achieve. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi
Love is only chatter,
Friends are all that matter. ~ Gelett Burgess
To desire the same things and to reject the same things, constitutes true friendship. ~ Catiline
Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it. ~ Cicero
We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us. ~ Cicero
A friend is, as it were, a second self. ~ Cicero
Friendship is a sheltering tree. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
When the daylight's gone, & you're on your own
And you need a friend, just to be around
I will comfort you, I will take your hand
And I'll pull you through, I will understand ~ The Corrs
Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~ Dinah Craik
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only way to have a friend is to be one. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The highest compact we can make with our fellow is, — Let there be truth between us two forevermore. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship. ~ Epicurus
Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow. ~ Elbert Hubbard
The finest friendships are between those who can do without each other. ~ Elbert Hubbard
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. ~ Jesus
Choose your friends, then treat them as friends; do not regard them like slaves or servants, but associate with them frankly and simply and generously; not saying one thing of them and thinking something else. ~ Julian
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage. ~ Samuel Johnson
The better part of one's life consists of his friendships. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Friendships that are won by awards, and not by greatness and nobility of soul, although deserved, yet are not real, and cannot be depended upon in time of adversity. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
A friendship that can be ended didn't ever start. ~ Mellin de Saint-Gelais
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. ~ Anaïs Nin
Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests... ~ Novalis
When it comes to friends, it's not how much time you spend with them, just how you spend it! ~ Eiichiro Oda
Remembrance and regrets, they too are a part of friendship. ~ Jean-Luc Picard
For all are friends in heaven, all faithful friends;
And many friendships in the days of time
Begun, are lasting here, and growing still. ~ Robert Pollok
It is something that grows over time... a true friendship. A feeling in the heart that becomes even stronger through time...The passion of friendship will soon blossom into a righteous power and through it, you'll know which way to go... ~ "Sheik", The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;
he who finds one finds a treasure.
A faithful friend is beyond price,
no sum can balance his worth. ~ Sirach
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence. ~ Sydney Smith
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends. ~ Aristotle
That my friend should be well is our wish, and that our enemies should be gone! May those friendly to you reach their goal as a ship does a friendly harbour! May your enemy, like the flood waters of a river, return to his city. ~ Sumerian proverb
Many a time,… from a bad beginning great friendships have sprung up. ~ Terence
All things are common to friends. ~ Terence
Friendship is not for merriment but for stern reproach when friends go astray. ~ Tiruvalluvar
True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. ~ George Washington
Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends. ~ William Butler Yeats
Death is mighty, and is no one's friend. ~ Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. ~ Ayn Rand, in Anthem
Keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key. ~ William Shakespeare

A

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  • Friends are born, not made.
    • Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Ch. VII.
  • One friend in a life time is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
    • Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Ch. XX.
  • The friendships of the world are oft
    Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure;
    Ours has severest virtue for its basis,
    And such a friendship ends not but with life.
  • Better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing.
    • Anacharsis, As quoted in The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, as translated by C. D. Yonge, (1853), "Anacharsis" sect. 5, p. 48
  • What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
    • Aristotle, from Braude's Second Encyclopedia of stories, quotations, and anecdotes.
  • Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
    • Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics Book VII, 1238.a20.
  • Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
    • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book I, 1096.a16.
  • Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
    • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book VIII, 1155.a5.
  • When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.
    • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book VIII, 1155.a26.
  • The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.
    • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book IX, 1168.b1
    • Variants: My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
      The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
  • You are the oldest democracy of the New World. We are the youngest democracy of the Old World. You, the great democracy of the New World, should take due note of your new sister democracy and should conceive its import. We are friends now, and we will be much closer friends in the future.
    • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Address to the American Ambassador to Turkey in 1927. As quoted in: Under Secretary Eugene V. Rostow (April 4, 1968): The United States and Turkey, Partners in World Security. Address made before the American-Turkish Society Inc., at New York, N.Y. on April 4, 1968. Source: United States Department of State (April 20, 1968): The Department of State Bulletin, Volume 58, page 559. Archived from the original on November 4, 2023. See also Google Books PDF-Page of aforementioned source, which was archived from the original on November 4, 2023.

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  • Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things, — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
  • No friend's a friend till [he shall] prove a friend.
  • For no one, in our long decline,
    So dusty, spiteful and divided,
    Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
    Or loved them half as much as I did.
    • Hilaire Belloc, "Dedicatory Ode," Sonnets and Verse (1923), p. 70, stanza 3.
  • From quiet homes and first beginning,
    Out to the undiscovered ends,
    There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
    But laughter and the love of friends.
    • Hilaire Belloc, "Dedicatory Ode," Sonnets and Verse (1923), p. 74, stanza 22.
  • You do retain the song we set,
    And how it rises, trips and scans?
    You keep the sacred memory yet,
    Republicans? Republicans?
    • Hilaire Belloc, "Dedicatory Ode," Sonnets and Verse (1923), p. 76, stanza 36. Republicans was the name of the friends' club.
  • That is almost the definition of any friendship that is worthwhile — that we don't care a damn how you behave yourself.
  • BEFRIEND, v.t. To make an ingrate.
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Word Book (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
  • Nicht aus dem schweren Boden der Erde,
sondern aus freiem Gefallen
und freiem Verlangen des Geistes,
der nicht des Eides und des Gesetzes bedarf,
wird der Freund dem Freunde geschenkt.
Not from the heavy soil of the earth,
but from the spirit's choice and free desire, needing no oath of legal bond,
is friend bestowed on friend.
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Der Freund, published in Widerstand und Ergebung, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft (1952), p. 269
  • We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
    • James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), "19 September 1777".
  • I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God.
  • Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate, but to engross his sorrows, that, by making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them; for in mine own reason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot entreat without myself, and within the circle of another.
  • Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.
  • There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.
  • Love is only chatter,
    Friends are all that matter.
    • Gelett Burgess, A Gage of Youth: Lyrics from The Lark and Other Poems (1901), "Willy and the Lady", p. 46.

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  • A young man needs friends to serve as guides and counselors, confidantes and role-models. The mature man is capable of meaningful undertakings only when his actions are undergirded by the support of others. And the elderly seek strength in their time of weakness and, ultimately, in their struggle for survival, in companionship and affection. Even if there is love at first sight, there is no friendship that does not demand time and space to reach its perfection. The ancient proverb states, and rightly so, that two friends cannot truly know each other without having first shared a bag of salt…Outside the family circle, friendship evolves into good will. In the workplace this allows us to manage without despotism, and to follow orders without resentment. In society we will learn to intervene without violence, but also without servility. And we will be able to look beyond the geographical borders of our own country, our customs, our race, our religious beliefs, and our political ideology to see that humanity is an attribute of all mankind.
    • Rosario Castellanos "In Praise of Friendship" (1964) In Another Way to Be: Selected Works of Rosario Castellanos translated from Spanish by Myralyn Allgood
  • Non nobis solum nati sumus ortusque nostri partem patria vindicat, partem amici.
    • We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us.
    • Cicero, De Officiis Book I, section 22.
  • Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.
    • Cicero, De Amicitia - On Friendship (44 B.C.).
  • Amicus est tamquam alter idem.
    • A friend is, as it were, a second self.
    • Cicero, De Amicitia, XXI. 80. (Adapted).
  • True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
  • When the daylight's gone, & you're on your own
    And you need a friend, just to be around
    I will comfort you, I will take your hand
    And I'll pull you through, I will understand
    And you know that

    I'll be at your side
    There's no need to worry
    Together, we'll survive
    Through the haste & hurry
    I'll be at your side, if you feel like you're alone
    And you've nowhere to turn
    I'll be at your side

    If life's standing still, and your soul's confused
    And you cannot find what road to choose
    [...]
    I will turn around
    And you know that
    I 'll be at your side

  • I would not enter on my list of friends
    (Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense,
    Yet wanting sensibility) the man
    Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
  • She that asks
    Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all,
    And hates their coming.
  • The blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
    • Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life (1859); since the 1930s this has also been published in many paraphrased forms, often uncredited to Craik, including:
      A friend is one
      To whom one may pour out all
      The contents of one's heart
      Chaff and grain, together,
      Knowing that the gentlest of hands
      Will take and sift it,
      Keep what's worth keeping
      And blow the rest away.

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  • I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts.
  • Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.
  • Le sort fait les parents, le choix fait les amis.
    • Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends.
    • Jacques Delille, Malheur at Pitié (1803), Canto I
  • We ought to esteem him alone an agreeable and good-natured man, who, in his daily intercourse with others, behaves in such a manner as friends usually behave to each other. For as a person of that rustic character appears, wherever he comes, like a mere stranger: so, on the contrary, a polite man, wherever he goes, seems as easy as if he were amongst his intimate friends and acquaintances.

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  • Es gibt wenig aufrichtige Freunde. Die Nachfrage ist auch gering.
    • There are very few honest friends—the demand is not particularly great.
    • Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, D. Scrase and W. Mieder, trans. (Riverside, California: 1994), p. 71
  • Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."
  • But a companion and a friend shall be turned to an enemy.
  • Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!
  • Friend more divine than all divinities.
  • A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
  • Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.
  • The only way to have a good friend is to be one.
  • The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
  • The wise man … needs no bribe or feast or palace to draw friends to him. He is supremely fair. He angles with himself and with no other bait.
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal entry December 26, 1839, Journals (1911), Volume 5, p. 360-361, also in “Politics,” The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard: 1972), p. 243

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  • 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.
  • I love everything that's old, — old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
    • Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (1771), Act I, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th edition (1919).
  • He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack;
    For he knew, when he pleas'd, he could whistle them back.
  • Hazer de los amigos maestros, penetrando el útil del aprender con el gusto del conversar.
    • Make your friends your teachers and blend the usefulness of learning with the pleasure of conversation.
    • Baltasar Gracián, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, § 11 (Christopher Maurer trans.)
  • If displeased with any man, do all you can to prevent his seeing it, for otherwise he will become estranged. And occasions often arise when he might and would have served you had you not lost him by showing your dislike. Of this I have had experience to my own profit. For once and again I have felt ill-disposed towards some one who not being aware of my hostility has afterwards helped me when I needed help and proved my good friend.
  • Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.

H

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  • A friend who offers help without asking for explanations is a treasure beyond price.
  • Friendship is often outgrown; and his former child's clothes will no more fit a man than some of his former friendships.
    • Sir Arthur Helps, in 'Unreasonable Claims in Social Affections and Relations', Chapter IX, Friends in Council (First Series) (1847).
  • Friends . . old friends. . .
One sees how it ends.
A woman looks
Or a man tells lies,
And the pleasant brooks
And the quiet skies,
Ruined with brawling
And caterwauling,
Enchant no more
As they did before;
And so it ends
with friends.
William Ernest Henley, part XLI, from Life and Death (Echoes) (1888)
  • The difficulty is not so much to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.
  • The finest friendships are between those who can do without each other.
  • Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.
  • Your friend is that man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
  • 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, in Katherine Frances Jelf, George Edward Jelf: A Memoir (London: Skeffington & Son, 1909), p. 10.
  • One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and more symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
  • I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.

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  • Chi si trova senz’ amici, e come un corpo senz’ anima.
    • A man without friends is like a body without a soul.
    • Italian Proverb, in Cassell's Book of Quotations, p. 884

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  • It is nothing against the validity of a friendship that the parties to it have not a mutual resemblance. There must be a basis of agreement, but the structure reared upon it may contain a thousand disparities.
  • I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.
    • William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1911).
  • Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
  • Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.
  • Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success — yours or his.
    • Franklin P. Jones, in Saturday Evening Post (29 November 1953).
  • Got a lot of haters and a lot of homies; some friends and some phony.
    • Michael Jones, "Still Tippin'" (2005), Who Is Mike Jones? (2005).
  • Choose your friends, then treat them as friends; do not regard them like slaves or servants, but associate with them frankly and simply and generously; not saying one thing of them and thinking something else.

K

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  • Friends need to tell each other the hard truth and friendships require mutual respect.
    • John Kerry, Kerry Blasts Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu — (December 2016)
  • The absolute condition for friendship is unity in a life-view. If a person has that, he will not be tempted to base his friendship on obscure feelings or on indefinable sympathies. As a consequence, he will not experience these ridiculous shifts, so that one day he has a friend and the next day he does not. He will not fail to appreciate the significance of the indefinable sympathies, because, strictly speaking, a person is certainly not a friend of everyone with whom he shares a life-view but neither does he stop with only the mysteriousness of the sympathies. A true friendship always requires consciousness and is therefore freed from being infatuation. The life-view in which one is united must be a positive view.
  • There is nothing in the world more trustworthy than a friend one is sure will betray everything confided to him, nothing more trustworthy if only one is careful about what is confided to him. it is unsafe to ask a friend to tell this or that, but if one confides to him under the pledge of secrecy something one wishes to come out, then one can be absolutely sure, for then it must come out. Furthermore, it is a rare good fortune if in turn such a friend has a friend, and in turn this friend has a girlfriend-then it travels with the speed of lightning.

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  • Friendship ... flourishes not so much by kindnesses as by sincerity.
  • Friendship ... receives its real sustenance from an equality that, to proceed without a limp, must have its two limbs equal.
  • Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, although frequently neither acknowledges the fact to himself.
  • Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
  • A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back — it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it.
    The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined. One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes. Perfect poise on the beat is what gives good dancing its sense of ease, of timelessness, of the eternal.
  • Come back! ye friendships long departed!
    That like o'erflowing streamlets started,
    And now are dwindled, one by one,
    To stony channels in the sun!
    Come back! ye friends, whose lives are ended,
    Come back, with all that light attended,
    Which seemed to darken and decay
    When ye arose and went away!
  • O friend! O best of friends! Thy absence more
    Than the impending night darkens the landscape o'er!
    • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christus (1872), Part II, The Golden Legend, I.
  • You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the friendship between us,
    Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily broken!
  • Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship
    Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!
  • Friendship was salvation, in this fragile world the only thing left that was not fragile. I promise you one can be drunk on friendship as well as on love.
    • Jacques Lusseyran, And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II (1998), p. 216.

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  • I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness. … A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from whence spring murders and rapine; for these as a rule injure the whole community, while the executions carried out by the prince injure only one individual. And of all princes, it is impossible for a new prince to escape the name of cruel, new states being always full of dangers. … Nevertheless, he must be cautious in believing and acting, and must not inspire fear of his own accord, and must proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence does not render him incautious, and too much diffidence does not render him intolerant. From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain ; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours; they offer you their blood, their goods, their life, and their children, as I have before said, when the necessity is remote; but when it approaches, they revolt. And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined, for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is merited but is not secured, and at times is not to be had. And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligation which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.
    • Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513), Ch. 17, as translated by Luigi Ricci (1903)
    • Variant translations of portions of this passage:
    • From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
    • He ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable.
    • The prince who relies upon their words, without having otherwise provided for his security, is ruined; for friendships that are won by awards, and not by greatness and nobility of soul, although deserved, yet are not real, and cannot be depended upon in time of adversity.
  • Used to have friends, now I've got enemies. Used to keep them close, now they're dead to me.
  • What find you better or more honourable than age? Take the preheminence of it in everything, — in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree.
    • Shackerley Marmionin The Antiquary, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th edition (1919).
  • Multiplex workplace friendships—those in which a personal, affective relationship coincides with a business relationship, namely, with coworkers within one’s organization—are a widespread organizational phenomenon (Ingram & Zou, 2008). Indeed, a recent Gallup study determined that 30% of employees report having a best friend at work (Rath, 2006), and studies show that a sizeable number of employees describe their coworkers as both colleagues and friends (e.g., Gersick, Bartunek, & Dutton, 2000; Lonkila, 1998). Importantly, multiplex workplace friendships have implications for key employee and organizational outcomes through the provision of moral and material support, work and nonwork advice, and quality information exchanges (Kram & Isabella, 1985; Rawlins, 1992; Sias, 2005; Sias & Cahill, 1998; Winstead, Derlega, Montgomery, & Pilkington, 1995). For instance, employees who report having friends at work have higher levels of productivity, retention, and job satisfaction, and are seven times more likely to be engaged in their work than their “friendless” counterparts (Rath, 2006).
  • Multiplex workplace friendships are exhausting because they create feelings of responsibility and obligation, and because they require investments of attention and energy toward their maintenance. Thus, although there are positive effects of multiplex workplace friendships on job performance, they should be offset somewhat by the effect of exhaustion, which reflects reduced energy and attention that could otherwise be applied to core job performance‐related activities (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; LePine, Podsakoff, & LePine, 2005).
  • Further, we expect individuals with larger multiplex workplace friendship networks will perform effectively because emotional support provides a mechanism to minimize distress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Emotional support is a form of support that is not related to work tasks themselves; rather, it is a “backstage resource” that allows employees to indirectly manage their work demands (Lazega & Pattison, 1999). More specifically, rather than being a source of work‐related communication, emotional support comprises communication regarding good things at work, bad things at work, and nonwork topics (Beehr, Jex, Stacy, & Murray, 2000), and having access to an outlet that allows the discussion of non work‐related topics and concerns fulfills socio emotional needs (Cobb, 1976; Cohen & Wills, 1985). Thus, emotional distress can be effectively managed with emotional support, decreasing the saliency of emotional distractions and, ultimately, allowing employees the opportunity to address work tasks. Along these lines, both AbuAlRub (2004) and Beehr et al. (2000) found a positive association between emotional support and job performance. Taken together, we theorize that access to emotional support will decrease attention paid to emotional distractions and increase productive work time, which will positively impact job performance.
  • The ubiquity of multiplex workplace friendships warrants a deeper investigation of their effects on individuals’ performance at work. Indeed, McEvily and colleagues (2014) argue that “the more we attempt to disentangle formal [interaction] and informal [interaction] in an effort to understand their unique effects, the less we learn about how they actually operate” (p. 333) and call for investigations “where multiplexity of interactions is not just a possibility, but rather is an essential and defining feature” (p. 335) of theory and research. Here, we address this issue by exploring how and why multiplex workplace friendships uniquely influence performance.
  • Feelings are contagious. “Each happy friend a person has increases that person’s probability of being happy by 9 percent and each unhappy friend decreases it by 7 percent,” says Nicholas A. Christakis, a co-author of “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives.”
    Males with depressed roommates may end up feeling a bit blue themselves, according to Daniel Eisenberg, an assistant professor of public health at the University of Michigan who recently led a survey of 1,600 freshmen at two universities — a public one in the Midwest and a private one in the Northeast — on the issue. He found no such carryover for female students.
    This mood contagion seems to occur when the student keeps his feelings bottled up, Dr. Eisenberg says. And it’s only a mild case; roommates typically don’t develop their friends’ more serious conditions.
    “It’s not like you catch a mental-health cold,” he says. “People are resilient. They have a lot of coping strategies.”

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  • A real friendship should not fade as time passes, and should not weaken because of space separation.
    • John Newton, Ph.D., Complete Conduct Principles for the 21st Century (2000), p. 138. ISBN 0967370574.
  • A more appropriate adjective for measuring the degree of a friendship should be “good” – how good, rather than “close” – how close. A good friend is not necessarily close; a close friend is not necessarily good.
    • John Newton, Ph.D., Complete Conduct Principles for the 21st Century (2000), p. 45. ISBN 0967370574.
  • Mitfreude, nicht Mitleiden, macht den Freund.
    • Fellowship in joy, not sympathy in sorrow, is what makes friends.
  • 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.
  • When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. 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.

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  • But remember! when it comes to friends, it's not how much time you spend with them, just how you spend it!

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  • We were at the age when a friend's conversation seems like oneself talking, when one shares a life in common the way I still think, bachelor though I am, some married couples are able to live.
  • Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love.
  • Although many scholars and practitioners have assumed that workplace friendships lead to desirable organizational outcomes, a growing body of research suggests important complexities and downsides associated with workplace friendships. This suggests a need to better understand how and when workplace friendships may lead to harmful outcomes, especially in light of organizational and technological shifts that are changing the way employees connect. Drawing on theories of close relationships, social exchange, and boundary management, we present a theoretical framework that highlights how the four defining features of friendship (informality, voluntariness, communal norms, and socio-emotional goals) are in tension with four fundamental elements of organizational life (formal roles, involuntary constraints, exchange norms, and instrumental goals). We also highlight how mutual self-disclosure and perceived similarity develop and deepen friendships but also lead to downsides for individuals, groups, and organizations. We articulate how specific features of a focal friendship clique (e.g., closeness, maturity, and status of members) may amplify or buffer negative aspects and how social media affect friendship formation and tensions. Our theoretical framework should inform new theory and research on positive relationships at work, boundary management of professional and personal identities, and how changes to work and technology affect workplace relationships.
    • Pillemer, Julianna; Rothbard, Nancy (2018-02-15). "Friends Without Benefits: Understanding the Dark Sides of Workplace Friendship". Academy of Management Review: amr.2016.0309. doi:10.5465/amr.2016.0309. ISSN 0363-7425.
  • For all are friends in heaven, all faithful friends;
    And many friendships in the days of time
    Begun, are lasting here, and growing still.
  • Friends given by God in mercy and in love;
    My counsellors, my comforters, and guides;
    My joy in grief, my second bliss in joy;
    Companions of my young desires; in doubt
    My oracles; my wings in high pursuit.
    Oh! I remember, and will ne'er forget
    Our meeting spots, our chosen sacred hours;
    Our burning words, that utter'd all the soul,
    Our faces beaming with unearthly love;—
    Sorrow with sorrow sighing, hope with hope
    Exulting, heart embracing heart entire.
  • What ill-starr'd rage
    Divides a friendship long confirm'd by age?
  • Ah, friend! to dazzle let the vain design;
    To raise the thought and touch the heart be thine.

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  • Our triumphs seem hollow unless we have friends to share them, and our failures are made bearable by their understanding.
  • I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire.
  • Although organizational research on workplace friendships is well established, it has been criticized for its predominately postpositivistic outlook, which largely focuses on how workplace friendships can be linked to improving organizational outcomes such as efficiency and performance. As a consequence, other aspects of the lived experiences of work and friendship are obscured, in particular how these friendships are important in their own right and how they function as social and personal relationships.

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  • A friend in need is a friend indeed.
    • Scots proverb, as published in Beauties of Allan Ramsay: Being a Selection of the Most Admired Pieces of that Celebrated Author, viz. The Gentle Shepherd; Christ's Kirk on the Green; The Monk, and the Miller's Wife; with his valuable collection of Scots Proverbs (1815), "Scots Proverbs" Ch. 1; also quoted in Pure Morning, a song by Placebo
  • Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.
  • The ending inevitably matches the beginning: the person who starts being friends with you because it pays him will similarly cease to be friends with you because it pays him.
    • Seneca, Letters, 9 (Robin Campbell trans.)
  • We still have slept together,
    Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;
    And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
    Still we went coupled and inseparable.
  • Most friendship is feigning.
  • Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
    Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
    But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
    Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.
  • For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
    And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
    Directly seasons him his enemy.
  • Where you are liberal of your loves and counsels
    Be sure you be not loose; for those you make friends
    And give your hearts to, when they once perceive
    The least rub in your fortunes, fall away
    Like water from ye, never found again
    But where they mean to sink ye.
  • Friendship is constant in all other things,
    Save in the office and affairs of love:
    Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues;
    Let every eye negotiate for itself,
    And trust no agent.
  • Words are easy, like the wind;
    Faithful friends are hard to find.
    • Attributed to William Shakespeare, Passionate Pilgrim. In Notes and Queries, June, 1918, p. 174, it is suggested that the lines are by Barnfield, being a piracy from Jaggard's publication (1599), a volume containing little of Shakespeare, the majority being pieces by Marlowe, Raleigh, Barnfield, and others.
  • For by these
    Shall I try friends: you shall perceive how you
    Mistake my fortunes; I am wealthy in my friends.
  • Do I not most effectually destroy my enemies, in making them my friends?
  • A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;
    he who finds one finds a treasure.
    A faithful friend is beyond price,
    no sum can balance his worth.
  • He who betrays a secret is no longer trusted; he will no longer find reliable friends. Love your friend and be loyal; if you have revealed his secrets, go with him no longer. It is like having lost some of your relatives: his friendship to you has died. Like a bird, you have let your friend go, you will not get him back. When you open your hand, the bird flies off; do not pursue him: he is far away and has fled like a gazelle from the snare. For a wound can be bandaged and an insult forgiven, but if you betray a secret there is no hope.
    • Ben Sirach, Ecclesiasticus:Wisdom of Sirach 27:16-21
  • A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity.
  • A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
    • Proverbs 18:24 (New International Version).
  • Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.
  • Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.
  • What matter that the man stands for much I cannot love—the moment he touches the realms of truth he enters my world and is my friend.

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  • Many a time,… from a bad beginning great friendships have sprung up.
  • It is a maxim of old that among themselves all things are common to friends.
  • Friendship is not for merriment but for stern reproach when friends go astray.
 
It’s very easy to develop friends but it’s very hard to see whether or not they’re real friends ~ Donald Trump
  • Well, I think it’s easier to develop friendships but I’m not so sure when you get back down to the traditional sense, and that would be the friends that are here in good times and bad. I’m not so sure necessarily how many of those friends would be around if things did take a turn for the worst. I’ve oftentimes thought that I’d like to test some people and find out and just played a little game of doing the testing and which has been done on occasion. But it’s very easy to develop friends but it’s very hard to see whether or not they’re real friends.

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  • If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.
    • Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims, E. Lee, trans. (1903), p. 175
  • Les méchants n’ont que des complices; les voluptueux ont des compagnons de débauche; les intéressés ont des associés; les politiques assemblent des factieux; le commun des hommes oisifs a des liaisons; les princes ont des courtisans; les hommes vertueux ont seuls des amis.
    • The wicked have only accomplices, the voluptuous have only companions in debauchery; self-seekers have only associates; politicians have only their factions; the generality of idle men has only connections; princes have only courtiers; virtuous men alone possess friends.
    • Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, “Amitié”

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  • True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
  • Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature — it requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist — to sympathise with a friend's success.
  • I have lost friends, some by death [...] others through sheer inability to cross the street.

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  • Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.
  • You that would judge me, do not judge alone
    This book or that, come to this hallowed place
    Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon,
    Ireland's history in their lineaments trace,
    Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
    And say my glory was I had such friends.
  • And friend received with thumps upon the back.
  • A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night II, line 571.
  • A foe to God was ne'er true friend to man,
    Some sinister intent taints all he does.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 704.

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  • If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
    • Zig Ziglar as quoted in The Power of Respect : Benefit from the Most Forgotten Element of Success (2009) by Deborah Norville, p. 65

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)

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  • Give me one friend, just one, who meets
    The needs of all my varying moods.
    • Esther M. Clark, "A Plea," lines 1 and 2, Verses by a Commonplace Person (1906).
  • The happiest business in all the world is that of making friends,And no investment on the street pays larger dividends,For life is more than stocks and bonds, and love than rate percent,And he who gives in friendship's name shall reap what he has spent.
    • Anne S. Eaton, "The Business of Friendship," lines 1–4. Seth Parker, Fireside Poems, p. 34 (1933).
  • Never Explain—your Friends do not need it and your Enemies will not believe you anyway
    • Elbert Hubbard, The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard, opposite p. 176 (1927).
  • But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.
    • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Maria Cosway, October 12, 1786. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 10, p. 449–50 (1954).
  • Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends—those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work—who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even, hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter now?—now when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail—if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise councils may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.
    • Abraham Lincoln, speech delivered at the close of the Republican state convention, which named him the candidate for the United States Senate, Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 2, p. 468–69 (1953).
  • When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, "I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends."
    • Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
  • Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
    And say my glory was I had such friends.
    • William Butler Yeats, "The Municipal Gallery Revisited," lines 54–55, The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, ed. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, p. 604 (1957). Senator George McGovern quoted these words of Yeats's in his concession speech following the 1972 presidential election.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), "Friends", p. 296-300; "Friendship", p. 300-302.
 
Friendship, of itself a holy tie,
Is made more sacred by adversity. ~ John Dryden
 
I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. ~ William Cowper
  • Great souls by instinct to each other turn,
    Demand alliance, and in friendship burn.
  • The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break.
    • George Bancroft, History of the United States, William Penn's Treaty with the Indians.
  • It is better to avenge a friend than to mourn for him.
  • Friend, of my infinite dreams
    Little enough endures;
    Little howe'er it seems,
    It is yours, all yours.
  • Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul,
    Sweet'ner of life, and solder of society.
  • Let my hand,
    This hand, lie in your own—my own true friend;
    Aprile! Hand-in-hand with you, Aprile!
  • Hand
    Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship,
    And great hearts expand
    And grow one in the sense of this world's life.
  • We twa hae run about the braes,
    And pu'd the gowans fine.
  • Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
    And never brought to mind?
    Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
    And days o' lang syne?
    • Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne. Burns refers to these words as an old folk song. Early version in James Watson's Collection of Scottish Songs (1711).
  • Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
    Though they return with scars.
    • Allan Ramsay's Version. See his Tea-Table Miscellany (1724). Transferred after to Johnson's Musical Museum. See S. J. A. Fitzgerald's Stories of Famous Songs.
  • His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony,
    Tam lo'ed him like a vera brither—
    They had been fou for weeks thegither!
  • Ah! were I sever'd from thy side,
    Where were thy friend and who my guide?
    Years have not seen, Time shall not see
    The hour that tears my soul from thee.
    • Lord Byron, Bride of Abydos (1813), Canto I, Stanza 11.
  • Friendship is Love without his wings!
    • Lord Byron, L'Amitié est l'Amour sans Ailes, Stanza 1.
  • In friendship I early was taught to believe;
    * * * * * *
    I have found that a friend may profess, yet deceive.
    • Lord Byron, lines addressed to the Rev. J. T. Becher, Stanza 7.
  • 'Twas sung, how they were lovely in their lives,
    And in their deaths had not divided been.
  • Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe;
    Bold I can meet—perhaps may turn his blow;
    But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
    Save, save, oh! save me from the candid friend.
  • Oh, how you wrong our friendship, valiant youth.
    With friends there is not such a word as debt:
    Where amity is ty'd with band of truth,
    All benefits are there in common set.
  • Greatly his foes he dreads, but more his friends,
    He hurts me most who lavishly commends.
  • Friends I have made, whom Envy must commend,
    But not one foe whom I would wish a friend.
  • Amicus est tanquam alter idem.
    • A friend is, as it were, a second self.
    • Cicero, De Amicitia, XXI. 80. (Adapted).
  • You must therefore love me, myself, and not my circumstances, if we are to be real friends.
    • Cicero, De Finibus. Yonge's translation.
  • Secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia, et adversas partiens communicansque leviores.
    • Friendship makes prosperity brighter, while it lightens adversity by sharing its griefs and anxieties.
    • Cicero, De Amicitia, VI.
  • Vulgo dicitur multos modios salis simul edendos esse, ut amicitia munus expletum sit.
    • It is a common saying that many pecks of salt must be eaten before the duties of friendship can be discharged.
    • Cicero, De Amicitia, XIX.
  • Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.
  • Soyons amis, Cinna, c'est moi qui t'en convie.
    • Let us be friends, Cinna, it is I who invite you to be so.
    • Pierre Corneille, Cinna, V. 3.
  • The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
    And proves by thumps upon your back
    How he esteems your merit,
    Is such a friend, that one had need
    Be very much his friend indeed
    To pardon or to bear it.
  • As we sail through life towards death,
    Bound unto the same port—heaven,—
    Friend, what years could us divide?
  • Then come the wild weather, come sleet or come snow,
    We will stand by each other, however it blow.
    • Simon Dach, Annie of Tharaw. Longfellow's trans, line 7.
  • Le sort fait les parents, le choix fait les amis.
    • Chance makes our parents, but choice makes our friends.
    • Jacques Delille, Pitié
  • Les amis—ces parents que l'on se fait soi-même.
  • "Wal'r, my boy," replied the captain; "in the Proverbs of Solomon you will find the following words: 'May we never want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him!' When found, make a note of."
  • What is the odds so long as the fire of souls is kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the wing of friendship never moults a feather?
    • Charles Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop, Chapter II.
  • Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.
    • Charles Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop, Chapter VII.
  • For friendship, of itself a holy tie,
    Is made more sacred by adversity.
    • John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Part III, line 47.
  • Be kind to my remains; and O defend,
    Against your judgment, your departed friend.
  • Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable unto him. A new friend is as new wine: when it is old thou shalt drink it with pleasure.
    • Ecclesiasticus, IX. 10.
  • The fallying out of faithful frends is the reunyng of love.
  • Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
  • Friendships begin with liking or gratitude—roots that can be pulled up.
    • George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876), Book IV, Chapter XXXII.
  • So, if I live or die to serve my friend,
    'Tis for my love —' tis for my friend alone,
    And not for any rate that friendship bears
    In heaven or on earth.
  • To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life.
  • A day for toil, an hour for sport,
    But for a friend is life too short.
  • Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor, busy men can usually command.
  • The highest compact we can make with our fellow is, — Let there be truth between us two forevermore. * * * It is sublime to feel and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him; we need not reinforce ourselves or send tokens of remembrance; I rely on him as on myself; if he did thus or thus, I know it was right.
  • I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.
  • The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.
  • There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.
  • A sudden thought strikes me—Let us swear an eternal friendship.
  • Friendship, like love, is but a name,
    Unless to one you stint the flame.
  • To friendship every burden's light.
  • Who friendship with a knave hath made,
    Is judg'd a partner in the trade.
  • 'Tis thus that on the choice of friends
    Our good or evil name depends.
    • John Gay, Old Woman and Her Cats, Part I.
  • An open foe may prove a curse,
    But a pretended friend is worse.
    • John Gay, Shepherd's Dog and the Wolf, line 33.
  • Wer nicht die Welt in seinen Freunden sieht
    Verdient nicht, dass die Welt von ihm erfahre.
    • He who does not see the whole world in his friends, does not deserve that the world should hear of him.
    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso, I. 3. 68.
  • And what is friendship but a name,
    A charm that lulls to sleep;
    A shade that follows wealth or fame,
    And leaves the wretch to weep?
  • Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
    Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
    Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.
  • A favourite has no friend.
  • We never know the true value of friends. While they live, we are too sensitive of their faults; when we have lost them, we only see their virtues.
    • J. C. and A. W. Hare, Guesses at Truth.
  • Friendship closes its eye, rather than see the moon eclipst; while malice denies that it is ever at the full.
    • J. C. and A. W. Hare, Guesses at Truth.
  • Friendship is Love, without either flowers or veil.
    • J. C. and A. W. Hare, Guesses at Truth.
  • Devout, yet cheerful; pious, not austere;
    To others lenient, to himself sincere.
  • Before you make a friend eat a bushel of salt with him.
  • For my boyhood's friend hath fallen, the pillar of my trust,
    The true, the wise, the beautiful, is sleeping in the dust.
  • Fast as the rolling seasons bring
    The hour of fate to those we love,
    Each pearl that leaves the broken string
    Is set in Friendship's crown above.
    As narrower grows the earthly chain,
    The circle widens in the sky;
    These are our treasures that remain,
    But those are stars that beam on high.
  • A generous friendship no cold medium knows,
    Burns with one love, with one resentment glows;
    One should our interests and our passions be,
    My friend must hate the man that injures me.
    • Homer, The Iliad, Book IX, line 725. Pope's translation.
  • Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspir'd.
    • Homer, The Iliad, Book XVI, line 267. Pope's translation.
  • Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici;
    Expertus metuit.
    • To have a great man for an intimate friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.
    • Horace, Epistles, I. 18. 86.
  • True friends appear less mov'd than counterfeit.
    • Horace, Of the Art of Poetry, line 486. Wentworth Dillon's translation.
  • The new is older than the old;
    And newest friend is oldest friend in this:
    That, waiting him, we longest grieved to miss
    One thing we sought.
  • If a man does not make new acquaintances, as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.
  • Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven,
    The noble mind's delight and pride,
    To men and angels only given,
    To all the lower world denied.
  • The endearing elegance of female friendship.
  • To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.
  • True happiness
    Consists not in the multitude of friends,
    But in the worth and choice. Nor would I have
    Virtue a popular regard pursue:
    Let them be good that love me, though but few.
  • 'Tis sweet, as year by year we lose
    Friends out of sight, in faith to muse
    How grows in Paradise our store.
  • One faithful Friend is enough for a man's self, 'tis much to meet with such an one, yet we can't have too many for the sake of others.
  • In Friendship we only see those faults which may be prejudicial to our friends. In love we see no faults but those by which we suffer ourselves.
  • Love and friendship exclude each other.
  • Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can never taste.
  • Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
    Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
  • I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
  • Alas! to-day I would give everything
    To see a friend's face, or hear a voice
    That had the slightest tone of comfort in it.
  • My designs and labors
    And aspirations are my only friends.
  • Ah, how good it feels!
    The hand of an old friend.
  • Nulla fides regni sociis omnisque potestas
    Impatiens consortis erit.
    • There is no friendship between those associated in power; he who rules will always be impatient of an associate.
    • Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia. I. 92.
  • Let the falling out of friends be a renewing of affection.
  • Friends are like melons. Shall I tell you why?
    To find one good, you must a hundred try.
  • My fair one, let us swear an eternal friendship.
    • Molière, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Act IV, scene 1.
  • The wiser a man becomes the more numerous are the men whom he dislikes, only if he is really wise, he does not tell anyone of his dislikes, unless he finds it necessary to cement a friendship with a man (or a woman) by talking about a mutual enemy. There is no stronger bond of friendship than a common enemy.
  • Oh, call it by some better name,
    For Friendship sounds too cold.
  • Forsooth, brethren, fellowship is heaven and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them.
  • We have been friends together
    In sunshine and in shade.
    • Caroline E. S. Norton We Have Been Friends.
  • Vulgus amicitias utilitate probat.
    • The vulgar herd estimate friendship by its advantages.
    • Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto, II. 3. 8.
  • Scilicet ut fulvum spectatur in ignibus aurum
    Tempore in duro est inspicienda fides.
    • As the yellow gold is tried in fire, so the faith of friendship must be seen in adversity.
    • Ovid, Tristium, I. 5. 25.
  • Cætera fortunæ, non mea, turba fuit.
    • The rest of the crowd were friends of my fortune, not of me.
    • Ovid, Tristium, I. 5. 34.
  • Quod tuum'st meum'st; omne meum est autem tuum.
    • What is thine is mine, and all mine is thine.
    • Plautus, Trinummus, II. 2. 47.
  • There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.
    • Alexander Pope, reported in Johnson's Lives of the Poets; Life of Pope.
  • Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear,
    (A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear.)
    • Alexander Pope, Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford.
  • A man that hath friends must show himself friendly; and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
    • Proverbs, XVIII. 24.
  • Faithful are the wounds of a friend.
    • Proverbs, XXVII. 6.
  • Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.
    • Proverbs, XXVII. 17.
  • Mine own familiar friend.
    • Psalms. XLI. 9.
  • Our triumphs seem hollow unless we have friends to share them, and our failures are made bearable by their understanding.
  • There is no treasure the which may be compared unto a faithful friend;
    Gold soone decayeth, and worldly wealth consumeth, and wasteth in the winde;
    But love once planted in a perfect and pure minde indureth weale and woe;
    The frownes of fortune, come they never so unkinde, cannot the same overthrowe.
    • Roxburghe Ballads. The Bride's Good-Morrow. Ed. by John Payne Collier.
  • Idem velle et idem nolle ea demum firma amicitia est.
    • To desire the same things and to reject the same things, constitutes true friendship.
    • Sallust, Catilina, XX. From Catiline's Oration to his Associates.
  • Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.
    • 2 Samuel. 1:23.
  • Dear is my friend—yet from my foe, as from my friend, comes good:
    My friend shows what I can do, and my foe what I should.
  • Not for the body, but for the heart; companion and company are needed.
  • Perhaps it is the deprivation that keeps hearts connected. Once everything is fulfilled, wings sprout in everyone’s heart, and they fly off to different destinations. How can a relationship stay warm with just the body, when the heart is absent?"
  • Amicitia semper prodest, amor etiam aliquando nocet.
    • Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures.
    • Seneca the Younger, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, XXXV.
  • To hear him speak, and sweetly smile
    You were in Paradise the while.
    • Sir Philip Sidney, Friend's Passion for his Astrophel. Attributed also to Spenser and Roydon.
  • Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
    • Sydney Smith, in Lady Holland's Memoir (1855) , p. 257; "Let us swear an eternal friendship. Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. The Rovers".
  • Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.
    • Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir (1855), "Of Friendship".
  • For to cast away a virtuous friend, I call as bad as to cast away one's own life, which one loves best.
    • Sophocles, Œdipus Tyrannis. Oxford translation. Revised by Buckley.
  • For whoever knows how to return a kindness he has received must be a friend above all price.
    • Sophocles, Philoctetes. Oxford translation. Revised by Buckley.
  • 'Tis something to be willing to commend;
    But my best praise is, that I am your friend.
  • It's an owercome sooth fo' age an' youth,
    And it brooks wi' nae denial,
    That the dearest friends are the auldest friends,
    And the young are just on trial.
  • I thought you and he were hand-in-glove.
  • Amici vitium ni feras, prodis tuum.
    • Unless you bear with the faults of a friend you betray your own.
    • Syrus, Maxims.
  • Amicum lædere ne joco quidem licet.
    • A friend must not be injured, even in jest.
    • Syrus, Maxims.
  • Secrete amicos admone, lauda palam.
    • Reprove your friends in secret, praise them openly.
    • Syrus, Maxims.
  • A good man is the best friend, and therefore soonest to be chosen, longer to be retained; and indeed, never to be parted with, unless he cease to be that for which he was chosen.
    • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.
  • Choose for your friend him that is wise and good, and secret and just, ingenious and honest, and in those things which have a latitude, use your own liberty.
    • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.
  • When I choose my friend, I will not stay till I have received a kindness; but I will choose such a one that can do me many if I need them; but I mean such kindnesses which make me wiser, and which make me better.
    • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.
  • Friendship is like rivers, and the strand of seas, and the air, common to all the world; but tyrants, and evil customs, wars, and want of love, have made them proper and peculiar.
    • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.
  • Nature and religion are the bands of friendship, excellence and usefulness are its great endearments.
    • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.
  • Some friendships are made by nature, some by contract, some by interest, and some by souls.
    • Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Nature, Measures, and Offices of Friendship.
  • O friendship, equal-poised control,
    O heart, with kindliest motion warm,
    O sacred essence, other form,
    O solemn ghost, O crowned soul!
  • Then came your new friend: you began to change—
    I saw it and grieved.
    • Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), IV, line 279.
  • Ego meorum solus sum meus.
    • Of my friends I am the only one I have left.
    • Terence, Phormio, IV. 1. 21.
  • Fidus Achates.
    • Faithful Achates (companion of Æneas).
    • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), VI. 158.
  • True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation.
  • A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends; and that the most liberal professions of good-will are very far from being the surest marks of it.
  • I have friends in Spirit Land,—
    Not shadows in a shadowy band,
    Not others but themselves are they,
    And still I think of them the same
    As when the Master's summons came.
  • Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.
  • Friendship's the wine of life: but friendship new * * * is neither strong nor pure.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night II, line 582.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).
  • I consider beyond all wealth, honor, or even health, is the attachment due to noble souls; because to become one with the good, generous, and true, is to be, in a manner, good, generous, and true yourself.
  • The friendship of high and sanctified spirits loses nothing by death but its alloy; failings disappear, and the virtues of those whose faces we shall behold no more appear greater and more sacred when beheld through the shades of the sepulchre.
  • Character is so largely affected by associations that we cannot afford to be indifferent as to who and what our friends are. They write their names in our albums, but they do more, they help make us what we are. Be therefore careful in selecting them; and when wisely selected, never sacrifice them.
    • M. Hulburd, p. 255.
  • Friendship is a cadence of divine melody melting through the heart.
    • Charles Mildway, p. 255.
  • A good man is the best friend, and therefore soonest to be chosen, longest to be retained, and indeed never to be parted with, unless he cease to be that for which he was chosen.

See also

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