quotations about friendship
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Friendship", Essays
It is a strange thing to observe, how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship, whereof we speak: so great, as they purchase it, many times, at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favorites, or privadoes; as if it were matter of grace, or conversation. But the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum; for it is that which tieth the knot. And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants; whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed other likewise to call them in the same manner; using the word which is received between private men.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
Lonesome creates diseases that friendship cures.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather, not I, but the Deity in me and in them, both deride and cancel the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex and circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat, or violence, or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
The Book of Friendship
Some friendships are formed by a commonality of interests and ideas: you both love judo or camping or making your own sausage. Other friendships are forged in alliance against a common enemy.
DAVID SEDARIS
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Friendship ... is essential to intellectuals. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.
MARY McCARTHY
How I Grew
[It] is the juvenal period of life when friendships are formed, and habits established, that will stick by one.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Alexander Hamilton, Sep. 1, 1796
It is never easier to forget friends than when we imagine they have forgotten us--friendship, like love, requires reciprocal assurance of continuity.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
In a quarrel between two friends, if one of them, even the injured one, were in the retirement of his chamber, to consider himself as the hired advocate of the other at the court of wronged friendship; and were to omit all the facts which told in his own favour, to exaggerate all that could possibly be said against himself, and to conjure up from his imagination a few circumstances of the same tendency; he might with little effort make a good case for his former friend. Let him be assured, that whatever the most skilful advocate could say, his poor friend really believes and feels; and then, instead of wondering at the insolence of such a traitor walking about in open day, he will pity his friend's delusion, have some gentle misgivings as to the exact propriety of his own conduct, and perhaps sue for an immediate reconciliation.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Letters of friendship require no study.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Major-General Knox, Jan. 5, 1785
Friendship should be more than biting Time can sever.
T. S. ELIOT
Murder in the Cathedral
Friendship has been called the sweetener of life. It is a compound made up of truth and kindness, prudence and piety.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Whatever dissolves friendship should, at least, be equal in importance to that which formed it.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Choose a friend as thou dost a wife, 'till Death separate you.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Close friendships are one of life's miracles--that a few people get to know you deeply, all your messy or shadowy stuff along with the beauty and sweetness, and they still love you. Not only still love you, but love you more and more deeply. I would do anything for my closest friends, and they would do almost anything for me, and that is about as spiritual a truth as you can get.
ANNE LAMOTT
interview, Friends Journal, Jan. 30, 2013
Of what use the friendliest disposition even, if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant duties and relations? Friendship first, Friendship last.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Friendship
We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience. It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays