quotations about friendship
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God, the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts?
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
The true beauty of friendship is that it is bottomless.
ROGER & SALLY HORCHOW
The Art of Friendship
For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
Friendship can only exist between persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the conventions of society are born with different interests and different points of view.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
The Son of a Servant
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Friendship", Essays
Be a friend, and thou shalt have friends.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Friendship's eye is often blind.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
The Friend does not count his Friends on his fingers; they are not numerable.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Friendship
We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Friendship extends about four city blocks.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Friendship is not an obsolete sentiment. It is as true now as in Aristotle's time that no one would care to live without friends, though he had all other good things. It is still necessary to our life in its largest sense.
HUGH B. BLACK
Friendship
We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
[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
Break not an ancient friendship; keep it hale;
Stir round its roots, that it be green of heart;
Let not the spirit of its growth depart:
It is a power to brave the strongest gale.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"Friendship"
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
Lonesome creates diseases that friendship cures.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Though most of the friendships of the world ill deserve the name of friendships; yet a man may make use of them on occasion, as of a traffic whose returns are uncertain, and in which 'tis usual to be cheated.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Whatever dissolves friendship should, at least, be equal in importance to that which formed it.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections