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Welcome to our collection of the very best friendship quotes we could find. We hope you enjoy pondering them. If you do, please share! Wishing you all the most special of friendships in your lives!

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

--Cicero

Friends are the family you choose.

--Unknown Author

Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

--J. Donald Walters

Keeping score is for games, not friendships.

--John C. Maxwell

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

--Harriet Beecher Stowe

If you have a friend whose friendship you wouldn’t recommend to your sister, or your father, or your son, why would you have such a friend for yourself?

--Jordan Peterson

Longer Version:

Here’s something to consider: If you have a friend whose friendship you wouldn’t recommend to your sister, or your father, or your son, why would you have such a friend for yourself? You might say: out of loyalty. Well, loyalty is not identical to stupidity. Loyalty must be negotiated, fairly and honestly. Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement. You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place. Quite the opposite. You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse. It’s a good thing, not a selfish thing, to choose people who are good for you. It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.


We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

--Robert Louis Stevenson

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

--Kahlil Gibran

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.

--Euripides

The best time to make friends is before you need them.

--Ethel Barrymore

Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.

--Baltasar Gracian

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

--Anna Deavere Smith

There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.

--Linda Grayson

Friends are the sailors who guide your rickety boat safely across the dangerous waters of life.

--Sare and Cate

The great thing about new friends is that they bring new energy to your soul.

--Shanna Rodriguez

A good friend will help you move, but a true friend will help you move a body.

--Steven J. Daniels

Good friends are hard to find, harder to leave and impossible to forget.

--G. Randolf

Do not save your loving speeches
For your friends till they are dead;
Do not write them on their tombstones,
Speak them rather now instead.

--Anna Mickelson

Best friends listen to what you don't say.

--Samantha Norman

There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound.

--Diana Cortes

Good friends are like angels. You don't have to see them to know they are there for you.

--Moywaywa

A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.

--Donna Roberts

Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another.

--Eustace Budgell

How rare and wonderful is that flash of a moment when we realize we have discovered a friend.

--William Rotsler

It costs nothing to ask wise advice from a good friend.

--George Clason

Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives and remembering what one receives.

--Alexander Dumas

What men call friendship is only social intercourse, an exchange of favours and good offices; it comes down to a commercial dealing in which self-esteem always expects to profit.

--Andre Maurois

A road to a friend's house is never long.

--Ann Richards

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.

--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.

--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Friendship isn't a big thing, it's a million little things.

--Anonymous

Friendship is the candle that lights up your heart whenever it is dark outside.

--Anonymous

True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils. Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island... to find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing.

--Baltasar Gracian

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.

--Bernard Meltzer



Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.

--Charles Caleb Colton

The beginning of a friendship, the fact that two people out of the thousands around them can meet and connect and become friends, seems like a kind of magic to me. But maintaining a friendship requires work. I don't mean that as a bad thing. Good art requires work as well.

--Charles de Lint

Love without humility results in the inclination to act as everyone's parent, humility without love results in the need to be everyone's child, and love with humility results in the desire to be a friend.

--Criss Jami

Ten minutes with a genuine friend is better than years spent with anyone less.

--Crystal Woods

If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not in fact his friends.

--Dean Koontz

Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life -- and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.

--Dean Koontz

As soon as you try to describe a close friendship, it loses something.

--Dean Smith

A true bond of friendship is usually only possible between people of roughly equal status. This equality is demonstrated in many indirect ways, but it is reinforced in face-to-face encounters by a matching of the posture of relaxation or alertness.

--Desmond Morris

An honest answer is the sign of true friendship.

--E.W. Howe

I hate it when people say they're trying to be your friend. You shouldn't have to try to be somebody's friend. Either you like someone or you don't. Either you want them as a friend or not. Making friends isn't like trying for the lead in the school play.

--Emily Wing Smith

I learned that a real friendship is not about what you can get, but what you can give.  Real friendship is about making sacrifices and investing in people to help them improve their lives.

--Eric Thomas

Friendship is something whose depth fits human aspirations and fulfills human possibilities. It has heft to it, as a gold-piece does and a gambling chip does not.

--Eugene Kennedy

The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?

--Eugene Kennedy

Friendship doubles your joys, and divides your sorrows.

--Euripides

Life has no blessing like a prudent friend.

--Euripides

What men term friendship is merely a partnership with a collection of reciprocal interests, and an exchange of favours -- in fact it is but a trade in which self love always expects to gain something.

--François de La Rochefoucauld

It's not that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but it's your best friends who are your diamonds.

--Gina Barreca

Longer Version:

It's not that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but it's your best friends who are your diamonds. It's your best friends who are supremely resilient, made under pressure and of astonishing value. They're everlasting; they can cut glass if they need to.


A friend in power is a friend lost.

--Henry Brooks Adams

A friend is what the heart needs all the time.

--Henry Van Dyke

The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.

--Hubert Humphrey

A best friend is like a fourleaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have.

--Irish Proverb

Chance makes our parents, but choice makes our friends.

--Jacques Delille

Choose thy friends like thy books, few but choice.

--James Howell

Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.

--Jean de la Bruyere

Where would you be without friends? The people to pick you up when you need lifting? We come from homes far from perfect, so you end up almost parent and sibling to your friends -- your own chosen family. There's nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing.

--Jennifer Aniston

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

--John Leonard

Most people are enduring a marginalized isolation. One of the great obstacles to modern friendships is the 'religion of rush.' People are rushing all the time through time. Friendship takes time.

--John O'Donohue

The truth is friendship is every bit as sacred and eternal as marriage.

--Katherine Mansfield


Only friendship which can stand occasional plain speaking is worth having.

--Lin Yutang

A friend is a beloved mystery; dearest always because he is not ourself, and has something in him which it is impossible for us to fathom. If it were not so, friendship would lose its chief zest.

--Lucy Larcom

You don't lose friends because real friends can never be lost. You lose people masquerading as friends and you're better for it.

--Mandy Hale

Every friendship goes through ups and downs. Dysfunctional patterns set in; external situations cause internal friction; you grow apart and then bounce back together.

--Mariella Frostrup

Sustaining true friendship is a lot more challenging than we give it credit for.

--Mariella Frostrup

Friendship and money: oil and water.

--Mario Puzo

I think in friendship, you want to be there for your friend, and sometimes you just don't know what to do or the relationship you have with them is not clear enough for you to know what to do.

--Marion Cotillard

It's not so much that the old friend is a better friend. It's just that you know the person better, and you know they don't really care if you're acting like a poor, grovelling idiot. They know you would do the same for them.

--Markus Zusak

Friendship is love minus sex and plus reason. Love is friendship plus sex and minus reason.

--Mason Cooley

Complete your world with those who wish to be in it.

--Mitta Xinindlu

A genuine enemy is more useful than a fake friend.

--Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

--Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.

--Octavia E. Butler

Happy is the soul that has a friend. Happier is the soul that trusts in the truth of the heart of a friend. Happiest is the soul that knows the solemnity of friendship and honours its laws.

--Ogwo David Emenike

I have no trouble with my enemies. But my goddam friends… they are the ones that keep me walking the floor nights.

--Oscar Levant

Friendship is the purest love.

--Osho

Longer Version:

Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of Love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving.



Odd how much it hurts when a friend moves away -- and leaves behind only silence.

--Pam Brown

A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often -- just to save it from drying out completely.

--Pam Brown

The best mirror is an old friend.

--Peter Nivio Zarlenga

Have friends, not for the sake of receiving, but of giving.

--Philibert Joseph Roux

Where there are friends there is wealth.

--Plautus

Friendship is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

--Plautus

Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.

--Plautus

To lose a friend is the greatest of all losses.

--Publilius Syrus

Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.

--Publilius Syrus

Friendship true is a vow of care.
A warm embrace when in despair.
A loving presence waiting there
to lift a heart, its burdens bear.

Friendship true is an earnest prayer.
A tongue of praise for one's welfare.
A smile 'mid laughs as light as air,
and thoughtfulness most kind and rare.

--Richelle E. Goodrich

I get by with a little help from my friends.

--Ringo Starr

As a friend, you first give your understanding, then you try to understand.

--Robert Breault
four person hands wrap around shoulders while looking at sunset

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