Friends Quotes

Friendship is a very simple word, very commonly used. The word friend is almost used on a daily basis. Yet, the depth and meaning of friendship certainly go beyond the simple and the common. Throughout history friendship has been a favorite theme for many writers. The following passages highlight what others have said about friendship in the past.

Dorothy Riera

It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.

Mignon McLaughlin

A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gal. So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey which catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the highroad to his reason.

Abraham Lincoln

I don't like that man. I'm going to have to get to know him better.

Abraham Lincoln

I desire to so 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.

Abraham Lincoln

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.

Colette, The Pure and the Impure

...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

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

Ethel Barrymore

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness.

Samuel Butler

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage -- but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

Samuel Butler

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

Samuel Butler

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

Albert Camus

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care to acquire.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

You can't eat your friends and have them too.

Budd Schulberg

Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.

Jesse Owens

Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.

John Selden

Friends show me what I can do, foes teach me what I should do.

Friedrich von Schiller

One who looks for a friend without faults will have none.

Anon.