Friendship quotes
2.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside friendship — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil."
"Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer."
"It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity."
"A friend is, as it were, a second self."
"It is a common saying that many pecks of salt must be eaten before the duties of friendship can be discharged."
"Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?"
"The love of new acquaintance comes not so much from being weary of what we had before, or from any satisfaction there is in change, as from the distaste we feel in being too little admired by those that know us too well, and the hope of being more admired by those that know us less."
"Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking."
"Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love, or life."
"Hell, madame, is to love no longer."
"When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat."
"My only politics have been friendship."
"Sir, this is a unique dog. He does not live by tooth or fang. He respects the right of cats to be cats although he doesn't admire them. He turns his steps rather than disturb an earnest caterpillar. His greatest fear is that someone will point out a rabbit and suggest that he chase it. This is a dog of peace and tranquility."
"My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether."
"A decent boldness ever meets with friends."
"Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society."
"Forgiveness is the only way to heal"
"Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity."
"The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define."
"One doesn't know, till one is a bit at odds with the world, how much one's friends who believe in one rather generously, mean to one."
