Life flings miles and years between us,
      It is true,—
But brings never to me dearer
      Friends than you!
~Dorothy Scarborough, Humorous Ghost Stories, 1921


The very best gift of all is having a friend. ~Ethel Pochocki (1925–2010), The Mushroom Man, 1993


One true friend adds more to our happiness than a thousand enemies add to our unhappiness. ~Marie Dubsky, Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916), translated by Mrs Annis Lee Wister, 1882


A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be. ~Douglas Pagels


Most of us don't need a psychiatric therapist as much as a friend to be silly with. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Friendship is like a rainbow between two hearts. ~Author unknown


Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty. ~Sicilian proverb


Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you. ~Elbert Hubbard, c. 1908


A good friend is cheaper than therapy. ~Author unknown


If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do; think up something appropriate, and do it. ~E. W. Howe, Country Town Sayings, 1911


But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
~William Shakespeare


The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. ~Elisabeth Foley


It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. ~William Blake


A friend is the only person you will let into the house when you are Turning Out Drawers. ~Pam Brown


One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human. ~George Santayana


If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendships in constant repair. ~Samuel Johnson


Keep your friendships in repair, and then see if you do not find your horizon broadened, your life sweetened, and the weary weight of this sad old world lightened. ~Silas X. Floyd (1869–1923), "Keeping Friendship In Repair," Floyd's Flowers: or, Duty and Beauty for Colored Children, 1905


True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable. ~Dave Tyson Gentry


Real friends are those who, when you've made a fool of yourself, don't feel that you've done a permanent job. ~Erwin T. Randall, quoted in The Reader's Digest, 1955


I ask of life only that which makes it worth living: the love of friends. ~Justin Regier, January 2012 entry to The Quote Garden create your own quote contest on Twitter


Friends are those rare people who ask how you are and then wait for the answer. ~Author unknown


A London paper not long ago offered a prize for the best definition of "friend." The prize was awarded to the person who sent in this: "The first person who comes in when the whole world has gone out." It is a good definition. True friendship delights in deeds more than in words — coming unasked in times of adversity. A true friend never forsakes us, not even when we forsake ourselves. True friendship abides, in sunshine and in storm. When the whole world has gone out, this loving Friend will love you still. ~J. L. Harbour, "When the World Has Gone Out," in The Golden Rule, 1897 September 9th  [a little altered —tg]


Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival. ~C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 1960


The best kind of friend is the one you could sit on a porch with, never saying a word, and walk away feeling like that was the best conversation you've had. ~Author unknown


I like friends who, when you tell them you need a moment alone, know enough not to stray too far. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


The language of friendship is not words but meanings. ~Henry David Thoreau


It's important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to the friendship that we are not. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind. ~Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1987


Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Friends can be said to "fall in like" with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love. ~Letty Cottin Pogrebin


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


If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give. ~George MacDonald


Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts. ~Margaret Lee Runbeck


Love is like the wild rose-brier;
      Friendship is like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-brier blooms,
      But which will bloom most constantly?...
~Emily Brontë, "Love and Friendship"


Our most difficult task as a friend is to offer understanding when we don't understand. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


As a friend, you first give your understanding, then you try to understand. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


A true friend is forever a friend. ~George MacDonald


The function of a friend is not to have a function. ~Detlef Cordes


The friend within the man is that part of him which belongs to you and opens to you a door which never, perhaps, is opened to another. Such a friend is true, and all he says is true; and he loves you even if he hates you in other mansions of his heart. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


It takes a long time to grow an old friend. ~John Leonard


He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
~Ali ibn Abi Talib


Friends are divided into two great classes: Those you need, and those who need you. ~Washington Star, quoted in For the Gaiety of Nations: Fun and Philosophy from the American Newspaper Humorists compiled by Wallace Rice, 1909


Strangers are just friends waiting to happen. ~Rod McKuen


It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help. ~Epicurus


You always think you could have done more. That's why you need a friend — to tell you you did all you could. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need more. ~American proverb


The bird, a nest; the spider, a web; man, friendship. ~William Blake


All you would have your friend to you, that must you be to him—and more; for there can be no thought of balancing of favors given by friend to friend; the obligations reach beyond; nor is there any selfishness, save selfishness for him. Full friendship is the selfishness and the unselfishness, at once, of two, bound into twinship fair of soul and spirit. Seek you then for friend one whom you understand down to the depths, up to the heights, of being, whose soul meets yours with the same understanding. Only so can you, can he, attain that sympathy which, growing with your intercourse, at last reaches beyond mere understanding, gains the other's thought and feeling, though no word be spoken, knows from the eyes of truth, and stands to aid in every project nobly true as ready as to speak against the false: Then may you say, "I have, he has, a friend!" ~Wallace Rice, To My Friend, 1914


The tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


A healing friend is a kindred spirit who says "yeah, I know what you mean!" while pouring your cup of tea; sees your uniqueness; challenges you with love, humor, and honesty, to live your dreams; finds humor, song, dance, and magic hidden in your problems; delights in your surprises; accepts both ups & downs; helps you, then asks for help, too; encourages you to formulate your next steps, then goes the first step with you. ~Kristina Turner, The Self-Healing Cookbook, 2002, originally published 1987  [a little altered —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


We are each the star of our own situation comedy, and, with luck, the screwball friend in somebody else's. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning days,
No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise:
Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold;
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, "No Time Like the Old Time," 1865


Friendship is a sheltering tree... ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge


We are keenly aware of the faults of our friends, but if they like us enough it doesn't matter. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


A bosom friend — an intimate friend, you know — a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul. ~L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables


What do we ask of friendship except to be taken for what we pretend to be — and without having to pretend. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Friendship is Love, without his wings. ~Lord Byron


But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~Dinah Maria Craik, A Life for a Life, "Chapter XVI: Her Story," 1859


A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably. ~William Penn


But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs Cosway, 1786 October 26th, Paris


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


I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing. ~Katherine Mansfield


The strongest marriage is between two who seek the same God, the strongest friendship between two who flee the same devil. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


It's not how many friends you can count, it's how many of those you can count on. ~Anthony Liccione


Just what is a friend; do you ask of me?
      I think it is one who will ever be
      Loyal and loving, what e'er may betide;
      One who will always stand close by our side
With faith and trust and a fond, cheery smile
      Of understanding for us all the while;
      One who is ready to give us a hand
      As we struggle on through the shifting sands
Of time: an honest, sincere friend is one
      Who will share our sorrows, our joys, our fun;
      And we know in him we can ever trust
      Till the time our bodies return to dust!
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "A Friend," 1940s


Probably no man ever had a friend that he did not dislike a little. ~E. W. Howe


There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul. ~Edith Wharton


I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


'Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his. ~Benjamin Franklin


The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams. ~Henry David Thoreau


If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends — you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue. ~Alice Duer Miller


It is when there is nothing you can say or do to help that a friend needs you the most. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Friends are relatives you make for yourself. ~Eustache Deschamps


In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
~Khalil Gibran, The Prophet


Many a person has held close, throughout their entire lives, two friends that always remained strange to one another, because one of them attracted by virtue of similarity, the other by difference. ~Emil Ludwig


But it is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them... ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838


Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


      Ah, how good it feels!
The hand of an old friend.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christus: A Mystery, 1872


Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends. ~Samuel Pepys


A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Circles"


Hold a true friend with both your hands. ~Nigerian proverb


Yes 'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of... ~Sarah Orne Jewett, "A Strange Sail"


I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. ~Blaise Pascal


If I had to sum up Friendship in one word, it would be Comfort. ~Terri Guillemets


Friendship is Love with jewels on, but without either flowers or veil. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Say what you want about aging, it's still the only way to have old friends. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. ~Aristotle


I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world. ~Thomas Edison


How few friends would remain friends if each could see the sentiments of the other in their entirety. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799), translated by Norman Alliston, 1908


Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone — but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming. ~William Hazlitt


It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it. ~Somerset Maugham


In my friend, I find a second self. ~Isabel Norton


A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Friendship"