Friend Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

William Shakespeare

Groucho Marx

Nicolaus Copernicus

Mother Teresa

Edgar Allan Poe

Nikola Tesla

Aristotle

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.

A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of his friends, and that the most liberal professions of good will are very far from being the surest marks of it. I should be happy that my own experience had afforded fewer examples of the little dependence to be placed upon them.

George Washington

So, influenced by these advisors and this hope, I have at length allowed my friends to publish the work, as they had long besought me to do.

Nicolaus Copernicus

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

William Shakespeare

I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it.

Edgar Allan Poe

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success … Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.

Henry David Thoreau

But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Got just enough room to be a friend of yours. Oh I hope you got room to be a friend of mine.

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.

Charles William Eliot

It is always well to accept your own shortcomings with candor but to regard those of your friends with polite incredulity.

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

Listen, my friend, I've just come back from Mississippi and over there when you talk about the West Bank they think you mean Arkansas.

It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.

The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.

You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
LVI.

When Dan Quayle made a tacit comparison between himself and John Kennedy:

Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.

Martin Farquhar Tupper

Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends.

A steady patriot of the world alone,
The friend of every country but his own.

On the Jacobin