Friend Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

My dear friend, do not imagine that I am vain enough to ascribe our success [Revolution] to any superiority... If it had not been for the justice of our cause, and the consequent interposition of Providence, in which we had faith, we must have been ruined. If I had ever before been an atheist, I should now have been convinced of the being and government of a Deity!

Benjamin Franklin

A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles…Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.

George Bernard Shaw

Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.

I have neither time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the Friend, and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the question whether, if it be true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indicated, it is not probable that he would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her.

Abraham Lincoln

We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.

When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy—that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.

Let me be suffered to extend
Compassion to a hapless friend.

I spend a lot of time parenting because I'm home. A friend of mine told me that the average father sees each kid an average of twenty-two minutes a week, which I found almost unbelievable. Mine are in my hip pocket all the time. And I like it that way.

I prithee gentle friend,
Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passions, sway
In this uncivil and unjust extent
Against thy peace.

William Shakespeare

Whatever character our theology may ascribe to him, in reality God is the infinite ideal of Man, towards whom men move in their collective growth, with whom they seek their union of love as individuals, in whom they find their ideal of father, friend and beloved.

Rabindranath Tagore

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Soul unto itself
Is an imperial friend, -
Or the most agonizing Spy -
An Enemy - could send -

Emily Dickinson

I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange of good offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Grave — is a restricted Breadth —
Yet ampler than the Sun —
And all the Seas He populates
And lands he looks upon To Him who on its small Repose
Bestows a single Friend —
Circumference without Relief —
Or Estimate — or End

Emily Dickinson

As for us, my little friend, we entered [the Communist Party] because we were tired of dying of hunger.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily; for there is little that is pleasant in them...

I'm not going to sacrifice love, real love, for any *%@$n' war or any friend, or any business, because in the end you're alone at night.

Well they say the sky's the limit
And to me that's really true
But my friend you have seen nothing
Just wait 'til I get through...
Because I'm bad, I'm bad.

Michael Jackson

The wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible.

It is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky..but to express oneself honestly not lying to oneself, now that my friend is very hard to do

A false friend and a shadow attend only while the sun shines.

Benjamin Franklin

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hope of the heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must therefore... hold them [the British] as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

Thomas Jefferson