Friend Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.

G. K. Chesterton

This was the end, Echekrates, of our friend; a man of whom we may say that of all whom we met at that time he was the wisest and justest and best.

On the death of socrates

Glee! the great storm is over!
Four have recovered the land;
Forty gone down together
Into the boiling sand. Ring, for the scant salvation!
Toll, for the bonnie souls,—
Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
Spinning upon the shoals! How they will tell the shipwreck
When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, But the forty?
Did they come back no more? Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller's eye;
And the children no
further question,
And only the waves reply.

Emily Dickinson

I charm in vain; for never again,
All keenly as my glance I bend,
Will Memory, goddess coy,
Embody for my joy
Departed days, nor let me gaze
On thee, my fairy friend!

You care not who sees your back: call you that backing of your friends? A plague upon such backing!

William Shakespeare

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I walked in the woods I felt what I often feel that nothing can befall me in life, no calamity, no disgrace (leaving me my eyes) to which Nature will not offer a sweet consolation. Standing on the bare ground with my head bathed by the blithe air, & uplifted into the infinite space, I become happy in my universal relations. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign & accidental. I am the heir of uncontained beauty and power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is it not a pleasure to learn and to repeat or practice from time to time what has been learned? Is it not delightful to have friends coming from afar? Is one not a superior man if he does not feel hurt even though he does not feel recognized?

Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy?
Don't know what it means? - Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

He [Bernard Shaw] hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.

Just as we respect the right of each nation to determine its own future, we also recognize the responsibility of each nation to secure its own future.
Just as America's role is indispensable in preserving the world's peace, so is each nation's role indispensable in preserving its own peace.
Together with the rest of the world, let us resolve to move forward from the beginnings we have made. Let us continue to bring down the walls of hostility which have divided the world for too long, and to build in their place bridges of understanding—so that despite profound differences between systems of government, the people of the world can be friends.

I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.

A blow from your friend is better than a kiss from your enemy.

Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my friend, the Historian in one of his flashing moments: "Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries."

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Driven by a wish to save Tomás from a life of penury and misunderstanding, Fermin had decided that he needed to develop my friend's latent conversational and social skills. Like the good ape he is, man is a social animal, characterized by cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and gossip. That's the intrinsic blueprint for our ethical behavior.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

If as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means, succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery; and, at the same time, in restoring a captive people to their long-lost father-land, with bright prospects for the future; and this too, so gradually, that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation.

Abraham Lincoln

As far as I am concerned, the greatest suffering is to feel alone, unwanted, unloved. The greatest suffering is also having no one, forgetting what an intimate, truly human relationship is, not knowing what it means to be loved, not having a family or friends.

And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To the query, What is a friend? his reply was, A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

With earnest prayers to all my friends to cherish mutual good will, to promote harmony and conciliation, and above all things to let the love of our country soar above all minor passions, I tender you the assurance of my affectionate esteem and respect.

Thomas Jefferson

Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt

I am excessively fond of a cottage; there is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them. And I protest, if I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one myself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself down at any time, and collect a few friends about me and be happy. I advise everybody who is going to build, to build a cottage.

O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.

Ralph Waldo Emerson