Friend Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

If we want to make friends, let's greet people with animation and enthusiasm.

The great man down, you mark his favourite flies;
The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.

William Shakespeare

Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.

What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!

Henry David Thoreau

Think you to be a philosopher while acting as you do? think you to go on thus eating, thus drinking, giving way in like manner to [your own] wrath and to displeasure? Nay you must watch, you must labor; overcome certain desires; quit your familiar friends, submit to be despised by your slave, to be held in derision by them that meet you, to take the lower place in all things, in office, in positions of authority, in courts of law. Weight these things fully, and then, if you will, lay to your hand; if as the price of these things you would gain Freedom, Tranquility, and passionless Serenity.

A father's a treasure; a brother's a comfort; a friend is both.

Benjamin Franklin

How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie.

Emptiness the starting point. — In order to taste my cup of water you must first empty your cup. My friend, drop all your preconceived and fixed ideas and be neutral. Do you know why this cup is useful? Because it is empty.

Let the Gita be to you a mine of diamonds, as it has been to me; let it be your constant guide and friend on life's way.

Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now with us — he does not pretend to be — he does not promise ever to be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends — those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work — who do care for the result.

Abraham Lincoln

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

One afternoon, which is ever present in my recollection, I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the city park and reciting poetry. At that age I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe's Faust. The sun was just setting and reminded me of a glorious passage:
The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!
A glorious dream! though now the glories fade.
Alas! the wings that lift the mind no aid
Of wings to lift the body can bequeath me.

The friends that we have lost do not repose in the bosom of the earth, but are buried deep in our hearts, and it has been ordained that we may always be accompanied by them.

Alexandre Dumas

All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is the acid test of nonviolence that in a nonviolent conflict there is no rancor left behind, and in the end the enemies are converted into friends.

You, your families, your friends and your countries are to be exterminated by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the public hopes, all that has been achieved in art, and knowledge and thought and all that might be achieved hereafter is to be wiped out forever.
Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom and the power to create beauty which have given value to human life.

Bertrand Russell

D'Artagnan, my friend, thou art brave, thou art prudent, thou hast excellent qualities, but- women will destroy thee!" -D'Artagnan

Alexandre Dumas

My worthy friend, gray are all theories
And green alone Life's golden tree.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Death is no fiend, he is the truest of friends. He delivers us from agony.

Gauguin, that curious artist, that alien whose mien and the look in whose eyes vaguely remind one of Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Man" in the Galerie Lacaze — this friend of mine likes to make one feel that a good picture is equivalent to a good deed; not that he says so, but it is difficult to be on intimate terms with him without being aware of a certain moral responsibility.

Vincent van Gogh

All theory, my friend, is grey, But green is life's glad golden tree.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.

Jean de La Bruyère

Satan met his ancient friend
With more hauteur, as might an old Castilian
Poor noble meet a mushroom rich civilian.

We all know that the 'divine glory of the ego' is socially a great nuisance; we all do actually value our friends for modesty, freshness, and simplicity of heart. Whatever may be the reason, we all do warmly respect humility — in other people.

G. K. Chesterton

I thank warmly the friends who remained loyal to me through the most difficult hours of my life. I do not name anyone in particular because I cannot name them all.
However, I consider myself justified in making an exception in the case of my companion, Natalia Ivanovna Sedova. In addition to the happiness of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate gave me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our life together she remained an inexhaustible source of love, magnanimity, and tenderness. She underwent great sufferings, especially in the last period of our lives. But I find some comfort in the fact that she also knew days of happiness.