Friend Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?

Charles Dickens

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

Abu Usayd Malik ibn Rabi'a as-Sa'idi said, "Once while we were sitting with the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, a man from the Banu Salama came up and asked, 'O Messenger of Allah, is there any devotion to my parents which I can show them after their death?' He said, 'Yes, praying for them, asking forgiveness for them, fulfilling their pledges after them, maintaining ties with relations which are only maintained through them, and honoring any friend of theirs."

A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavour to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.

George Bernard Shaw

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

We take care of our health; we lay up money; we make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all, -friends?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

But he whose inborn worth his acts commend, Of gentle soul, to human race a friend.

Sweet moonlight, shining full and clear, Why do you light my torture here? How often have you seen me toil, Burning last drops of midnight oil. On books and papers as I read, My friend, your mournful light you shed. If only I could flee this den And walk the mountain-tops again, Through moonlit meadows make my way, In mountain caves with spirits play - Released from learning's musty cell, Your healing dew would make me well!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

That the existence of the Soviet Union has an international revolutionary significance is a commonplace equally recognized by friends and foes.

A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man's friends are his magnetisms.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I suppose you are going home to see your families and friends. For the service you have done in this great struggle in which we are engaged I present you sincere thanks for myself and the country.

Abraham Lincoln

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,
Such seems your beauty still.

William Shakespeare

Yes, my friend, and if you will steal for me then you will steal from me.

Theodore Roosevelt

We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce.

Thomas Jefferson

In true friendship, in which I am expert, I give myself to my friend more than I draw him to me. I not only like doing him good better than having him do me good, but also would rather have him do good to himself than to me; he does me most good when he does himself good.

Michel de Montaigne

Who would be so mocked with glory, or to live
But in a dream of friendship,
To have his pomp and all what state compounds
But only painted, like his varnished friends?

William Shakespeare

By Heaven! it is a splendid sight to see For one who hath no friend, no brother there.

My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather not I, but the Deity in me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sitting with her on Sunday evening — a wet Sunday evening — the very time of all others when if a friend is at hand the heart must be opened, and every thing told…

It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

Martin Luther King, Jr.