quotations about friendship
Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
ELIE WIESEL
From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences
The Friend does not count his Friends on his fingers; they are not numerable.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Friendship
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Memoir
A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being in all its height, variety and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Be a friend, and thou shalt have friends.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Break not an ancient friendship; keep it hale;
Stir round its roots, that it be green of heart;
Let not the spirit of its growth depart:
It is a power to brave the strongest gale.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"Friendship"
For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Friendship", Essays
We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
A real friendship ought to introduce each person to unexpected weirdness in the other.
JARON LANIER
You Are Not a Gadget
Friendship extends about four city blocks.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
It is a strange thing to observe, how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship, whereof we speak: so great, as they purchase it, many times, at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favorites, or privadoes; as if it were matter of grace, or conversation. But the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum; for it is that which tieth the knot. And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants; whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed other likewise to call them in the same manner; using the word which is received between private men.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Friendship ... is essential to intellectuals. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.
MARY McCARTHY
How I Grew
Friendship's eye is often blind.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Though most of the friendships of the world ill deserve the name of friendships; yet a man may make use of them on occasion, as of a traffic whose returns are uncertain, and in which 'tis usual to be cheated.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
While friendship itself has an air of eternity about it, seeming to transcend all natural limits, there is hardly any emotion so utterly at the mercy of time. We form friendships, and grow out of them. It might almost be said that we cannot retain the faculty of friendship unless we are continually making new friends.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
The Friendship of Christ
Choose a friend as thou dost a wife, 'till Death separate you.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Friendship can exist between persons of different sexes, without any coarse or sensual feelings; yet a woman always looks upon a man as a man, and so a man will look upon a woman as a woman.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères