Quotes about friendship

Have no friends not equal to yourself.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends.

Envy is destroyed by true friendship, flirtation by true love.

Most friends sicken us of friendship, most devotees of devotion.

We easily forgive in our friends those faults we do not perceive.

However rare true love is, true friendship is rarer.

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

There is an old-time toast which is golden for its beauty. “When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend.”

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

ADMONITION, n. Gentle reproof, as with a meat-axe. Friendly warning.

AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

ANTIPATHY, n. The sentiment inspired by one’s friend’s friend.

BACK, n. That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity.

BEGGAR, n. One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.

DATARY, n. A high ecclesiastic official of the Roman Catholic Church, whose important function is to brand the Pope’s bulls with the words Datum Romae. He enjoys a princely revenue and the friendship of God.

DISTRESS, n. A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.

EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.

FRIENDSHIP, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

LIGHTHOUSE, n. A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.

If we judge of love by the majority of its results it rather resembles hatred than friendship.

What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.

We can love nothing but what agrees with us, and we can only follow our taste or our pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves; nevertheless it is only by that preference that friendship can be true and perfect.

What men term friendship is merely a partnership with a collection of reciprocal interests, and an exchange of favours—in fact it is but a trade in which self love always expects to gain something.

We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.

Self love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them, and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.

We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and betrayed by our friends, yet still we are often content to be thus served by ourselves.

We sometimes complain of the levity of our friends to justify our own by anticipation.

We are easily consoled at the misfortunes of our friends when they enable us to prove our tenderness for them.

What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honour of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.

When we exaggerate the tenderness of our friends towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own merit.

What commonly hinders us from showing the recesses of our heart to our friends, is not the distrust we have of them, but that we have of ourselves.

If we take the liberty to dwell on their faults we cannot long preserve the feelings we should hold towards our friends and benefactors.

Sometimes we lose friends for whose loss our regret is greater than our grief, and others for whom our grief is greater than our regret.

The greatest effort of friendship is not to show our faults to a friend, but to show him his own.

The charm of novelty and old custom, however opposite to each other, equally blind us to the faults of our friends.

When our friends have deceived us we owe them but indifference to the tokens of their friendship, yet for their misfortunes we always owe them pity.

There is a certain lively gratitude which not only releases us from benefits received, but which also, by making a return to our friends as payment, renders them indebted to us.

As in friendship so in love, we are often happier from ignorance than from knowledge.

The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on that account he keeps so far away from him:—the devil, in effect, as the oldest friend of knowledge.

It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your permission to possess it;—eh, my friends?

The stream is friendly to the miller whom it serves; it likes to pour over the mill wheels; what is the good of it stealing through the valley in apathy?

I should like to be honest with you, without our falling out; but it will not do. You act wrongly, and fall between two stools; you win no adherents and lose your friends. What is to be the end of it?

It is not easy to be in any great assembly without thinking that the chance which brings so many people together will also make us meet our friends.

Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist. We should not like old friends to give up certain peculiarities.

Some men think about the defects of their friends, and there is nothing to be gained by it. I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.

In your friendships, and in your enmities, let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds: make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business!

At court, people embrace without acquaintance, serve one another without friendship, and injure one another without hatred. Interest, not sentiment, is the growth of that soil.