“If my character is flawed by a few minor faults, but is otherwise decent and moral, if you can point out only a few scattered blemishes on an otherwise immaculate surface, if no one can accuse me of greed, or of prurience, or of profligacy, if I live a virtuous life, free of defilement (pardon, for a moment, my self-praise), and if I am to my friends a good friend, my father deserves all the credit… As it is now, he deserves from me unstinting gratitude and praise. I could never be ashamed of such a father, nor do I feel any need, as many people do, to apologize for being a freedman's son.”

"The Situation Is Not Easy" by Lally Weymouth in Newsweek (26 April 2010)

Sec. 56
The Gay Science (1882)

as quoted by Roberto Ridolfi, 'The Life of Niccolo Machiavelli', page 74.

Garantissez-moi de mes amis, écrivait Gourville proscrit et fugitif, je saurai me défendre de mes ennemis. ("Defend me from my friends," wrote Gourville, exile and fugitive, "I can defend myself from my enemies.") — Gabriel Sénac de Meilhan, Considérations sur l'esprit et les moeurs (1788): "De L'Amitié." Sénac de Meilhan was quoting Jean Hérault, sieur de Gourville (1625 - 1703).
The remark has often been attributed to Voltaire and to Claude-Louis-Hector de Villars.
Misattributed

Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 37

Source: The Complete Poems

Lecture on Hegel

Variant: And she kissed me. It was the kind of kiss that I could never tell my friends about out loud. It was the kind of kiss that made me know that I was never so happy in my whole life.
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Variation: Defend me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies myself The quote has been attributed to Voltaire, who was using it after Villars. Quoted in Connie Robertson, Dictionary of Quotations, 1998
Source: The 48 Laws of Power