Quotes about friendship
page 6

Hilaire Belloc photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“If we judge love by the majority of its results, it resembles hatred more than friendship.”

Si on juge de l'amour par la plupart de ses effets, il ressemble plus à la haine qu'à l'amitié.
Maxim 72.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Henry Adams photo

“[The integrative system] deals with such matters as respect, legitimacy, community, friendship, affection, love, and of course their opposites, across a broad scale of human relationships and interactions.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Spicer (1997) explains: "Boulding (1989) referred to three independent systems from which power is exercised in our society: threat, production and exchange, and integrative. The threat system is one in which power is accomplished through coercion in its many guises, often including asymmetrical one-way persuasive communication exchanges. The production and exchange system speaks to the economic system, of which public relations is certainly a part. And, finally, the integrative system.
Source: 1980s, Three Faces of Power, 1989, p. 670-671 as cited in: Christopher Spicer (1997) Organizational Public Relations: A Political Perspective. p. 248

“[M]ost of the pop music out today I consider to have become a homogenized product. It gets to the point that so much of what is going on is copying everything else that is out, because there is a businessman that knows what he has just sold millions of records with, and so he keeps trying to get every group that comes in to do it, you know. You know, you approach somebody who is well known as a booker or manager, and the first remark will be, "I love what you do, but you would have to change this to this, and that to that, and this to this, in order for me to be able to sell it." Well, by the time you've changed that, of course, it's like everything else that is out there. And when Prince first started sending me songs, I thought maybe that by the time I had done four arrangements that I would have started getting some sort of a repetitive something or other. I have been extremely surprised to find that each one is as different from the last as the next one is going to be different. Some of them are like little art songs. Some of them have dealt with heavy things like friendship and death. I mean, death of a friend. And yet, some of them are as baudy as…”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT456 (1992, 2006, 2014)

Clarence Thomas photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“In friendship and in love, one is often happier because of what one does not know than what one knows.”

Dans l'amitié comme dans l'amour on est souvent plus heureux par les choses qu'on ignore que par celles que l'on sait.
Variant translation: In friendship as in love, we are often happier due to the things we are unaware of than the things we know.
Maxim 441.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Stephen Tobolowsky photo
Neville Chamberlain photo
Sidney Hillman photo
F. Anstey photo

“Candour’s the cement of friendship.”

F. Anstey (1856–1934) English novelist and journalist

Source: The Brass Bottle (1900), Chapter 1, “Horace Ventimore Receives a Commission”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo

“I wish to salute the intransigent patriotism and the unflinching determination for independence of the Roumanian president. I was allied to him by a true friendship.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 147
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On world leaders and statesmen

André Maurois photo

“The friendship of two young people," says Goethe somewhere, "is delightful when the girl likes to learn and the boy to teach.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

“Earlier fundamental work of Whitehead, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Whorf, etc., as well as my own attempt to use this earlier thinking as an epistemological base for psychiatric theory, led to a series of generalizations: That human verbal communication can operate and always does operate at many contrasting levels of abstraction. These range in two directions from the seemingly simple denotative level (“The cat is on the mat”). One range or set of these more abstract levels includes those explicit or implicit messages where the subject of discourse is the language. We will call these metalinguistic (for example, “The verbal sound ‘cat’ stands for any member of such and such class of objects”, or “The word, ‘cat’ has no fur and cannot scratch”). The other set of levels of abstraction we will call metacommunicative (e. g., “My telling you where to find the cat was friendly”, or “This is play”). In these, the subject of discourse is the relationship between the speakers. It will be noted that the vast majority of both metalinguistic and metacommunicative messages remain implicit; and also that, especially in the psychiatric interview, there occurs a further class of implicit messages about how metacommunicative messages of friendship and hostility are to be interpreted.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Gregory Bateson (1955) " A theory of play and fantasy http://sashabarab.com/syllabi/games_learning/bateson.pdf". In: Psychiatric research reports, 1955. pp. 177-178] as cited in: S.P. Arpaia (2011) " Paradoxes, circularity and learning processes http://www2.units.it/episteme/L&PS_Vol9No1/L&PS_Vol9No1_2011_18b_Arpaia.pdf". In: L&PS – Logic & Philosophy of Science, Vol. IX, No. 1, 2011, pp. 207-222

Plutarch photo
John Gay photo

“Love, then, hath every bliss in store;
'Tis friendship, and 'tis something more.
Each other every wish they give;
Not to know love is not to live.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Fable LXIII, "Plutus, Cupid, and Time"
Fables (1727)

Emil Nolde photo
Linda McQuaig photo
Jean Cocteau photo

“I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Vogue (May 1984)

André Maurois photo
Arthur Helps photo

“Friendship is often outgrown; and his former child’s clothes will no more fit a man than some of his former friendships.”

Arthur Helps (1813–1875) British writer

‘Unreasonable Claims in Social Affections and Relations’, Chapter IX.
Friends in Council (First Series), (1847),

Berthe Morisot photo

“These last days [of Manet, dying] were very painful. Poor Edouard suffered atrociously. His agony was horrible, death in one of its most appealing forms, that I once again witnessed at a very close range. If you add to these almost physical emotions my old bond of friendship with Edouard, a entire past of youth and work suddenly ending, you will know that I am devastated.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

in a letter to her sister Edma, April 1883; as quoted in The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, with her family and friends Denish Rouart - newly introduced by Kathleen Adler and Tamer Garb; Camden Press London 198, p. 131
1881 - 1895

Ali Khamenei photo
D. V. Gundappa photo

“The one and only God of Universe Vishwanatha, takes the shape of different deities, worshipped by the devotees whether he be Hindu, Jain, Parsi, Mohammed, Yahudi, Christian. Let him also sow seeds of unity and friendship in the mind of the people of the country.”

D. V. Gundappa (1887–1975) Indian writer

One of the six hymns that he had set for the Gokhale Institute of Public Affairs that he had set up in Bangalore quoted in page=13
D.V. Gundappa,Sahitya Akademi

Willa Cather photo
Porphyry (philosopher) photo
Philippe de Commines photo

“Two princes who wish to remain on friendly terms should never see each other but send good and wise men to one another, and these should maintain their friendship and amend any faults.”

Deux grands princes qui se voudroient bien entr'aymer, ne se devroient jamais voir, mais envoyer bonnes gens et sages les uns vers les autres, et ceux là les entretiendroient ou amenderoient les fautes.
Bk. I, ch. 14.
Mémoires

Stanley Baldwin photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo

“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The Weight of Glory (1949)

Gustav Stresemann photo
Joseph Joubert photo
Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland photo

“It started as a friendship that grew into something more.”

royalcorrespondent.com interview http://royalcorrespondent.com/2013/07/15/we-really-are-a-team-says-princess-madeleine-in-a-new-interview/

Joseph Addison photo
Anu Partanen photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Newton Lee photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“For friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.”
Nam et secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia et adversas partiens communicansque leviores.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Section 22
Laelius De Amicitia – Laelius On Friendship (44 BC)

Thomas Moore photo

“If I speak to thee in friendship's name,
Thou think'st I speak too coldly;
If I mention love's devoted flame,
Thou say'st I speak too boldly.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

How shall I woo?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Charles Lamb photo
Nicholas Sparks photo

“Work, spirituality, family, friendships, health--you can't ignore any of them or it'll get you in the end.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nicholas Sparks, Chapter 15, p. 268
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)

George Steiner photo
Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“Confidence is the only bond of friendship.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 34
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Edward Young photo
William Hazlitt photo

“Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone — but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

" On The Conduct of Life" http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/ConductLife.htm (1822), reprinted in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt (1902-1904)

Sania Mirza photo
Francis Escudero photo

“Every evening after dinner, a new life began. There was no hurry. Some walked in the garden. Others smoked. About nine o’clock we made our way alone or in twos and threes to the Study House. Outdoor shoes came off and soft shoes or moccasins were put on. We sat quietly, each on his or her own cushion, round the floor in the centre. Men sat on the right, women on the left; never together.

Some went straight on to the stage and began to practice the rhythmic exercises. On our first arrival, each of us had the right to choose his own teacher for the movements. I had chosen Vasili Ferapontoff, a young Russian, tall, with a sad studious face. He wore pince-nez, and looked the picture of the perpetual student, Trofimov, in The Cherry Orchard. He was a conscientious instructor, though not a brilliant performer. I came to value his friendship, which continued until his premature death ten years later. He told me in one of our first conversations that he expected to die young.

The exercises were much the same as those I had seen in Constantinople three years before. The new pupils, such as myself, began with the series called Six Obligatory Exercises. I found them immensely exciting, and worked hard to master them quickly so that I could join in the work of the general class.”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

Source: Witness: the Story of a Search (1962), p. 90–91 cited in: "Gurdjieff’s Temple Dances by John G. Bennett", Gurdjieff International Review, on gurdjieff.org; About Fontainebleau 1923

Ben Gibbard photo
Catiline photo

“Agreement in likes and dislikes—this, and this only, is what constitutes true friendship.”
Idem velle atque idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est.

Catiline (-109–-62 BC) ancient Roman Senator

As quoted by Sallust (86 BC – c. 35 BC) in Catiline's War, Book XX, pt. 4 (trans. J. C. Rolfe).
Variant translations:
To like and dislike the same things, that is indeed true friendship.
To like the same things and to dislike the same things, only this is a strong friendship.

Mikhail Kalinin photo
Rembrandt van Rijn photo
Justin Trudeau photo

“We should be past tolerance in Canada
..
In Canada, can we speak of acceptance, openness, friendship, understanding? It is about where we are going and what we are going through every day in our diverse and rich communities
..
Tolerating someone means accepting their right to exist on the condition that they don’t disturb us too, too much.”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

As quoted by The Guardian, Justin Trudeau rules out burkini ban in Canada https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/23/justin-trudeau-rules-out-burkini-ban-in-canada (23 August 2016).
2016

Gautama Buddha photo
Kristoff St. John photo
K. R. Narayanan photo
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël photo

“Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the débris are friendship, fame, and love.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

Reflections on Suicide (Réflexions sur le suicide, 1813), Section 1

“Love is not dependency or sex, but is friendship, and, therefore, love can't exist between two males, between a male and a female or between two females, one or both of whom is a mindless, insecure, pandering male; like conversation it can exist only between two secure, free-wheeling, independent, groovy female females, as friendship is based on”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

respect, not contempt.
Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 10 ("respect, not contempt." (not bracketed in original) not certain in original due to truncation of bottom of photocopy page but consistent with it).

André Maurois photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Tenzin Gyatso photo
Rab Butler photo

“What struck me at the League was the prestige in which our Government and our Prime Minister are held. What has struck hon. Members who have listened to this Debate is the fact that public opinion in the dictator countries has conceived a profound admiration for our Prime Minister and our country. Our country, therefore, is the country which is in a priceless position for securing the future of peace…It seems to me that we have two choices either to settle our differences with Germany by consultation, or to face the inevitability of a clash between the two systems of democracy and dictatorship. In considering this, I must emphatically give my opinion as one of the younger generation. War settles nothing, and I see no alternative to the policy upon which the Prime Minister has so courageously set himself—the construction of peace, with the aid which I have described. There is no other country which can achieve this, and I ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite sincerely to believe that in our efforts to understand, to consult with and, if possible, to get friendship with Germany, we do not abandon by one jot or tittle the democratic beliefs which are the very core of our whole being and system. In conclusion, I must gratify the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield by quoting Shakespeare. The right hon. Gentleman will remember the little poem "Under the Greenwood Tree"—"Here shall he see" "No enemy," "But winter and rough weather."”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

We have the winter before us, and we have a great deal of political rough weather, but in that rough weather, do not let us forget the joint idea of peace which animates us all.
Speech on the Munich Agreement http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government (5 October 1938).

“That is almost the definition of any friendship that is worthwhile — that we don't care a damn how you behave yourself.”

Source: Trent's Own Case (1936), Chapter XV: "Eunice Makes a Clean Breast of It"

“How much of our literature, our political life, our friendships and love affairs, depend on being able to talk peacefully in a bar!”

John Wain (1925–1994) British writer

As given in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) p. 301

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Gerald Ford photo
Paul Carus photo
Michael Chabon photo
Algernon Charles Swinburne photo

“I can truly say with Shelley I have been fortunate in friendships: that I have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

From his own Dedicatory Epistle to his Poems & Ballads 1904.

Samuel Butler photo

“It is said of money that it is more easily made than kept and this is true of many things, such as friendship; and even life itself is more easily got than kept.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Colour http://books.google.com/books?id=JHguFYrTEQ0C&q=%22It+is+said+of+money+that+it+is+more+easily+made+than+kept+and+this+is+true+of+many+things+such+as+friendship+and+even+life+itself+is+more+easily+got+than+kept%22&pg=PA141#v=onepage
Often paraphrased as "Friendship is like money, easier made than kept."
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting

Albrecht Thaer photo
Michelle Obama photo
Jean de La Bruyère photo

“Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.”

Le temps, qui fortifie les amitiés, affaiblit l'amour.
Aphorism 4
Les Caractères (1688), Du Coeur

Bernard Malamud photo

“Levin wanted friendship and got friendliness; he wanted steak and they offered spam.”

A New Life (1961; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) p. 111

Kurt Lewin photo
Heather Langenkamp photo
André Maurois photo
Stephen King photo
Swami Vivekananda photo

“There cannot be friendship without equality.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Johann Kaspar Lavater photo
Michel Seuphor photo
Marie de France photo

“If one of two lovers is loyal, and the other jealous and false, how may their friendship last, for Love is slain! But sweetly and discreetly love passes from person to person, from heart to heart, or it is nothing worth. For what the lover would, that would the beloved; what she would ask of him that should he go before to grant. Without accord such as this, love is but a bond and a constraint. For above all things Love means sweetness, and truth, and measure.”

Marie de France medieval poet

Se l'uns des amans est loiax,
E li autre est jalox è faus,
Si est amors entr'ex fausée,
Ne puet avoir lunge durée.
Amors n'a soing de compagnun,
Boin amors n'est se de Dex nun,
De cors en cors, de cuer en cuer,
Autrement n'est prex à nul fuer.
Tulles qui parla d'amistié,
Dist assés bien en son ditié,
Que vent amis, ce veut l'amie
Dunt est boine la compaignie,
S'ele le veut è il l'otreit.
Dunt la druerie est à dreit,
Puisque li uns l'autre desdit,
N'i a d'amors fors c'un despit;
Assés puet-um amors trover,
Mais sens estuet al' bien garder,
Douçour è francise è mesure.
"Graelent", line 85; pp. 149-50.
Misattributed

James Anthony Froude photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Steve Jobs photo

“My girlfriend always laughs during sex — no matter what she's reading.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

This has appeared rather prominently on the internet, usually without indications of a source, and is often attributed to Jobs, but it was actually part of the comedy routines of Emo Philips, who used "giggles" rather than "laughs" on his comedy album Emo.
Misattributed

James Fitzjames Stephen photo
Fabian Picardo photo

“We want friendship and co-operation with the people of Spain. But the people of Gibraltar said no to Joint Sovereignty in our referendum of 2002. By 98% we rejected Joint Sovereignty then. But that was obviously not loud and clear enough. So let me be unequivocal so that there is no mistake or any further foolish repetition of this warped notion for the transfer of our sovereignty: Gibraltarian is not for sale. The Gibraltarians will not be bribed. The Gibraltarians will never surrender!”

Fabian Picardo (1972) Gibraltarian politician and barrister

[14 June 2016, Chief Minister's Address To United Nations Committee Of 24, http://www.yourgibraltartv.com/politics/11901-jun-14-chief-minister-s-address-to-united-nations-committee-of-24, Your Gibraltar, 19 September 2016]
Address to the Special Committee on Decolonisation in New York
2016

Jennifer Beals photo

“[Speaking about women’s friendships] If two women go to a bar and they are fighting over men, it makes it much easier for the men. If two women are very close and they act as… it makes it very difficult for the men to pull one over on anybody.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview in Stumped Magazine (February 2002) http://stumpedmagazine.com/interviews/jennifer-beals-transcript.html.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“Man seeks, in his manhood,
not orders, not laws and peremptory dogmas,
but counsel from one who is earnest in goodness
and faithful in friendship,
making man free.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend