Quotes about friendship
page 7

Arjo Klamer photo
Burt Ward photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Gracie Allen photo

“Cultivate friendships. If you don’t have time to cultivate all of them, plow under every fifth one and collect your bonus.”

Gracie Allen (1902–1964) American actress and comedienne

Source: How to Become President (1940), Ch. 6 : How not to offend anybody

Nicolae Ceaușescu photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Philo photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Kenneth Minogue photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Michael Chabon photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo

“Alternative translation: In politics… shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 96 http://books.google.com/books?id=3gtoAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA96&vq=%22hatred+is+almost+always+the+foundation%22&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0
1850s and later

Hafez al-Assad photo

“Why should we not boycott the Soviet Union and its supporters inside the country? If we do so, we can force them to review their stand. Either they give us what we want and what is necessary or they will lose our friendship.”

Hafez al-Assad (1930–2000) former president of Syria

Moscow and the Middle East: Soviet policy since the invasion of Afghanistan, Robert Owen Freedman, 1991, CUP Archive, 0521359767, 40, 426, 2010-6-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=6zk7AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA40&dq=mustafa+talas+red+book&hl=en&ei=SGAaTJn2N5O8M7Sq-K8F&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Why%20should%20we%20not%20boycott%20the%20Soviet%20Union%20and%20its%20supporters%20inside%20the%20country%3F%20If%20we%20do%20so%2C%20we%20can%20force%20them%20to%20review%20their%20stand.%20Either%20they%20give%20us%20what%20we%20want%20and%20what%20is%20necesary%20or%20they%20will%20lose%20our%20friendship&f=false,

Bram van Velde photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert photo
Abd al-Karim Qasim photo

“We do not wish to become subordinate to any power. We will be friends with the powers of the world. We will be sincere friends to the powers that are sincere in their intentions and their friendship to us.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

Speech delivered at the officers' club (June 16, 1959).
Principles of the 14th July Revolution (1959)

Sarah Vowell photo
Frank Popper photo
Henry Adams photo
Mark Kingwell photo

“Friendship requires a leap, not of faith but of regard.”

Mark Kingwell (1963) Canadian philosopher

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 3, Virtues And Vices, p. 85.

Ko Wen-je photo
Thomas Moore photo

“Oh, call it by some better name,
For friendship sounds too cold.”

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

Ballads and Songs. Oh, Call It by Some Better Name, st. 1.

Muammar Gaddafi photo
Farrokh Tamimi photo
Sunil Dutt photo

“If there is no friendship with one's neighbours, no one can progress. Look at Canada and the USA -- both countries help each other.”

Sunil Dutt (1929–2005) Hindi film actor

We all are one, whichever religion we belong to

Jon Cruddas photo
Sydney Smith photo

“Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

"Of Friendship"
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Charles Stross photo
Robin Sloan photo

“There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care.”

Robin Sloan (1979) American writer

Source: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012), Chapter 31 “Epilogue” (p. 288)

Richard Hovey photo

“Love seeks a guerdon; friendship is as God,
Who gives and asks no payment.”

Richard Hovey (1864–1900) American writer

Act i. Sc. 1.
The Marriage of Guenevere (1891)

Seneca the Younger photo

“Friendship is always helpful, but love sometimes even does harm”
Amicitia semper prodest, amor aliquando etiam nocet

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXXV

André Maurois photo
Alastair Reynolds photo

“There is no such thing as eternal friendship or eternal hostility–-only eternal interests.”

Former Dean of Islamic Law at Qatar University Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari: The Innocent Pay the Price for the Incitement by the Preachers of Hatred, MEMRI, December 9, 2007 http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1656.htm,
Political friendships

Maggie Stiefvater photo
Lal Bahadur Shastri photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Swami Vivekananda photo
Charlotte Brontë photo

“If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Carolyn Warner (1992), page 135

Thich Nhat Tu photo
Lewis F. Powell, Jr. photo
Pythagoras photo

“True and perfect Friendship is, to make one heart and mind of many hearts and bodies.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

The Sayings of the Wise (1555)

Theodore Dalrymple photo
Joseph Smith, Jr. photo
Oliver Goldsmith photo

“Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Act I.
The Good-Natured Man (1768)

Winston S. Churchill photo
Eduard Shevardnadze photo

“It is time to realize that neither socialism, nor friendship, nor good-neighborliness, nor respect can be produced by bayonets, tanks or blood.”

Eduard Shevardnadze (1928–2014) Georgian politician and diplomat

As quoted in North Atlantic Assembly Political Committee Report (1990), p. 7.

George Gordon Byron photo

“Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Quoted by Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington in Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington http://books.google.com/books?id=w648AAAAYAAJ&q="Friendship+may+and+often+does+grow+into+love+but+love+never+subsides+into+friendship"&pg=PA179#v=onepage (1834).

Haile Selassie photo
Charles Dickens photo
Andrew Sullivan photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Katherine Philips photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Tessa Virtue photo

“This friendship and this bond that we share is, to us, the No. 1 priority.”

Tessa Virtue (1989) Canadian ice dancer

Tessa Virtue, quoted in "Scott & Tessa Say Their Relationship Is “So Much Better” than People Imagine" http://www.flare.com/celebrity/scott-tessa-say-their-relationship-is-so-much-better-than-people-imagine/ (26 February 2018)
Partnership with Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue about Moir

Charles Dickens photo
Jalal Talabani photo

“The building of this site would not be possible without the courageous decision by President Bush to liberate Iraq. This building is not only a compound for the embassy but a symbol of the deep friendship between the two peoples of Iraq and America.”

Jalal Talabani (1933–2017) Iraqi politician

On the United States building a new embassy in the Green Zone of Iraq — reported in Chelsea J. Carter, Associated Press (January 6, 2009) "U.S. inaugurates $700 million new embassy in Iraq Mammoth new building called symbol of new era", Charleston Gazette, p. P3A.

Theodor Mommsen photo

“But while at the bottom of the national life the slime was thus constantly accumulating more and more deleteriously and deeply, so much the more smooth and glittering was the surface, overlaid with the varnish of polished manners and universal friendship. All the world interchanged visits; so that in the houses of quality it was necessary to admit the persons presenting themselves every morning for the levee in a certain order fixed by the master or occasionally by the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only to the more notable one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted partly in groups, partly en masse at the close—a distinction which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy, is said to have introduced. The interchange of letters of courtesy was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy; "friendly" letters flew over land and sea between persons who had neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter is addressed to a corporation. In like manner invitations to dinner, the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials; even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions to his countless "neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake. Just as in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes which had lost all meaning, and thus by degrees the reality came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of "friendship," which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 2, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
On Roman Friendship in the last ages of the Republic.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

William Cowper photo

“Society friendship and love
Divinely bestow'd upon man,
O had I the wings of a dove
How soon I would taste you again!”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 17.

Winthrop Mackworth Praed photo

“And oh! I shall find how, day by day,
All thoughts and things look older;
How the laugh of pleasure grows less gay,
And the heart of friendship colder.”

Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839) British politician, poet

"Twenty-eight and Twenty-nine" in The Poetical Works of Winthrop Mackworth Praed (published 1860) p. 212.

Julius Malema photo

“Malema: So these popcorn and mushrooming political parties in Zimbabwe, they will never find friendship in us. They can insult us here from air-conditioned offices of Sandton, we are unshaken. They must stop shouting at us, they must go and fight with their battle in Zimbabwe and win. Even if they've got ground and they are formed on the basis of solid ground in Zim, why are they speaking in Sandton and not Mashonaland or Matabeleland? … Let them go back and go and fight there. Even when the ANC was underground in exile, we had our internal underground forces fighting for freedom.
Fisher: You live in Sandton.
Malema: And we have never spoken from … exile. Let me tell you before you are tjatjarag [i. e. chatty]. This is a building of a revolutionary party, and you know nothing about the revolution.
Fisher: So, so they are not welcome in Sandton but you are?
Malema: So here you behave or else you jump. [Fisher and others laugh. ] Don't laugh.
Fisher: You're joking.
Malema: Chief, can you get security to remove this thing here. If you are not going to behave … call security to take you out. This is not a news room this. This is a revolutionary house. And you don't come here with that tendency. Don't come here with that white tendency, not here. … If you've got a tendency of undermining blacks even while you work, you are in a wrong place …
Fisher: That's rubbish.
Malema: … and you can go out!
Fisher: Absolutely rubbish.
Malema: Rubbish is what you have covered in that trouser. … You are a small boy, you can't do anything. … Bastard! Go out! You bloody agent! … So we think that we need to ensure that we encourage Zanu PF comrades to engage in peaceful means.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

Outburst against reporter Jonah Fisher at Luthuli House on 8 April 2010, while president of the ANC youth league and after his return from Zimbabwe, ANC's Julius Malema lashes out at 'misbehaving' BBC journalist https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/08/anc-julius-malema-bbc-journalist (8 April 2010)

Huldrych Zwingli photo
Roger Scruton photo
Tjalling Koopmans photo
André Maurois photo
Oliver Goldsmith photo

“And what is friendship but a name,
A charm that lulls to sleep,
A shade that follows wealth or fame,
And leaves the wretch to weep?”

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 8, The Hermit (Edwin and Angelina), st. 19.

W. H. Auden photo
Eddie Vedder photo

“One of the first people I met outside of the group [Pearl Jam] was this next human and I had no idea how he would affect my life and my views on music and my views on friendship and what a big impact he would have. These guys [the other members of Pearl Jam] know him much longer than me and his impact is profound. I'd like to introduce with great pleasure my old neighbor, Chris Cornell.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

Eddie Vedder introducing Cornell during a Pearl Jam concert on September 4, 2011
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbG9CNCettk, PEARL JAM Chris Cornell *Hunger Strike* PJ20 night 2 @ Alpine Valley Temple of the Dog 9/4/2011, YouTube, 5 September 2011

James McNeill Whistler photo

“The rare few, who, early in life, have rid themselves of the friendship of the many.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

Dedication
1870 - 1903, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' (1890)

Simone Weil photo

“To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it; it is of the order of grace.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Love (1947), p. 274

Ray Comfort photo
Narendra Modi photo
William Penn photo

“Friendship is the next Pleasure we may hope for: And where we find it not at home, or have no home to find it in, we may seek it abroad. It is an Union of Spirits, a Marriage of Hearts, and the Bond thereof Vertue.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

106
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

Hans Blüher photo
John Gray photo
Gustav Stresemann photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Allan Kardec photo
AnnaSophia Robb photo
Robert Frost photo

“No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Provide, Provide http://plagiarist.com/poetry/732/" (1936), st. 6 - 7
General sources

Olly Blackburn photo

“Blackburn also took an interest in the dynamics of friendships between men and the psychological games that can become part of this.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[Film4, Channel Four Television Corporation, http://www.film4.com/features/article/olly-blackburn-and-david-bloom-on-donkey-punch, 23 February 2012, Olly Blackburn and David Bloom on Donkey Punch, 2008]
About

“Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Non-series books, (1967)

Michael Szenberg photo
Adolph Freiherr Knigge photo

“No bonds last longer than those made in early youth. At that age one is less mistrustful and less troubled by trifles.”

Keine Verbindungen pflegen dauerhafter zu sein als die, welche in der frühen Jugend geschlossen werden. Man ist da noch weniger misstrauisch, weniger schwierig in Kleinigkeiten.
Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788)

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold;
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

No Time like the old Time; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Syed Ahmed Khan photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“Thus they are destitute of that very lovely and exquisitely natural friendship, which is an object of desire in itself and for itself, nor can they learn from themselves how valuable and powerful such a friendship is. For each man loves himself, not that he may get from himself some reward for his own affection, but because each one is of himself dear to himself. And unless this same feeling be transferred to friendship, a true friend will never be found; for a true friend is one who is, as it were, a second self.”
Ita pulcherrima illa et maxime naturali carent amicitia per se et propter se expetita nec ipsi sibi exemplo sunt, haec vis amicitiae et qualis et quanta sit. Ipse enim se quisque diligit, non ut aliquam a se ipse mercedem exigat caritatis suae, sed quod per se sibi quisque carus est. Quod nisi idem in amicitiam transferetur, verus amicus numquam reperietur; est enim is qui est tamquam alter idem.

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

Section 80; translation by J. F. Stout
Laelius De Amicitia – Laelius On Friendship (44 BC)

William James photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“The man of Hope, Barack Obama. America is stronger because of President Obama's leadership, and I'm better because of his friendship.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

Farah Pahlavi photo

“[Sheltering the shah and his family] was completely out of [President Sadat's] friendship and good human nature as he had no personal gain from it. Egyptians had not forgotten the help they received from Iran during their troubled times of war.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Interview: Farah Pahlavi Recalls 30 Years In Exile http://www.rferl.org/content/Interview_Farah_Pahlavi_Recalls_30_Years_In_Exile/2111354.html, Radio Free Europe, (July 27, 2010).
Interviews

Homér photo
Saki photo
Katherine Philips photo