Quotes about friend
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“Before you were my enemy, you were my best friend.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Skye

“When I didn't have friends, I had books.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Books

“The happy man in this life needs friends.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Life, Happiness

“What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Books, Reading

“All I know is that I carried you for nine months. I fed you, I clothed you, I paid for your college education. Friending me on Facebook seems like a small thing to ask in return.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Education, Clothes

“Wonderful. What's the point of throwing a hissy fit without friends and family on hand to hear it?"
-Amy Cahill”

Gordon Korman book The Medusa Plot

Source: The Medusa Plot

Family

“My life is not packaged,
Not tidy. There are leftover strands and jagged
Edges that cut even my friends.”

Walter Dean Myers (1937–2014) American writer

Source: Street Love

Life

“For Colin Firth:
You're a really great guy, but I'm married, so I think we should just be friends.”

Shannon Hale book Austenland

Source: Austenland

Guy, Thinking

“He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Variant: He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends
Source: Les Misérables

Love, Books

“If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

“New friends can often have a better time together than old friends.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Tender is the Night

Time

“Picture this," said Magnus. "Me with a little monkey friend. I could teach him tricks. I could dress him in a cunning jacket. He could look just like me! But more monkey-shaped.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

“If your intentions are pure, I'm seeking a friend for the end of the world.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

World

“No one was perfect. But we all did the best we could. I guessed you had to forgive when you could, move on when you couldn't, and love your family and friends for who they were instead of punishing them for who they weren't.”

Sarah Mlynowski (1977) Novelist

Source: Ten Things We Did

Love, Family, Forgiveness, Perfection

“Things did change. He’d gone from being eaten up with jealousy of Simon, to a grudging respect for his tenacity and courage, to actually considering him a friend, though he doubted he’d ever say so out loud”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Jealousy, Courage, Change

“It’s good to see your friends happy, isn’t it? (Nick)
How would I know? I have no friends. People basically suck and all friends will screw you over in the end. Take my word for it. (Savitar)
Then why am I here? (Nick)
Hell if I know. (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

Happiness, People, Hell

“Wasnt it Startre who said hell was eternity spent in a room with your friends?”

L.J. Smith The Forbidden Game

Source: The Forbidden Game

Hell

“… I do not tell you often enough, dear Mother, how very grateful I am that I am yours. It is a rare parent
who would offer a child such latitude and understanding. It is an even rarer one who calls a daughter
friend. I do love you, dear Mama.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: To Sir Phillip, With Love

Love, Understanding, Parent, Daughters

“Friends are a weird thing. It seems like they know all about you, but then they don’t understand you at all.”

Natsuo Kirino book Real World

Source: Real World

Understanding

“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 12: The Cry of the Hunters
Context: His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

Heart

“The next time you face a room full of strangers… you might tell yourself that some of them are just friends waiting to be found.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: It Happened One Autumn

Time, Waiting

“Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.”

Milan Kundera book Encounter

Source: Encounter

Loyalty

“A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Feeling

“I’ve fallen for the one person I shouldn’t have. For the boy who broke Mary’s heart. For Rennie’s one true love. For Alex’s best friend.
It has to end here. Now.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: Fire with Fire

Love, Boy, Heart, Personality

“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Dreams

“Lydia was the kind of friend whom people referred to as a 'party favor' -- always fun to be around but she doesn't have any patience for suffering unless it's her own.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Source: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

People, Suffering, Patience

“Because, you see, you only need one friend for a party. One is enough. Two is enough. Anything is enough.”

Ann M. Martin A Corner of the Universe

Source: A Corner of the Universe, ~pg 107; Adam on friendship

Friendship

“How do I know I can trust you?'

'You can't,' he said bluntly. 'You've got to take it on faith that the enemy of your enemy is your friend.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Faith

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend… if you have one.""Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Night

“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Love, Friendship, Happiness, Wealth

“Rose only hangs out with guys and psychopaths," said Mia.

"Well," he said cheerfully, "since I'm both a psychopath and a guy, that would explain why we're such good friends.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Guy

“But what I really want is to just swim around in a warm baby pool of these friends, jump in their dry leaf pile-to rub them all over myself, without words and clothes.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Baby, Clothes

“It's just hard to see a friend hurt this much. Especially when you can't do anything except 'be there.' I just want to make him stop hurting, but I can't. So I just follow him around whenever he wants to show me his world.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

World, Hurt

“Parabatai" said Jace. "It means a pair of warriors who fight together - who are closer than brothers. Alec is more than justmy best friend.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Fight

“I need a new friend. I need a friend, period. Not a true friend, nothing close or share clothes or sleepover giggle giggle yak yak. Just a pseudo-friend, disposable friend. Friend as accessory. Just so I don't feel or look so stupid.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Stupidity, Feeling, Clothes

“The word friends doesn't seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. We forget where one of us starts and the other one stops.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Feeling, Forgetting

“Friends show their love in times of trouble.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Love, Time, Wise, Inspirational

“A friend is someone whose face you can see in the dark.”

Frances O'Roark Dowell (1964) American writer

Source: The Secret Language of Girls

“We all fail to appreciate each day just how much we already possess. Light, air, freedom, the companionship of friends.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

Freedom, Light

“Too bad Jason wasn’t a metal automaton. At least then Leo would have some idea of how to help his best friend. But with humans … Leo felt helpless. They broke way too easily.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Way, Idea, Help

“How am I going to make friends with these people if all I can think of is how easy it would be to rob them?”

Trudi Canavan book The Magicians' Guild

Source: The Magicians' Guild

People, Thinking

“In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Thinking

“friends don't threaten friends' distributor caps”

C.E. Murphy (1973) American writer

Source: Urban Shaman

“It may… be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love, Happiness, Feeling

“292. The best mirrour is an old friend.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)
Variant: 292. The best mirrour is an old friend.

“You can lose a friend in springtime easier than any other season if you're too curious.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Season

“A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

“You can’t really yell at your boyfriend for stealing your seat and your best friend. You also can’t yell at your best friend for stealing your boyfriend. Or you can…but Hi seemed like a much easier way to start the morning.”

Ally Carter Out of Sight, Out of Time

Source: Out of Sight, Out of Time

Way

“There's no point in defending camp if you guys die. All our friends are here.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Guy

“Maybe I was naïve to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Question, Thinking, Silence

“Maybe a friend is someone who wants your updates. Even if they're boring. Or sad. Or annoyingly cutesy. A friend says "Sign me up for your boring crap, yes indeed"--because he likes you anyways. He'll tolerate your junk”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: Real Live Boyfriends: Yes. Boyfriends, Plural. If My Life Weren't Complicated, I Wouldn't Be Ruby Oliver

Sadness

“A friend to kill time is a friend sublime.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 40, The Rat Who Wound the Clock

Time

“Friends can betray you, but with an old enemy, you always know where you stand.”

Raymond E. Feist book Krondor: The Betrayal

Source: Krondor: The Betrayal

“Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friend calls it.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Birth

“If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so many enemies.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

“Adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

“Clary sat back. "You don't just get to say no."
"This plan involves me! I get to say no! No."
"Simon -"
Simon patted the seat beside him as if someone were sitting there. "Let me introduce you to my good friend No.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.”

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) American teacher and writer

Source: Tablets

Books

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

March 1937
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

World, Deep, Friendship, Relationship

“Nothing is stable in the realm of power, and even closest of friends can be transformed into the worst of enemies.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

“Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Letter to Henry Cromwell (19 October 1709).
Source: Letters of the Late Alexander Pope, Esq. to a Lady. Never Before Published

Dogs, History

“By the way, my name's Rose Hathaway. I'm seventeen years old, training to protect and kill vampires, in love with a completely unsuitable guy, and have a best friend whose weird magic could drive her crazy.
Hey, no one said high school was easy.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Love, School, Way, Guy

“Cats are cats… the world over!
These intelligent, peace-loving, four-footed friends- who are without prejudice, without hate, without greed- may someday teach us something.
-James Mackintosh Qwilleran”

Lilian Jackson Braun (1913–2011) author

Source: The Cat Who Saw Stars

Love, Hate, World, Peace

“Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Fate, Teachers

“But, Bubba? Aren’t you and Mark friends? (Nick)
Ah, hell no. Mark’s not my friend, he’s my minion. (Bubba)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Hell

“We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

Lovers

“We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Variant: The human heart... tells us that we are more alike than we are unalike.
Source: The Complete Collected Poems

“You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.”

Paul Sweeney (1989) Scottish politician

Books, Feeling, Reading

“Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Source: Hart's Hope

Home

“Damn, Atlantean, what did you do? (Julian)
I apparently made a new friend. (Acheron)
I made a friend like that once. The bastard almost gutted me. (Julian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“Then spoke the thunder
DA Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Variant: The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Source: The Waste Land (1922)

Age, Heart

“But Valentine, why despair, why always paint the future in such sombre hues?" Maximilien asked.

"Because, my friend, I judge it by the past.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Past, Future, Painting, Despair

“I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. They are the real heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter

Still Me (1999); also quoted at the Christopher Reeve Foundation http://www.christopherreeve.org/site/c.geIMLPOpGjF/b.1097025/k.6FF5/Christopher_and_Dana_Reeve.htm <br class="br">Context: When the first Superman movie came out, I gave dozens of interviews to promote it. The most frequent question was: What is a hero? My answer was that a hero is someone who commits a courageous action without considering the consequences. Now my definition is completely different. I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. They are the real heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.

Family, Thinking, Perseverance

“My friends are my "estate."”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them.
Letter to Samuel Bowles (August 1858 or 1859), letter #193 of The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958), edited Thomas H. Johnson, associate editor Theodora Ward
Variant: My friends are my "estate." Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them.

“Sometimes Matilda longed for a friend, someone like the kind, courageous people in her books.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

People, Books, Courage

“Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Time, Forgetting

“I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Sadness, Sea

“The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Boy, Heart

“It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. "A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

World

“They're betting on how long I'll live!' I burst out. 'They're not my friends!”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“Life works on strange laws of nature (Karma).
One never knows when a friend turns enemy & vice-versa.
Rely on your Self; self-reliance”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (1956) spiritual leader

Life, Law, Nature

“Valkyrie, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your friend is most likely dead.”
“Of course he’s dead. He’s a skeleton.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Dark Days

Hate, Dead

“[T]he time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Time

“It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Reportedly in: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Mistrust, Conspiracy, and Lack of Internet Ethics (1980) Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, Ninety-second Congress. p. 32
Attributed

Friendship

“She and I were still friends, but not best friends, not like we used to be. But we were still friends. She'd known me my whole life. It's hard to throw away history. It was like you were throwing away a part of yourself.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Life, History, Parting

“For the record, we’re not friends. (Stryker)
For the record, I don’t care. (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: One Silent Night

“Have no friends not equal to yourself.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher