Quotes about friend
page 38

Libba Bray photo
Lee Atwater photo
Larry Flynt photo
Francisco De Goya photo

“I had established an enviable scheme of life. I refused to dance attendance in the ante-chambers of the great. If anyone wanted something from me he had to ask. I was much run after, but if the person was not of rank, or a friend, I worked [painted] for nobody.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to his friend Don Martín Zapater, c. 1789; from: Francisco Zapater y Gomez : Goya; Noticias biograficas, Zaragoza, 1868, La Perse Verencia; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p. 182
1780s

George Horne photo
The Mother photo
Terence photo

“It is a maxim of old that among themselves all things are common to friends.”

Act V, scene 3, line 18 (803).
Adelphoe (The Brothers)

Truman Capote photo
Fritz Leiber photo
John Oliver photo
John Dryden photo

“Be kind to my remains; and oh defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend!”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Epistle to Congreve (1693), line 72.

Tori Amos photo
Wendy Doniger photo
Boris Johnson photo

“With friends like these, who needs Yemenis?”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

At a summit about the civil war in Yemen, Financial Times, 19 September 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/4060a7e0-9972-11e7-a652-cde3f882dd7b
Attributed

“It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies, seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; CCLXXXVI
Lacon (1820)

David Brewster photo

“The only sure mode of acquiring sound ideas of our relation to the Creator is to begin with the study of ourselves, and to view God as a Father and Friend, dealing with us in precisely the same way as we would deal with others over whom we exercise authority. Conscience, that infallible Mentor "that sticketh closer than a brother," tells us that we are responsible beings; and in the domestic, as well as the social circle, we speedily feel the discipline and learn the lesson of rewards and punishments. The law written in man's heart points to the past as pregnant with events which may affect the future; and in the earnestness of his aspirations, and the activity of his search, he is gradually led to the mysterious history of his race. He learns that on tables of stone have been engraven the same law to which his heart responded; -that when all were dead, one died for all; and in the contemplation of the great sacrifice, he obtains a solution of the interesting problem of his individual destiny. The Sacred record which is now his guide, speaks to him of fore-knowledge and predestination, while, in perfect consistency, it records the ministration of descending spirits, and the holier communings of God with man. The Divine decrees no longer perplex him. They transcend, indeed, his Reason - but that Reason, the faithful interpreter of Conscience, does not falter in proclaiming the Freedom of his Will, and the Responsibility of his Actions.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Review of Vestiges (1845)

Hale Boggs photo

“[FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover lied his eyes out to the [Warren] Commission – on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it.”

Hale Boggs (1914–1972) American politician

Speaking to an aide, quoted by Bernard Fensterwald, Coincidence or Conspiracy?

William Cowper photo

“She that asks
Her dear five hundred friends.”

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 642.

Laxmi Prasad Devkota photo

“Oh yes, friend! I'm crazy- that's just the way I am.”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

Lunatic. 1
पागल (The Lunatic)

Tyra Banks photo

“I was embarrassed when a businessman friend asked, 'What's the yearly budget of your talk show? What's the per-episode budget?' And I looked at him with these blank, typical-model eyes and said, 'I don't know.' I call myself a businesswoman and I don't know that? So that is my goal next year--to really dissect the budget.”

Tyra Banks (1973) American model, author and television personality

Kiri Blakeley (July 3, 2006) "Celebrity 100: Tyra Banks On It" http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2006/0703/120.html, Forbes, Forbes.com LLC.

Josefa Iloilo photo
Charles James Fox photo
Will Carleton photo
Charles Symmons photo
Diogenes Laërtius photo

“He was once asked what a friend is, and his answer was, "One soul abiding in two bodies."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Aristotle, 9.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics

Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Chuck Klosterman photo

“At some point in the past, this person was (arguably) your best friend.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006), Recognizing Your Nemesis

Harry Truman photo

“Some of my best friends never agree with me politically.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Statement to a group of four congress freshmen (2 July 1947), as quoted in The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 44

Salman al-Ouda photo
Muharrem İnce photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“Nowhere would anyone grant that science and poetry can be united. They forgot that science arose from poetry, and failed to see that a change of times might beneficently reunite the two as friends, at a higher level and to mutual advantage.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Von andern Seiten her vernahm ich ähnliche Klänge, nirgends wollte man zugeben, daß Wissenschaft und Poesie vereinbar seien. Man vergaß, daß Wissenschaft sich aus Poesie entwickelt habe, man bedachte nicht, daß, nach einem Umschwung von Zeiten, beide sich wieder freundlich, zu beiderseitigem Vorteil, auf höherer Stelle, gar wohl wieder begegnen könnten.
Zur Morphologie (On Morphology), (1817)

Benjamin Franklin photo

“To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

This has been widely attributed to Franklin since the 1940s, but is not found in any of his works. The language is not Franklin's, nor that of his time. It does paraphrase a portion of something he wrote in 1732 under the name Alice Addertongue:
If I have never heard Ill of some Person, I always impute it to defective Intelligence; for there are none without their Faults, no, not one. If she be a Woman, I take the first Opportunity to let all her Acquaintance know I have heard that one of the handsomest or best Men in Town has said something in Praise either of her Beauty, her Wit, her Virtue, or her good Management. If you know any thing of Humane Nature, you perceive that this naturally introduces a Conversation turning upon all her Failings, past, present, and to come.
Misattributed

Dr. Seuss photo
Newton Lee photo
Seneca the Younger photo

“Who is everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.”
Nusquam est qui ubique est. Vitam in peregrinatione exigentibus hoc evenit, ut multa hospitia habeant, nullas amicitias.

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

Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter II: On discursiveness in reading, Line 2.

Jack Black photo

“[cries] I just want my friend back!”

Jack Black (1969) American actor, comedian, musician, music producer
Camille Paglia photo
Rani Mukerji photo
Bernard of Clairvaux photo
Jack Vance photo
Alain photo
Mark Zuckerberg photo
Algernon Charles Swinburne photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Hariprasad Chaurasia photo
Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“6103. A Friend in Need
Is a Friend in Deed.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

James Taylor photo
R. A. Salvatore photo
Gary Player photo

“An old friend once told me, you don't go fill up your car with gas at night and then park it in the garage.”

Gary Player (1935) South African golfer

Gary Player – Great Golfer, Better Human Being, WorldGolf.com, Kyle Dalton, 2008-12-09 http://www.worldgolf.com/course-design/gary-player-profile.htm,

Dilip Sankarreddy photo
Richard Koch photo
Lewis Mumford photo

“Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America, 1865-1895 (1931), p. 3

James Madison photo
J.M.W. Turner photo

“Well, Gaffer [his early friend Mr. Wells, artist] I see there will be no peace till I comply; so give me a piece of paper. There, now, rule the size for me, and tell me what I am to do. [Mr. Wells told him: 'Well divide your subject into classes, say: Pastoral, Marine, Elegant Pastoral, and so forth..']”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote of Turner, c. 1806?; told by Mr Wells' daughter, Mrs. Wheeler; included in The life of J.M.W. Turner, Volume II, George Walter Thornbury; Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, p. 55
the first drawings for the publication of Turners's famous print-collection Liber Studiorum started here; Mrs. Clara Wheeler as a young girl sat by his side while Turner was making those drawings. A few years later she have gone out many times, sketching with Turner
1795 - 1820

Ted Cruz photo
Nicolas Chamfort photo

“After a certain age, any new friends we make in our attempt to replace the ones we've lost are like glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Les nouveaux amis que nous faisons après un certain âge, et par lesquels nous cherchons à remplacer ceux que nous avons perdus, sont à nos anciens amis ce que les yeux de verre, les dents postiches et les jambes de bois sont aux véritables yeux, aux dents naturelles et aux jambes de chair et d'os.
Maximes et Pensées (Van Bever, Paris :1923), #303
Reflections

Klayton photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“They are not your friends, but they are your enemies in fact, though not in intention, who teach you to look to the Legislature for the radical removal of the evils that afflict human life…It is the individual mind and conscience, it is the individual character, on which mainly human happiness or misery depends. (Cheers.) The social problems that confront us are many and formidable. Let the Government labour to its utmost, let the Legislature labour days and nights in your service; but, after the very best has been attained and achieved, the question whether the English father is to be the father of a happy family and the centre of a united home is a question which must depend mainly upon himself. (Cheers.) And those who…promise to the dwellers in towns that every one of them shall have a house and garden in free air, with ample space; those who tell you that there shall be markets for selling at wholesale prices retail quantities—I won't say are imposters, because I have no doubt they are sincere; but I will say they are quacks (cheers); they are deluded and beguiled by a spurious philanthropy, and when they ought to give you substantial, even if they are humble and modest boons, they are endeavouring, perhaps without their own consciousness, to delude you with fanaticism, and offering to you a fruit which, when you attempt to taste it, will prove to be but ashes in your mouths.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Cheers.
Speech at Blackheath (28 October 1871), quoted in The Times (30 October 1871), p. 3.
1870s

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Roger Ebert photo
Cyrano de Bergerac photo
Prince William, Duke of Cambridge photo

“I think at first they were a bit surprised that it had happened, then they realised it was really nice and it was good fun and we got on really well, they were good friends of ours as well so we had a good giggle with them as well.”

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (1982) a member of the British royal family

On the reaction of their flatmates when he and Kate became romantically involved with each other.
First post-engagement interview (2010)

Ernst Röhm photo
Charles Dickens photo
Robert E. Howard photo

“Come, my friend, let us cuss things in general.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (January 14, 1926)
Letters

Isaac Rosenberg photo
Nicolas Sarkozy photo
Joseph Gordon-Levitt photo

“My dad never blew anything up, but he probably had friends who did. He and my mom have always preached that the pen is mightier than a Molotov cocktail.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

The New York Times, March 25, 2007.

Francis Bacon photo
Hal David photo
Nelson Mandela photo

“I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on friendship, From his unplubished autobiographical manuscript written in 1975. Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes
1970s

Michelle Obama photo
James Taylor photo

“In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina.
Can't you see the sunshine?
Can't you just feel the moonshine?
Ain't it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind?
Yes, I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Carolina in My Mind" · BBC performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXmgkvIgc0w
Song lyrics, James Taylor (1968)

Jean-François Millet photo
Emma Thompson photo
E. W. Howe photo

“A man needs a friend not to flatter him, but to strengthen him at his weak points.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Country Town Sayings [An anthology of witty sentences by the author] (1911), p81.

Adolf Hitler photo

“Our Italian ally has been a source of embarrassment to us everywhere. It was this alliance, for instance, which prevented us from pursuing a revolutionary policy in North Africa. In the nature of things, this territory was becoming an Italian preserve and it was as such that the Duce laid claim to it. Had we been on our own, we could have emancipated the Moslem countries dominated by France; and that would have had enormous repercussions in the Near East, dominated by Britain, and in Egypt. But with our fortunes linked to those of the Italians, the pursuit of such a policy was not possible. All Islam vibrated at the news of our victories. The Egyptians, the Irakis and the whole of the Near East were all ready to rise in revolt. Just think what we could have done to help them, even to incite them, as would have been both our duty and in our own interest! But the presence of the Italians at our side paralysed us; it created a feeling of malaise among our Islamic friends, who inevitably saw in us accomplices, willing or unwilling, of their oppressors. For the Italians in these parts of the world are more bitterly hated, of course, than either the British or the French. The memories of the barbarous, reprisals taken against the Senussi are still vivid. Then again the ridiculous pretensions of the Duce to be regarded as The Sword of Islam evokes the same sneering chuckle now as it did before the war. This title, which is fitting for Mahomed and a great conqueror like Omar, Mussolini caused to be conferred on himself by a few wretched brutes whom he had either bribed or terrorized into doing so. We had a great chance of pursuing a splendid policy with regard to Islam. But we missed the bus, as we missed it on several other occasions, thanks to our loyalty to the Italian alliance! In this theatre of operations, then, the Italians prevented us from playing our best card, the emancipation of the French subjects and the raising of the standard of revolt in the countries oppressed by the British. Such a policy would have aroused the enthusiasm of the whole of Islam. It is a characteristic of the Moslem world, from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific, that what affects one, for good or for evil, affects all.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

17 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

David Wood photo

“Nietzsche would say my friends lacked ears.”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 8, Performative Reflexivity, p. 133

Phillips Brooks photo

“As two floating planks meet and part on the sea,
O friend! so I met and then drifted from thee.”

William R. Alger (1822–1905) American clergyman and poet

"The Brief Chance Encounter", p. 196.
Poetry of the Orient, 1865 edition

Samuel Johnson photo

“Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Stanza 2
Elegy on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser in Physic (1783)

Kent Hovind photo
Alessandro Manzoni photo

“The general practice is for the secret to be confided only to an equally trustworthy friend, the same conditions being imposed on him. And so from trustworthy friend to trustworthy friend the secret goes moving on round that immense chain, until finally it reaches the ears of just the very person or persons whom the first talker had expressly intended it never should reach.”

Ma la pratica generale ha volato che ella obblighi soltanto a non confidare il segreto che ad un amico egualmente fidato, e imponendogli la condizione medesima. Cosi d'amico fidato in amico fidato, il segreto gira e gira per quella immensa catena, tanto che giunge all' orecchio di colui o di coloro a cui il primo che ha parlato intendeva appunto di non lasciarlo giunger mai.
Source: The Betrothed (1827; 1842), Ch. 11, p. 155

Hesiod photo
Michelle Obama photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Edwin Arlington Robinson photo

“We are young
And we are friends of time.”

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) American poet

Captain Craig (1902)

Gustav Stresemann photo
Mike Tyson photo
Anne Brontë photo

“I possess the faculty of enjoying the company of those I — of my friends as well in silence as in conversation.”

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. IX : A Snake in the Grass; Gilbert to Helen

Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Thomas Hughes photo