Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Quotes about friend
page 4
“There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.”
Jim Henson
(1936–1990) American puppeteer
Source: Favorite Songs from Jim Henson's Muppets
“True happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice.”
Cynthia's Revels (1600), Act III, scene ii
“Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel.”
Doris Lessing
(1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 499
Misattributed
“There are no laws, there are no rules, just grab your friend and love him.”
Jim Morrison
(1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors
Ludwig Van Beethoven
(1770–1827) German Romantic composer
Variant: Never shall I forget the days I spent with you. Continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours.
“The only true test of friendship is the time your friend spends on you.”
John Marsden
(1950) author
Source: Circle of Flight
Zig Ziglar
(1926–2012) American motivational speaker
As quoted in The Power of Respect : Benefit from the Most Forgotten Element of Success (2009) by Deborah Norville, p. 65
“Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friends”
John Lennon
(1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
“Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”
Book VIII, 1155a.5
Nicomachean Ethics
Source: The Nicomachean Ethics
“Sometimes being a good friend means saying nothing.”
Kristin Hannah
(1960) American writer
Source: Firefly Lane
“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”
Source: Different Seasons
Robert F. Kennedy
(1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy
Source: Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis
“If you make friends with yourself, you'll never be alone.”
Maxwell Maltz
(1889–1975) Plastic surgeon, self-help author
Variant: If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Widely attributed to Emerson on the internet, this actually originates with "What is Success?” http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/emerson/Ephemera/Success.html by Bessie Anderson Stanley in Heart Throbs Volume Two (1911) edited by Joseph Mitchell Chapple.
Misattributed
“Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.”
Amos Bronson Alcott
(1799–1888) American teacher and writer
Misattributed
Source: Concord Days
“Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Sec. 56
The Gay Science (1882)
“A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.”
Abraham Lincoln
(1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
“If you lose money you lose much,
If you lose friends you lose more,
If you lose faith you lose all.”
My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt's Acclaimed Newspaper Columns 1936-62
“Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
W.B. Yeats
(1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
The Municipal Gallery Revisited http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1659/, st. 7
Last Poems (1936-1939)
Variant: Think where man's glory most begins and ends. And say my glory was I had such friends.
Context: You that would judge me, do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland's history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.
“Most people don't bother about their friends in the vegetable kingdom.”
Frank Zappa
(1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
“When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.”
Mark Twain
(1835–1910) American author and humorist
“True friends are like diamonds – bright, beautiful, valuable, and always in style.”
Nicole Richie
(1981) American television personality, musician, actress, and author
Vincent Van Gogh
(1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)
Quote in his letter from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Oct. 1883, 'Van Gogh's Letters', http://webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/13/336.htm
1880s, 1883
“If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.”
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Marcus Garvey
(1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur
“America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”
Henry Kissinger
(1923–2023) United States Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger: The White House Years, quoted from Dinesh D'Souza: What's so great about America http://books.google.com/books?id=tFcDN5D1SLQC&pg=PA164&dq=kissinger+america+friends+only+interests&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=50&as_brr=0&ei=_UCDSs7YA6fuygTH3LTiCg&hl=sv#v=onepage&q=kissinger%20america%20friends%20only%20interests&f=false. This echoes Lord Palmerston's words: "We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual".
1980s
“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
Abraham Lincoln
(1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
His response when "accused of treating his opponents with too much courtesy and kindness, and when it was pointed out to him that his whole duty was to destroy them", as quoted in More New Testament Words (1958) by William Barclay; either this anecdote or Lincoln's reply may have been adapted from a reply attributed to Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund:
:* Some courtiers reproached the Emperor Sigismond that, instead of destroying his conquered foes, he admitted them to favour. “Do I not,” replied the illustrious monarch, “effectually destroy my enemies, when I make them my friends?”
::* "Daily Facts" in The Family Magazine Vol. IV (1837), p. 123 http://books.google.de/books?id=aW0EAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA123&dq=destroy; also quoted as simply in "Do I not effectually destroy my enemies, in making them my friends?" in The Sociable Story-teller (1846)
Disputed
“My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”
Abraham Lincoln
(1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
“Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.”
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Source: Shantaram
“Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.”
Elbert Hubbard
(1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul
The Motto Book (1907).
Variant: Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.
Aldo Leopold
(1887–1948) American writer and scientist
"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 145-146.
1930s
Context: Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. … Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.
Antonin Sertillanges
(1863–1948) French philosopher
Source: The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods
Jimmy Carter
(1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Never make excuses. Your friends don't need them and your foes won't believe them.”
John Wooden
(1910–2010) American basketball coach
Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
Nora Ephron
(1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter
Source: I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
Bertrand Russell
(1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 3: A Free Man's Worship
Context: Such... but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.
Context: That Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.
“I don't like to commit myself about Heaven and Hell, you see, I have friends in both places.”
Mark Twain
(1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”
George Eliot
(1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator
Source: Mr Gilfil's Love Story
“Best friends are important. They're the closest thing to a sister you'll ever have.”
Jenny Han
(1980) American writer
Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty
Polonius, Act I, scene iii.
Source: Hamlet (1600–1)
“In the high tide or low tide, I'm gonna be your friend… I'm gonna be your friend!”
Bob Marley
(1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician
Song High Tide Or Low Tide
“Chance made us sisters. Hearts made us friends.”
Zig Ziglar
(1926–2012) American motivational speaker
“There are no strangers, only friends you have not met yet.”
W.B. Yeats
(1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
Tad Williams
(1957) novelist
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 42, “Beneath the Uduntree” (p. 718).
Context: “Never make your home in a place,” the old man had said, too lazy in the spring warmth to do more than wag a finger. “Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it—memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things.” Morgenes had grinned. “That way it will go with you wherever you journey. You’ll never lack for a home—unless you lose your head, of course...”
“To be successful you need friends and to be very successful you need enemies.”
Source: The Other Side of Midnight
Stephen King
book
It
Source: It (1986), Ch. 16 : Eddie's Bad Break, §8
Context: Maybe, he thought, there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends — maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.
“Only my books anoint me,
and a few friends,
those who reach into my veins.”
Anne Sexton
(1928–1974) poet from the United States
Source: The Complete Poems
“When you lose your temper, you lose a friend. When you lie, you lose yourself.”
Robyn Carr
American writer
Harvest Moon
Mark Twain
(1835–1910) American author and humorist
Source Undetermined in Everyone's Mark Twain (1972) compiled by Caroline Thomas Harnsberger, p. 161
Disputed
Source: The Passionate Pilgrim
“Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
(-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
“Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is.”
Daniel Handler
(1970) American novelist, children's writer, creator of Lemony Snicket
“I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”
She Stoops to Conquer (1771), Act I
Source: The Vicar of Wakefield
“Never do anything wrong to make a friend or keep one”
Robert E. Lee
(1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War
As quoted in Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography (1986) by Robert A. Caro and William Knowlton Zinsser. Also quoted in Truman by David McCullough (1992), p. 44, New York: Simon & Schuster.-
Context: You must be frank with the world; frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted you mean to do right … Never do anything wrong to make a friend or keep one; the man who requires you to do so, is dearly purchased at a sacrifice. Deal kindly, but firmly with all your classmates; you will find it the policy which wears best. Above all do not appear to others what you are not.
“I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”
Oscar Wilde
(1854–1900) Irish writer and poet