171 Inspirational Quotes for Best Friends That Celebrate True Friendship

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Don't walk in front of me… I may not follow Don't walk behind me… I may not lead Walk beside me… just be my friend"

- Albert Camus

"There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature."

- Jane Austen

"Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing."

- E.B. White

"If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart. I'll stay there forever."

- Winnie the Pooh

"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."

- Walter Winchell

"Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down."

- Oprah Winfrey

"My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me."

- Henry Ford

"To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world."

- Dr. Seuss

"Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget."

- G. Randolf

"If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together…there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think but the most important thing is, even if we're apart… I'll always be with you."

- Winnie the Pooh

"Things are never quite as scary when you've got a best friend."

- Bill Watterson

"A true friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be anywhere else."

- Len Wein

"She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."

- Toni Morrison

"If you have one true friend you have more than your share."

- Thomas Fuller

"I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let's face it, friends make life a lot more fun."

- Charles R. Swindoll

"There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

"The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity."

- Ulysses S. Grant

"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives."

- Euripides

"Remember that the most valuable antiques are dear old friends."

- H. Jackson Brown Jr.

"Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ."

- C.S. Lewis

"If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever."

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."

- Henri Nouwen

"Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies."

- Aristotle

"There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship."

- Thomas Aquinas

"Of all possessions, a friend is the most precious."

- Herodotus

"One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood."

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Friends…they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams."

- Henry David Thoreau

"My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake."

- Aristotle

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."

- Albert Schweitzer

"Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses... swapped back and forth and over again."

- Michelle Obama

"There are friendships imprinted in our hearts that will never be diminished by time and distance."

- Dodinsky

"No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth."

- Robert Southey

"A friend is one of the best things you can be and the greatest things you can have."

- Sarah Valdez

"A real friendship should not fade as time passes, and should not weaken because of space separation."

- John Newton

"Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer."

- Ed Cunningham

"Friends are the siblings God never gave us."

- Mencius

"Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."

- Marcel Proust

"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."

- Helen Keller

"I don't know what I would have done so many times in my life if I hadn't had my girlfriends. They have literally gotten me up out of bed, taken my clothes off, put me in the shower, dressed me, said, 'Hey, you can do this,' put my high heels on and pushed me out the door!"

- Reese Witherspoon

"Remember that life's most valuable antiques are dear old friends."

- H. Jackson Brown Jr.

"A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down."

- Arnold H. Glasgow

"The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it."

- Hubert H. Humphrey

"A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself."

- Jim Morrison

"Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."

- Muhammad Ali

"A friend is what the heart needs all the time."

- Henry van Dyke

"If you have two friends in your lifetime, you're lucky. If you have one good friend, you're more than lucky."

- S.E. Hinton

"My old grandmother always used to say, summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever."

- George R.R. Martin

"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked."

- Bernard Meltzer

"What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."

- Aristotle

"I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff."

- Jon Katz

"Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."

- Muhammad Ali

"Distance means so little, when someone means so much."

- Tom McNeal

"Time doesn't take away from friendship, nor does separation."

- Tennessee Williams

"Through the ups, the downs and the sideways, life is always better with friends."

- Mercedes Lucero

"Friends are the family we choose for ourselves."

- Edna Buchanan

"The most important discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart."

- Elisabeth Foley

"A single rose can be my garden…a single friend, my world."

- Leo Buscaglia

"A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails."

- Donna Roberts

"It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter."

- Marlene Dietrich

"A good friend is like a four-leaf clover; hard to find and lucky to have."

- Irish proverb

"I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light."

- Helen Keller

"The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another's little lapses."

- David Storey

"As long as we share the same sky and breathe the same air, we're still together."

- Donna Lynn Hope

"Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled."

- Ally Condie

"A true friend is for ever a friend."

- George MacDonald

"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"No road is long with good company."

- Turkish Proverb

"Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them."

- Francesco Guicciardini

"Every new friend is a new adventure… the start of more memories."

- Patrick Lindsay

"The kindest way of helping yourself is to find a friend."

- Ann Kaiser Stearns

"When the world is so complicated, the simple gift of friendship is within all of our hands."

- Maria Shriver

"If you are ever lucky enough to find a weirdo, never let them go."

- Matthew Gray Gubler

"A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand."

- Kahlil Gibran

"A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside."

- Winnie the Pooh

"The best mirror is an old friend."

- George Herbert

"You don't have to have anything in common with people you've known since you were five. With old friends, you've got your whole life in common."

- Lyle Lovett

"How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live 'em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give 'em."

- Shel Silverstein

"What I realize now in hindsight is that there is a natural ebb and flow to friendships. There are times you think there's nothing left between you, that you've hit the bottom, but the special ones survive, find ways of restoring themselves."

- Colette McBeth

"There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy."

- Henry Ford

"Friendship isn't a big thing — it's a million little things."

- Paulo Coelho

"I have learned that to be with those I like is enough."

- Walt Whitman

"Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over."

- Octavia E. Butler

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for."

- Bob Marley

"When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable."

- Jess C. Scott

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."

- C.S. Lewis

"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."

- Anais Nin

"No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow."

- Alice Walker

"Can miles truly separate you from friends…If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?"

- Richard Bach

"Each new friendship can make you a new person, because it opens up new doors inside of you."

- Kate DiCamillo

"There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound."

- Diana Cortes

"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

- Carl W. Buechner

"True friendship is when two friends can walk in opposite directions, yet remain side by side."

- Josh Grayson

"The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends."

- Virginia Woolf

"Friendship is a wildly underrated medication."

- Anna Deavere Smith

"As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend."

- King Solomon

"The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend."

- Henry David Thoreau

"It takes a long time to grow an old friend."

- John Leonard

"A true friend freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably."

- William Penn

"Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing."

- Elie Wiesel

"Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer."

- Jean de La Fontaine

"I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better."

- Plutarch

"There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first; when you learn to live for others, they will live for you."

- Paramahansa Yogananda

"My friends are my estate."

- Emily Dickinson

"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself."

- Frances Ward Weller

"True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils. Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island... to find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing."

- Baltasar Gracian

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

- Anais Nin

"The greatest sweetener of human life is friendship."

- Joseph Addison

"The only way to have a friend is to be one."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, for in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed."

- Kahlil Gibran

"Two things you will never have to chase: True friends & true love."

- Mandy Hale

"Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare — and precious as a pearl."

- Tahar Ben Jelloun

"Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that."

- Ally Condie

"It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help."

- Epicurus

"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity."

- Kahlil Gibran

"Friendship is a sheltering tree;"

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years."

- Richard Bach

"Friendship's the wine of life."

- Edward Young

"Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes."

- Henry David Thoreau

"There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met."

- William Butler Yeats

"Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant."

- Socrates

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

- Confucius

"You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes."

- A.A. Milne

"False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports."

- Richard Burton

"Silence makes the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts."

- Margaret Lee Runbeck

"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Be genuinely interested in everyone you meet and everyone you meet will be genuinely interested in you."

- Rasheed Ogunlaru

"The great thing about new friends is that they bring new energy to your soul."

- Shanna Rodriguez

"Getting to know new people and gaining new friends is one of life's greatest pleasures. So conquer your fears and get out there."

- Tony Clark

"A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face."

- Maya Angelou

"Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious."

- Thomas Aquinas

"True friendship is a plant of slow growth."

- George Washington

"Friendship is the sweetest influence."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost."

- Charles Caleb Colton

"A friend is a gift you give yourself."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together."

- Woodrow Wilson

"Only a true best friend can protect you from your immortal enemies."

- Richelle Mead

"One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about."

- Mindy Kaling

"To like and dislike the same things, that is what makes a solid friendship."

- Sallust

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence."

- George Washington

"A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth."

- Charles Darwin

"Friends and good manners will carry you where money won't go."

- Margaret Walker

"Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected."

- Charles Lamb

"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate."

- Linda Grayson

"Well, it seems to me that the best relationships - the ones that last - are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is... suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with."

- Gillian Anderson

"Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure."

- Stephen King

"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation."

- Oscar Wilde

"Don't be afraid of new beginnings. Don't shy away from new people, new energy, new surroundings. Embrace new chances at happiness."

- Billy Chapata

"Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up."

- Thomas J. Watson, Jr.

"You are my best friend as well as my lover, and I do not know which side of you I enjoy the most. I treasure each side, just as I have treasured our life together."

- Nicholas Sparks

"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

- Mark Twain

"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"

- Abraham Lincoln

"Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Everyone you meet knows something you don't know but need to know. Learn from them."

- C.G. Jung

"The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship."

- William Blake

"There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature."

- P.G. Wodehouse

"There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends."

- Sylvia Plath

"A friend to all is a friend to none."

- Aristotle

"It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?"

- A. A. Milne

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself."

- Josh Billings

"There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth."

- Chanakya

"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."

- John D. Rockefeller

"Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend."

"Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil."

"There's not a word yet for old friends who've just met."