"Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
- Albert Camus
Relationships
"I always say, Lorelei Lee got it wrong in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It's not that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but it's your best friends who are your diamonds. It's your best friends who are supremely resilient, made under pressure, and of astonishing value. They're everlasting; they can cut glass if they need to."
- Gina Barreca
Ambition
"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity."
- Kahlil Gibran
Responsibility
"Friends…they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams."
- Henry David Thoreau
"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
Resilience
"The only way to have a friend is to be one."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Connection to Earth
"My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake."
- Aristotle
"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
"A good friend is a connection to life — a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world."
- Lois Wyse
"If you live to be a 100, I want to live to be 100 minus one day so I never have to live without you."
- Winnie the Pooh
Love
"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."
"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation."
- Oscar Wilde
"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."
"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
"Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare — and precious as a pearl."
- Tahar Ben Jelloun
"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
"That was what a best friend did: hold up a mirror and show you your heart."
- Kristin Hannah
"Everyone you meet knows something you don’t know but need to know. Learn from them."
- C.G. Jung
Learning
"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
New Beginnings
"Each new friendship can make you a new person, because it opens up new doors inside of you."
- Kate DiCamillo
Personal Growth
"Be genuinely interested in everyone you meet and everyone you meet will be genuinely interested in you."
- Rasheed Ogunlaru
Empowerment
"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 great thing about new friends is that they bring new energy to your soul."
- Shanna Rodriguez
"The kindest way of helping yourself is to find a friend."
- Ann Kaiser Stearns
"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
"There are friendships imprinted in our hearts that will never be diminished by time and distance."
- Dodinsky
"A friend is one of the best things you can be and the greatest things you can have."
- Sarah Valdez
"Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together."
- Woodrow Wilson
"Time doesn’t take away from friendship, nor does separation."
- Tennessee Williams
"Friends are the family we choose for ourselves."
- Edna Buchanan
"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."
- Walter Winchell
"A single rose can be my garden…a single friend, my world."
- Leo Buscaglia
"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."
- Elbert Hubbard
Compassion
"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
"Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget."
- G. Randolf
"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
Courage
"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
"I would rather walk with a friend in the dark than walk alone in the light."
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'"
- C.S. Lewis
"True friends are like diamonds — bright, beautiful, valuable, and always in style."
- Nicole Richie
"There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship."
- Thomas Aquinas
"Friends are the family you choose."
- Jess C. Scott
"Anything is possible when you have the right people there to support you."
- Misty Copeland
"A sweet friendship refreshes the soul."
- Proverbs 27:9
Healing
"The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart."
- Elisabeth Foley
"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
"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by, the doubling of our joy, and diving of our grief;"
- Joseph Addison
Happiness
"And what is a friend? More than a father, more than a brother: a traveling companion, with him, you can conquer the impossible, even if you must lose it later. Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing."
- Elie Wiesel
"A true friend is for ever a friend."
- George MacDonald
"Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose."
Choice
"For it would then be true friendship, such as no hope, no fear, no self-interest can sever. That is a friendship that stays with people until they die—and that people die for."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life."
- Amy Poehler
Motivation
"Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life—and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next."
- Dean Koontz
"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
"For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone."
- Audrey Hepburn
"The most important discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart."
"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."
Wisdom
"Can miles truly separate you from friends…If you want to be with someone you love, aren’t you already there?"
- Richard Bach
"As long as we share the same sky and breathe the same air, we’re still together."
- Donna Lynn Hope
"If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart. I’ll stay there forever."
"Distance means so little, when someone means so much."
- Tom McNeal
Family
"A real friendship should not fade as time passes, and should not weaken because of space separation."
- John Newton
"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
"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
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched — they must be felt with the heart."
"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 healing, not curing…that is a friend who cares."
- Henri Nouwen
"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."
- Albus Dumbledore
"True friends are never apart, maybe in distance but never in heart."
"Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
- Marcel Proust
Gratitude
"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
"In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, for in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed."
"Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing."
"Friends are angels who love you even at your most un-angelic."
- Carolina Fernandez
"A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world."
"Two things you will never have to chase: True friends & true love."
- Mandy Hale
"A friend is a gift, a blessing, a reason to be grateful to God."
- Jake Gahr
"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
"A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same."
"When twilight drops her curtain down and pins it with a star, remember that you have a friend though she may wander far."
- L. M. Montgomery
"They knew they’d be friends forever. And so it was."
- Cheryl Hawkinson
"Friends come and go, but the really good ones sit and stay."
- Tina Neidlein
"The best friends to have are the ones who make every long road feel shorter and every adventure even bigger."
- Keely Chace
Joy
"Someone who sticks by you, helps guide you and always sees the good in you…that’s the kind of friend you hold on to forever."
"The best friends are 'to the end' friends."
"Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Time doesn't take away from friendship, nor does separation."
"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
"Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world."
- John Evelyn
"When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know."
Belief
"Laughter is louder and life feels lighter with good friends."
- Melissa Woo
"If you have good friends, no matter how much life is sucking, they can make you laugh."
- P.C. Cast
"Real friends are the ones you can count on no matter what. The ones who go into the forest to find you and bring you home. And real friends never have to tell you that they’re your friends."
- Morgan Matson
"[The greatest gift in life] is the gift of friendship, and I have received it; the greatest healing therapy is friendship."
- Hubert Humphrey
"The thing about strength is that when you’re running a little low, you can tap a friend for a refill."
- Melvina Young
"Silence makes the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts."
- Margaret Lee Runbeck
"Friends are the stars that light up our lives all year round."
"Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends leave footprints in your heart."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
"Through the ups, the downs and the sideways, life is always better with friends."
- Mercedes Lucero
"How to measure friendship—by hours of listening by decibels of laughter by pounds of problems solved by miles of life walked together."
"Whatever words you say, a friend will hear your heart."
- Suzanne Berry
"Here’s to the moments that become great memories with the friends who become family."
"When you face the world with a friend by your side, your happiness doubles—your troubles divide."
"The best cure for a bad day is a good friend."
- Bill Gray
"Friends make the good things better and the bad things not so bad simply by being there."
- Renee Daniels
"A messy house is a must - it separates your true friends from other friends. Real friends are there to visit you not your house!"
- Jennifer Wilson
"To like and dislike the same things, that is what makes a solid friendship."
- Sallust
"Friendship is a wildly underrated medication."
- Anna Deavere Smith
"Friendship isn’t a big thing — it’s a million little things."
- Paulo Coelho
"Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend."
- Bill Watterson
"A friend is someone you’re connected to across time, space, and bizarre life situations."
"Nothing can separate true friends. Nice try, geography."
"When it gets the darkest, you’ll see who your true friends are. They’ll be the ones carrying the light."
- Katherine Stano
"Friendship is a forgiving mirror showing us we’re good enough just the way we are."
- Molly Wigand
Self-esteem
"No one has had my back, held my hand and hyped me up like my sisters."
- Amy Trowbridge-Yates
"There’s no such thing as boring when you share it with a friend."
"If your smile muscles hurt, thank a friend!"
- Chris Brethwaite
"Gratitude is what happens when you’ve got awesome friends."
"Good friends in my life. Grateful feelings in my heart."
"Friends give us the blessing of belonging."
- Megan Haave
"If you’re happy and you know it, thank your friends."
"Some friendships just get better with time."
- Jim Howard
Growth
"We grow, we change, but friendship always fits."
- John Peterson
"There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature."
- P.G. Wodehouse
"Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes."
"There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy."
"Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up."
- Thomas J. Watson
"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."
- Carl W. Buechner
Education
"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."
"When the world is so complicated, the simple gift of friendship is within all of our hands."
- Maria Shriver
"There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met."
- Jim Henson
"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
"‘Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected."
- Charles Lamb
"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked."
- Bernard Meltzer
"A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down."
- Arnold H. Glasgow
"If you are ever lucky enough to find a weirdo, never let them go."
- Matthew Gray Gubler
"The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another’s little lapses."
- David Storey
"A friend can tell you things you don’t want to tell yourself."
- Frances Ward Weller
"A friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face."
- Maya Angelou
"A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand."
"Things are never quite as scary when you've got a best friend."
"A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside."
Contentment
"The best mirror is an old friend."
- George Herbert
"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.
"Life is an ugly, awful place to not have a best friend."
- Sarah Dessen
Adversity
"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
"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
"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."
"True friendship is when two friends can walk in opposite directions, yet remain side by side."
- Josh Grayson
"True friendship is a plant of slow growth…"
- George Washington
"The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one."
Integrity
"Friendship's the wine of life."
- Edward Young
"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
"Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends."
- Virginia Woolf
"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
"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
"'Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected."
"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate."
- Linda Grayson
"Never let your best friends get lonely…keep disturbing them."
- Candlelight Publications
"A friend can make you smile even when they’re not around."
- Mike Rokoff
"My friends and I are crazy. That’s the only thing that keeps us sane."
- Matt Schucker
"There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends."
- Sylvia Plath
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means 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."
"A strong friendship doesn’t need daily conversation, doesn’t always need togetherness, as long as the relationship lives in the heart, true friends will never part."
"True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable."
"Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend."
"A true friend is somebody who can make us feel better no matter how bad things may be."
- Unknown
"A best friend is someone who makes you laugh even when you think you’ll never smile again."
"Best friends are the people in your life who make you laugh louder, smile brighter and live better."
"No friendship is an accident."
"Life was meant for good friends and great adventures."
Aspirations
"True friends are always together in spirit."
"True friends aren’t the ones who make your problems disappear. They are the ones who won’t disappear when you’re facing problems."
"Best friends understand when you say, ‘forget it.’ Wait forever when you say, ‘just a minute.’ Stay when you say, ‘leave me alone.’ And open the door before you can say, ‘come in.’"
"When it hurts to look back and you’re afraid to look ahead, you can look beside you and your best friend will be there."
"Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don’t say."
Empathy
"A strong friendship doesn’t need daily conversation or being together. As long as the relationship lives in the heart, true friends never part."
"Everyone has a friend during each stage of life. But only lucky ones have the same friend in all stages of life."
"That’s when I realized what a true friend was. Someone who would always love you — the imperfect you, the confused you, the wrong you — because that is what people are supposed to do."
"Best friends share laughs, memories and inside jokes. They will always be honest and stand by your side no matter what. They wipe your tears, pick you up when you fall, and are forever a piece of your heart."
"A part of you has grown in me, together forever we shall be, never apart, maybe in distance, but not in heart."
"To friendship every burden's light."
"A best friend is like a four-leaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have."
"You don’t have to be crazy to be my friend. I’ll train you."
"Friendship is so weird…you just pick a human you’ve met and you’re like ‘Yep, I like this one’ and you just do stuff with them."
"It’s not what we have in life, but who we have in our life that matters."
"Best friend: the one that you can be mad at only for a short period of time because you have important stuff to tell them."
"Best friends don’t care if your house is clean. They care if you have wine."
"Sometimes being with your best friend is all the therapy you need."
"We weren’t sisters [or brothers] by birth, but we knew from the start…fate brought us together to be sisters [or brothers] by heart."
"Best friends. Because if anyone else heard our conversations we’d end up in the mental hospital."
"A friend who understands your tears is much more valuable than a lot of friends who only know your smile."
"I love that our effortless friendship fits perfectly with my laziness."
"True friendship is when you walk into their house and your WiFi connects automatically."
"We’ll be best friends forever because you already know too much."
"We’ll be the old ladies causing trouble in the nursing home."
"God made us best friends because he knew our moms couldn’t handle us as sisters."
"Friends buy you food. Best friends eat your food."
"I think we’ll be friends forever because we’re too lazy to find new friends."
"Good friends are like stars. You don’t always see them, but you know they’re always there."
"It’s hard to find a friend who’s cute, loving, generous, caring, and smart. My advice to y’all is, don’t lose me."
"God couldn’t hand out hugs all the time, so he created friends."
"Whatever we step in, fall off of or trip over…friendship always gives us a soft place to land."
"By chance we met, by choice we become friends."
"True friends are great riches."
Well-being
"Best friends are the people in your life who make you laugh louder, smile brighter, and live better."
"There's not a word yet for old friends who've just met."
"A best friend is someone who makes you laugh even when you think you'll never smile again."
"Good friends are like stars. You don't always see them, but you know they're always there."
"One good friendship will outlive forty average loves."
"A friend is one who overlooks your broken fence and admires the flowers in your garden."
