- A friend in power is a friend lost.
The Education of Henry Adams (1907) ch. 7 - He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Ali ibn-Abi-Talib (602 AD - 661 AD), A Hundred Sayings - Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Eudemian Ethics - Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Nichomachean Ethics - A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling.
Arthur Brisbane, “The Book of Today” - The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961) - Friendship make prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), On Friendship, 44 B.C. - The shifts of Fortune test the reliability of friends.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), De Amicitia - It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.
Colette (1873 - 1954), The Pure and the Impure, 1932 - Have no friends not equal to yourself.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects - Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.
Czech Proverb - You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Dale Carnegie - My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet. She’s now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia.
Dame Edna Everage (1934 - ) - Never explain–your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915) - Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his.
Franklin P. Jones, Saturday Evening Post, November 29, 1953 - Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
George Washington (1732 - 1799) - Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven’t time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887 - 1986) - All people want is someone to listen.
Hugh Elliott, Standing Room Only weblog, May 8, 2003 - Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Northanger Abbey - When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.
Japanese Proverb - Go through your phone book, call people and ask them to drive you to the airport. The ones who will drive you are your true friends. The rest aren’t bad people; they’re just acquaintances.
Jay Leno (1950 - ) - In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.
John Churton Collins - True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.
Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719), The Spectator, March 17, 1911 - It isn’t kind to cultivate a friendship just so one will have an audience.
Lawana Blackwell, The Courtship of the Vicar’s Daughter, 1998 - A good friend of my son’s is a son to me.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Ethan of Athos, 1986 - Adversity does teach who your real friends are.
Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999 - If you make it plain you like people, it’s hard for them to resist liking you back.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity, 2002 - Never refuse any advance of friendship, for if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you.
Madame de Tencin - It’s the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter.
Marlene Dietrich (1901 - 1992) - Don’t flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858
- I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones. Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
- One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
The Education of Henry Adams (1907) ch. 20 - When he was asked ‘What is a friend?’ he said ‘One soul inhabiting two bodies.’
In Diogenes Laertius Lives of Philosophers bk. 5, sect. 2
Aristotle - A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
Proverbs ch. 17, v. 17 - There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
Proverbs ch. 18, v. 24 - A faithful friend is the medicine of life.
Ecclesiasticus ch. 6, v. 16 - Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him; a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.
Ecclesiasticus ch. 9, v. 10 - I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
Songs of Experience (1794) ‘A Poison Tree’
William Blake - There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.
What will he do with it? (1857) vol. 1, bk. 3, ch. 1
Edward Bulwer-Lytton - Of all the heavenly gifts that mortal men commend,
What trusty treasure in the world can countervail a friend?
‘Of Friendship’ (1557)
Nicholas Grimauld - The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
Essays (1841) ‘Friendship’
Ralph Waldo Emerson - L’amour est aveugle; l’amitié ferme les yeux.
Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
Proverbial saying - ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
The Cynic’s Word Book (1906) p. 12
Amrose Bierce - Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
Abraham Lincoln - Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
~ Richard Bach, “Illusions? - A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself.
Frank Crane - When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
Edgar Watson Howe - Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow; Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead; Walk beside me, and just be my friend.
Albert Camus - The best time to make friends is before you need them.
Ethel Barrymore - Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light.
Jennie Jerome Churchill - A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.
Arnold H. Glasgow - The road to a friend’s house is never long.
Danish Proverb - Be a friend to thyself, and others will be so too.
Thomas Fuller