The 125 Best Friendship Quotes

True friendship is deeply gratifying. It enriches every aspect of your life and comes with many important benefits. Friends are there for you when you need them the most and they help you to face difficult times with greater courage. When you have established an unbreakable bond with a handful of remarkable individuals that you can call your friends, every aspect of your life will be more pleasurable. In fact, friendship can have a great impact on your happiness and psychological well-being. For this reason, it’s always a great idea to let your friends know how much they mean to you every once in a while. The following quotes about friends will help you to celebrate the wonders, beauty, and joy of friendship. Here’s our hand-picked collection of the very best friendship quotes. For even more quotes about friendship, have a look at the funniest quotes about friendship.

Sometimes, it’s really difficult to describe how much your friends mean to you. You know that they are everything to you but you may simply not find the right words that express how important your friends are.

“Friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'”
C.S. Lewis

Luckily, there are many eloquent poets, wise authors, and remarkable artists who found just the right words to articulate the beauty of friendship. Many of the friendship quotes in the following stem from some of the wisest men and women that have ever walked on this planet. Their unique insights about friendship will remind you how important friendship is. The statements of these wise individuals will also show you that friendship is one of the greatest forces in this universe, aside from love.

Enjoy the friendship quotes in the following.

Here’s our collection of the best and most inspiring friendship quotes. Enjoy these inspiring quotes about friends.

The 125 Best Friendship Quotes

Having a couple of inspiring quotes about friendship at hand can be quite beneficial, especially when your friends are not around. These are the friendship quotes that will lift you up during difficult times and they will remind you to cherish your friends.

Here’s our selection of the best friendship quotes.

1. Friedrich Nietzsche on true friendship

“Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

2. Hubert H. Humphrey on the greatest gift

“The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it.”
Hubert H. Humphrey

3. Euripides on the importance of friends

“Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.”
Euripides

4. Walter Winchell on real friends

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”
Walter Winchell

5. Marlene Dietrich on the only friends that matter

“It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.”
Marlene Dietrich

6. Seneca on the qualities of friendship

“One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.”
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

7. Doug Larson on failures and successes

“A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success.”
Doug Larson

8. Helen Keller on darkness and light

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”
Helen Keller

9. Mencius on friendship

“Friendship is one mind in two bodies.”
Mencius

10. Marcel Proust on being grateful for your friends

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Marcel Proust

11. William Penn on true friends

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

12. Laurence J. Peter on making a fool of yourself

“You can always tell a real friend: when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.”
Laurence J. Peter

13. Thomas Aquinas on the value of friendship

“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”
Thomas Aquinas

14. Aristotle on trying to befriend everyone

“A friend to all is a friend to none.”
Aristotle

15. Charles R. Swindoll on friends and fun

“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

16. Len Wein on true friendship

“A true friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be anywhere else.”
Len Wein

17. Henry Van Dyke on what the heart needs

“A friend is what the heart needs all the time.”
Henry Van Dyke

18. Herodotus on the most precious possession

“Of all possessions a friend is the most precious.”
Herodotus

19. Ralph Waldo Emerson on old friends

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

20. Chanakya on making friends

“Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will never give you any happiness.”
Chanakya

21. Jackson Brown, Jr. on important gestures

“Remember that a gesture of friendship, no matter how small, is always appreciated.”
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

22. Aristotle on having a best friend

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

23. Mencius on God-given friends

“Friends are the siblings God never gave us.”
Mencius

24. Anaïs Nin on the world within

“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.”
Anaïs Nin

25. Francois R. on the greatest blessing

“A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

26. Leo Buscaglia on the impact of a single friend

“A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.”
Leo Buscaglia

27. Ralph Waldo Emerson on finding friends

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

28. Charles Caleb Colton on true friendship

“True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.”
Charles Caleb Colton

29. Jean de la Bruyere on being friends

“Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other’s little failings.”
Jean de la Bruyere

30. Muhammad Ali on the meaning of friendship

“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

31. Arnold H. Glasow on true friends

“A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.”
Arnold H. Glasow

32. Robert Louis Stevenson on a precious gift

“A friend is a gift you give yourself.”
Robert Louis Stevenson

33. George MacDonald on giving gifts

“If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.”
George MacDonald

34. Baltasar Gracian on friendship that multiplies

“Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.”
Baltasar Gracian

35. Euripides on loyal friends

“One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.”
Euripides

36. Henry David Thoreau on the language of friendship

“The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”
Henry David Thoreau

37. Henri Nouwen on those that share our pain

“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.”
Henri Nouwen

38. Paramahansa Yogananda on attracting true friends

“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

39. Baltasar Gracian on a life without friends

“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

40. Washington Irving on sweet memories

“Sweet is the memory of distant friends! Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart.”
Washington Irving

41. E. W. Howe on enemies and friends

“Instead of loving your enemies – treat your friends a little better.”
E. W. Howe

42. Plautus on the value of a real friend

“Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.”
Plautus

43. Joseph Brodsky on finding friends

“How delightful to find a friend in everyone.”
Joseph Brodsky

44. Epicurus on friends that help us

“It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.”
Epicurus

45. Bill Watterson on things that scare you

“Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend.”
Bill Watterson

46. Albert Camus on being friends

“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

47. Ulysses S. Grant on valuable friends

“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

48. Jackson Brown, Jr. on valuable antiques

“Remember that the most valuable antiques are dear old friends.”
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

49. Ethel Barrymore on making friends

“The best time to make friends is before you need them.”
Ethel Barrymore

50. Marcel Proust on being grateful

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Marcel Proust

51. Elbert Hubbard on true friends

“A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.”
Elbert Hubbard

52. Jean de La Fontaine on true friendship

“Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.”
Jean de La Fontaine

53. Euripides on the blessings of life

“Life has no blessing like a prudent friend.”
Euripides

54. Elie Wiesel on friendship and love

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

55. Nathaniel Hawthorne on intimate friends

“Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne

56. Henry David Thoreau on true knowledge

“True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.”
Henry David Thoreau

57. John Webster on old friends

“Lay this unto your breast: Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.”
John Webster

58. William Butler on strangers

“There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met.”
William Butler Yeats

59. Thomas Jefferson on different opinions

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
Thomas Jefferson

60. Henry David Thoreau on being a good friend

“The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.”
Henry David Thoreau

61. Martin Luther King, Jr. on love

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

62. Oprah Winfrey on taking the bus together

“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

63. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. on wearing a mask

“Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

64. Elbert Hubbard on explaining your actions

“Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.”
Elbert Hubbard

65. Giotto di Bondone on sincere friends

“The sincere friends of this world are as ship lights in the stormiest of nights.”
Giotto di Bondone

66. Khalil Gibran on sweet friendships

“In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”
Khalil Gibran

67. Margaret Lee Runbeck on silence

“Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.”
Margaret Lee Runbeck

68. Walt Whitman on those that you like

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.”
Walt Whitman

69. Pierre T. on the shape of the world

“The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

70. Charles Kingsley on true friends

“It is only the great hearted who can be true friends. The mean and cowardly, Can never know what true friendship means.”
Charles Kingsley

71. Zora Neale Hurston on living without friends

“It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.”
Zora Neale Hurston

72. Charles Darwin on the worth of a person

“A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.”
Charles Darwin

73. Dag Hammarskjold on solitude

“Friendship needs no words – it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.”
Dag Hammarskjold

74. Augustine Birrell on friendship

“Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.”
Augustine Birrell

75. Oliver Holmes, Sr. on what friendship is

“But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

76. Plutarch on needing a friend

“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.”
Plutarch

77. Octavia Butler on being a friend

“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 Butler

78. Marcus Tullius Cicero on happiness and misery

“Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero

79. Aristotle on becoming friends

“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.”
Aristotle

80. Oscar Wilde on having no enemies

“An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.”
Oscar Wilde

81. Francis Quarles on friendship to the end

“That friendship will not continue to the end which is begun for an end.”
Francis Quarles

82. Albert Schweitzer on the inner fire

“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

83. Robert Staughton Lynd on friendship and advice

“Friendship will not stand the strain of very much good advice for very long.”
Robert Staughton Lynd

84. Khalil Gibran on the purpose of friendship

“Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.”
Khalil Gibran

85. Khalil Gibran on the responsibility of friendship

“Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.”
Khalil Gibran

86. Taylor Swift on being a friend

“All you need to do to be my friend is like me.”
Taylor Swift

87. Eugene Kennedy on the test of friendship

“The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple.”
Eugene Kennedy

88. Marcus Tullius Cicero on friendship

“A friend is, as it were, a second self.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero

89. Robert E. Lee on keeping friends

“Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or to keep one.”
Robert E. Lee

90. Alice Miller on criticism

“If it’s very painful for you to criticize your friends – you’re safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that’s the time to hold your tongue.”
Alice Miller

91. Margaret Walker on friends and good behavior

“Friends and good manners will carry you where money won’t go.”
Margaret Walker

92. Robert Hall on the opinion of a friend

“A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity.”
Robert Hall

93. Jennifer Aniston on the importance of friends

” Where would you be without friends? The people to pick you up when you need lifting? We come from homes far from perfect, so you end up almost parent and sibling to your friends – your own chosen family. There’s nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing.”
Jennifer Aniston

94. Francesco Guicciardini on making friends

“Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.”
Francesco Guicciardini

95. Jim Morrison on being yourself

“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.”
Jim Morrison

96. Jodie Foster on true friendship

“My definition of a friend is somebody who adores you even though they know the things you’re most ashamed of.”
Jodie Foster

97. Saint Francis on arguing

“A quarrel between friends, when made up, adds a new tie to friendship.”
Saint Francis de Sales

98. George Santayana on being human

“One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.”
George Santayana

99. Sarah Orne Jewett on old friends

“Yes’m, old friends is always best, ‘less you can catch a new one that’s fit to make an old one out of.’”
Sarah Orne Jewett

100. Ralph Waldo Emerson on growth

“A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

101. Sophocles on being victorious

“You win the victory when you yield to friends.”
Sophocles

102. King Solomon on friends that help you to grow

“As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.”
King Solomon

103. George Nathan on love

“Love demands infinitely less than friendship.”
George Jean Nathan

104. Barack Obama on choosing your friends

“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.”
Barack Obama

105. Toni Morrison on having a friend of mind

“She is a friend of mind. She gathers me, man. The pieces I am, she gathers them and gives 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

106. Oscar Wilde on true friends

“True friends stab you in the front.”
Oscar Wilde

107. Oscar Wilde on laughter

“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.”
Oscar Wilde

108. E. W. Howe on friends being in trouble

“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.”
E. W. Howe

109. Richard Burton on false friends

“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

110. Friedrich Nietzsche on what it is that makes a friend

“Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

111. Henri Nouwen on silence

“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

112. Henry Adams on powerful friends

“A friend in power is a friend lost.”
Henry Adams

113. Justin Bieber on tough days

“Friends are the best to turn to when you’re having a rough day.”
Justin Bieber

114. Chanakya on self-interest

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

115. Herman Melville on friendship at first sight

“Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.”
Herman Melville

116. Hilaire Belloc on disappearing friendship

“When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.”
Hilaire Belloc

117. Benjamin Franklin on choosing your friends

“Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.”
Benjamin Franklin

118. Unknown author on friendship

“A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.”
Unknown

119. Judy Holliday on lovers and friends

“Lovers have a right to betray you… friends don’t.”
Judy Holliday

120. Emily Dickinson on the value of friends

“My friends are my estate.”
Emily Dickinson

121. John D. Rockefeller on the foundation of friendship

“A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.”
John D. Rockefeller

122. Henry David Thoreau on cherishing friends

“Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.”
Henry David Thoreau

123. C. S. Lewis on the necessity of friendship

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”
C. S. Lewis

124. Thomas Jefferson on precious friendship

“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