To many of us, the meaning of life could be resumed by one word: Friendship. What is friendship and why do we need friends or why do we feel like growing new friendships throughout our life?
What is a Friend?
For Aristotle it is a single soul, dwelling in two bodies. For Charles Peguy, it is rare than love while according to John Way, friends are the sunshine of life. Every one of us can come up with various meanings and characteristics of friends and friendship: From trust, emotion to usefulness. Having friends make one feel special and useful, while at the same time it means facing the uncertainties with bravery knowing that there will always be someone to trust and get advice from.
Good friends are good for your health – Irwin Sarason
Importance of friendship
Friendship can be the richest and healthiest aspect of life. According to an article by the NY Times – What Are Friends for? A Longer Life -many people turn to doctors, medicines or herbal supplements for better health, but overlook their friends – the most powerful medium that could help them fighting depression and illness and help them to see the bright side of life.
Everybody is in need of a friend who is sincere, trustworthy, and caring. Without a genuine friend, life gets dull, boring and incomplete. You need somebody consistently in your life with whom you can share your thoughts, feelings, happiness and making sure it doesn’t spread around. You would know there isn’t anybody to judge you and play games against you or throw negative criticism at you. It isn’t necessary to have many friends, quantity doesn’t matter but quality of friendship does. Life is too short to envy or to hate others, instead value the existing people in your life that make you feel good.
Below are a few reasons why one should appreciate friends in their life.
- Always there in difficult times
In complex issues or situations, when you are perplexed and unable to make a decision. There comes a role of a true friend in your life. There are always ways to find out if the person is sincere with you or not. He will listen to you carefully, will be confident about you that you will be able to succeed in any problematic condition. He will be there to encourage you, support you and give comments that would make you feel better and pleasant.
- Gives time
A true friend is the one who takes out time for you from his hectic and busy schedule. Never complains how much preoccupied he was in his office or in house chores. It could happen once or twice but not always. A true friend is he who plans hangouts and decides to have meals together for the sake of spending time together. The joy of laughter brightens up the whole day. Out of many reasons of your happiness, friends make the most vital part of it.
- Sharing and caring
A true friend will always be concerned and worried about you. He will make sure if you are having a healthy diet, having a proper dose of sleep and doing all other work punctually or not. Sometimes he will act as your boss. He wouldn’t bear the neglectful and ignorant behaviour because he doesn’t want you to lack behind in any area. He will ensure you move on a right track and will provide you with best advice and resources. Lets take an example, if for instance you don’t have a farewell dress or a dress for any special occasion and you realize that at the eleventh hour, your friend is right there to lend you with whatever you need. He will be just a call away from you.
- Mutual qualities and interests
A friendship develops when two people have similar habits, qualities and intellectual level. When it matches, there builds a spark in the relationship. A bonding keeps on intensifying because of the companionship. You would want him to be with you in every event and every plan. This gives more time for both to strengthen their connection. There would always be a hope that both of you would grow and develop together in every phase of their life. Friendship involves doing something for another happily and expecting nothing in return.
Quotes About Friends
Do you have good friends? Cherish them! Friends are there to help us go through different moments.
Little friends may prove great friends.
Aesop
There’s a miracle of friendship that dwells within the heart And you don???t know how it happens or where it gets its start But the happiness it brings you always gives a special lift Any you realize that friendship Is God???s most perfect gift.
Anonymous
Sometimes a new love comes between old friends. Sometimes the best love was the one that was always there.
Anonymous
Tell me your friends, and I’ll tell you who you are.
Assyrian Proverb
If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
Blaise Pascal
We have been friends together in sunshine and in shade.
Caroline Norton
A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends.
Charles De Gaulle
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
Never judge someone by who he’s in love with; judge him by his friends. People fall in love with the most appalling people.
Cynthia Heimel
What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing
Elbert Hubbard
Friends LOVE misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too luck or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.
Erica Jong
I hate it in friends when they come too late to help.
Euripides
It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won’t save us any more than love did.
Euripides
Friends are relatives you make for yourself.
Eustache Descamps
Never exaggerate your faults. Your friends will attend to that.
Francis Bacon
One does not make friends. One recognizes them.
Garth Henrichs
We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in
George Washington
Wherever we are, it is our friends that make our world.
Henry Drummond
We cannot always assure the future of our friends we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.
A decent boldness ever meets with friends.
Homer
Friends are treasures.
Horace Bruns
In wealth many friends in poverty, not even relatives.
Japanese Proverb
We are friends and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn’t mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often.
Jeanette Winterson
You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
Joseph Conrad
No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.
La Bruyere
All things are in common among friends.
Laertius Diogenes
My father always used to say that when you die, if you’ve got five real friends, then you’ve had a great life.
Lee Iacocca
The bonds that unite another person to ourselves exist only in our mind. Memory as it grows fainter relaxes them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we cheat other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.
Marcel Proust
I thank You, God, in Heaven, for friends.
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
Its the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter.
Marlene Dietrich
Friends are like windows through which you see out into the world and back into yourself… If you don’t have friends you see much less than you otherwise might.
Merle Shain
I do not comprehend those rules of conduct that make us so content with self and so cold to those we love. I detest prudence, I even hate (suffer me to say so) those duties of friendship which substitute propriety for interest, and circumspection for fe
Michel de Montaigne
When you are down and out something always turns up-and it is usually the noses of your friends.
Orson Welles
Can miles truly separate you from friends… If you want to be with someone you love, aren’t you already there?
Richard Bach
A man’s best friends are his ten fingers.
Robert Collyer
Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.
Sicilian Proverb
Close friends love you for who you are, not what they want you to be.
Ted Rall
Of my friends, I am the only one I have left.
Terence
I’ve learned that all a person has in life is family and friends. If you lose those, you have nothing, so friends are to be treasured more than anything else in the world.
Trey and Matt Stone Parker
True friends are like diamonds precious but rare. Fake friends are like fall leaves found everywhere.
Unknown
Everyone hears what you say, Friends listen to what you say, Best friends listen to what you dont say.
Unknown
I look at my myself and see a stone, I look at my friends and see gold, But I look at you, and see a gem.
Unknown
We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
W. Somerset Maugham
We are advertis’d by our loving friends.
William Shakespeare
The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away.
Wilson Mizner
Cutest Friendship Quotes
Every now and then convey your feeling to them. Below is a compilation of 20 cute friendship quotes that you can use to make your friends look special.
It’s what each of us sows, and how, that gives to us character and prestige. Seeds of kindness, goodwill, and human understanding, planted in fertile soil, spring up into deathless friendships, big deeds of worth, and a memory that will not soon fade.
George Matthew Adams
There is no distance too far between friends, for friendship gives wings to the heart.
Kathy Kay Benudiz
Friendship is Love without his wings!
Lord Byron
The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.
Buddha
Friendship is genuine when two friends can enjoy each other’s company without speaking a word to one another.
George Ebers
A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.
William Arthur Ward
We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.
Dalai Lama
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
Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.
Virginia Woolf
Best friend is someone who knows all about you and loves you anyway.
Elbert Hubbard
Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another.
Eustace Budgell
A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
Charles Darwin
Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
George Eliot
Of all the things which wisdom provides to make life entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.
Epicurus
Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
Helen Keller
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Friends are like walls. Sometimes you lean on them, and sometimes it’s good just knowing they are there.
Unknown
True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.
Dave Tyson Gentry
There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.
Thomas Aquinas
A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.
Leo Buscaglia
Short Friendship Quotes
Read our Collection of Short Friendship Quotes (in less than 100 characters).
Friendship demands attention.
Sir Thomas More
Love is friendship set on fire.
Jeremy Taylor
Love is friendship caught on fire.
Unknown
Friendship is one mind in two bodies.
Mencius
Friendship is like a sheltering tree.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Love is blind friendship closes its eyes.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
It takes a long time to grow an old friend.
John Leonard
All lasting business is built on friendship.
Alfred A. Montapert
Love demands infinitely less than friendship.
Ethel Watts Mumford
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler
Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
William Blake
Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
Aristotle
The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.
Hubert Humphrey
Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.
Shirley MacLaine
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
Henry David Thoreau
An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship.
Danish proverb
Friendship multiplies the good in life and divides the evil.
Baltasar Gracian
Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship – never.
Charles Caleb Colton
Though friendship is not quick to burn, It is explosive stuff.
May Sarton
Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.
Rabindranath Tagore
A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship is…the sort of love one can imagine between angels.
Clive Staples Lewis
Friendship is a horizon– which expands whenever we approach it.
E. R. Hazlip
The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it.
Hubert Humphrey
Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.
Unknown
Friendship is neither a formality nor a mode it is rather a life.
David Grayson
Friendship is always a sweet responsibility never an opportunity.
Kahlil Gibran
The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
Elbert Hubbard
Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.
Samuel Pepys
True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.
Dave Tyson Gentry
There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.
Saint Thomas Aquinas
A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.
Arnold H. Glasow
There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.
Francis Bacon
Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.
Plautus
It isn’t kind to cultivate a friendship just so one will have an audience.
Lawana Blackwell
It’s much easier to turn a friendship into love, than love into friendship.
Anonymous
Friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life.
Thomas Jefferson
Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.
Aristotle
Be slow to fall into friendship but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
Socrates
If we judge of love by its usual effects, it resembles hatred more than friendship.
La Rochefoucauld
Friendship needs no words – it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.
Dag Hammarskjold
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.
Emily Kimbrough
A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.
Douglas Pagels
A friend is the only person you will let into the house when you are Turning Out Drawers.
Pam Brown
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
If we are to judge of love by the consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
La Rochefoucauld
Meaning of Friendship
I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.
Thomas A. Edison
At the shrine of friendship never say die, let the wine of friendship never run dry. (Les Miserables)
Victor Hugo
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another What You, too Thought I was the only one.
Clive Staples Lewis
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust
I’ve learned that true friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance. Same goes for true love.
Anonymous
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.
Margaret Lee Runbeck
I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.
Katherine Mansfield
Friendship is not only doing something for someone, but it is caring for someone, which is what every person needs.
C. Neil Strait
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
Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.
Epicurus
I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.
Robert Brault
Those truly linked don’t need correspondence, When they meet again after many years apart, Their friendship is as true as ever.
Deng Ming-Dao
Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.
Mignon McLaughlin
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.
Edward W. Howe
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
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
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
When a woman like that whom I’ve seen so much, All of a sudden drops out of touch; Is always busy and never can, Spare you a moment, it means a man.
Alice Duer Miller
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
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 Duer Miller
Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone – but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
William Hazlitt
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
Many a person has held close, throughout their entire lives, two friends that always remained strange to one another, because one of them attracted by virtue of similarity, the other by difference.
Emil Ludwig
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
A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often – just to save it from drying out completely.
Pam Brown
A child too, can never grasp the fact that the same mother who cooks so well, is so concerned about his cough, and helps so kindly with his homework, in some circumstance has no more feeling than a wall of his hidden inner world.
Alice Duer Miller
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.
Ralph Waldo Emerson