c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
There can't be a quarrel without two parties, and I won't be one. I will be a friend to you in spite of you. So now you know what you've got to expect
— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
The whole point of being a good friend is being in the darkness. I’ll be your light, until you can be it yourself again.
— Catherine Doyle, Inferno
Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
— Sydney Smith
I love you. I can't remember when I fell in love with you but very naturally, I had fallen in love with you before I knew it. The first time I met you, you were a strong and kind boy. You always protected me.
— Makoto Shinkai, 5 Centimeters per Second
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, The Courtship of Miles Standish
friend is someone you can trust and admits you whatever you are
— Lovely Free-Smith, Mom, I'm Pregnant: A Parent's Guide to the Pregnant Teen
In good company there is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly coextensive with the several consciousnesses there present. No partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited to his own. Now this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute running of two souls into one.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nico didn’t respond. He’d never had anyone talk to him this openly before, except maybe for Hazel. He felt like he was watching a flock of birds settle on a field. One loud sound might startle them away.
— Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
This is what I want so don't be sad.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
Remember, 'No one's more important than people'! In other words, friendship is the most important thing--not career or housework, or one's fatigue--and it needs to be tended and nurtured.
— Julia Child, My Life in France
Kindred spirits alone do not change with the changing years.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost. But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized and can only attract their like. How I would like to lead you to brave, stalwart friends who would protect you and play games with dice and teach you delightful songs that have no sad endings. If you would only leave cages locked and turn away from unloved Wyverns, you could stay Heartless.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Even when I'm alone I have real good company — dreams and imaginations and pretendings. I like to be alone now and then, just to think over things and taste them. But I love friendships — and nice, jolly little times with people.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams
Friendship is a give and take. You have to have a strong relationship with your friend and I think you have to offer them something and they have to offer you something and that’s to always learn from it.
— Raven Symone
Alone among unsympathetic companions, I hold certain views and standards timidly, half ashamed to avow them and half doubtful if they can after all be right. Put me back among my Friends and in half an hour - in ten minutes - these same views and standards become once more indisputable. The opinion of this little circle, while I am in it, outweighs that of a thousand outsiders: as Friendship strengthens, it will do this even when my Friends are far away. For we all wish to be judged by our peers, by the men "after our own heart." Only they really know our mind and only they judge it by standards we fully acknowledge. Theirs is the praise we really covet and the blame we really dread.
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken.The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender's enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
How rare true love maybe, it is less so than true friendship.
— François de La Rochefoucauld
Sometimes friends do go from us-it will happen more and more as you grow up, Chugg. But if you really love your friends, they're never really gone. Somewhere they're watching over you and they're always there inside your heart.-Martin
— Brian Jacques, The Legend of Luke
Forever and ever Bonnie, I will always be your friend.
— Bryan Davis, Raising Dragons
For no one, in our long decline,So dusty, spiteful and divided,Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,Or loved them half as much as I did.
— Hilaire Belloc
If my tears spilled spontaneously at that moment it’s because I immediately understood that what was happening, like in a dream, was the treat you had prepared for me I felt your friendship much stronger than if you had thanked me a million times that what pleased and touched me.
— Ai Yazawa
A friend in power is a friend lost.
— Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
Odd as this might sound, I suppose I’m glad you’re here, Jacob. [Edward Cullen]
— Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse
Meghan pushed her chocolate cheesecake across the table to me. I hadn’t gotten paid yet for November, so I had only ordered coffee. “Here,” she said.“Don’t you want it?”“Sure I want it. I ordered it. But I’m giving it to you.”“Why?”Meghan stood up and got me a fork. “Remember what Nora said about love? In your movie?”“Love is when you have a really amazing piece of cake, and it’s the very last piece, but you let him have it,” I said.“So it’s really amazing cake,” said Meghan. “And I want you to have it.
— E. Lockhart, Real Live Boyfriends: Yes. Boyfriends, Plural. If My Life Weren't Complicated, I Wouldn't Be Ruby Oliver
I HOLDIf I could have had him,I could have let himgo.But withoutthe having there was nothing—so to the nothingIhold.
— Coco J. Ginger
How could you carry the inside of a person with you and not call them a friend, no matter what the rules said?
— Barbara Samuel, The Sleeping Night
Friendship is the most important thing in my life. It's rare to have friends like I've got. If I had as great a taste in husbands as I have in friends, what an even better life I would have had!
— Andrea Michaels, Reflections Of A Successful Wallflower: Lessons In Business; Lessons In Life
A true friend finds a way to celebrate—even in the worst moments of life—and forces it upon you.
— Rionna Morgan, The Wanting Heart
I went to him in the doorway and embraced him tightly. "Thank you," I whispered. "You've done so much for us, and we've done nothing for you.""Don't say that." Vic's hands patted my back. "You're my friends. Nothing else to it.
— Claudia Gray, Afterlife
Every single time you crossed over for me and met me on my side. I realize now, I don't think I ever met you in the middle. And I don't think I ever once said that you for that.
— Cecelia Ahern
Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong." I told him that he knows next to nothing about me & I know nothing about him. He jabbed at his eyes & jabbed at mine, as if that single gesture were ample explanation.
— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
It had always been the two of them through everything -every adventure and every expedition- and now there was this awful distance between them, and she tried not to think about all the stories they were missing out on, all the litle moments and bigger milestones that had happened over the past few weeks without the other knowing
— Jennifer E. Smith, This Is What Happy Looks Like
In our opposed forms of loneliness and self-recognition and recognition of the other, we touched each other often as we spoke; and on shore in explorations of the past, we strolled with our arms linked...
— Harold Brodkey, Profane Friendship
#1425: When you really like someone, tell them. Sometimes you only get one chance.
— H. Jackson Brown Jr., The Complete Life's Little Instruction Book
Sometimes its not the strength but gentleness that cracks the hardest shells.
— Richard Paul Evans, Lost December
Friendship's enemy is betrayal.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
I'm not that bad,” he said. “I'm rich, popular. I have a sense of humor. I'm good looking, and not to mention I have a really big—
— J.M. Darhower, Sempre
Friends tell each other what nobody else is willing to tell you.
— Nikki Sixx, This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography, And Life Through The Distorted Lens Of Nikki Sixx
Liking is more important than loving. It lasts. I want what is between us to last, Luke. I don't want us just to love each other and marry and get tired of each other and then want to marry some one else.""Oh! my dear Love, I know. You want reality. So do I. What's between us will last for ever because it's founded on reality.
— Agatha Christie, Murder Is Easy
Whatever it means to be a friend, taking a black eye for someone has to be in it.
— Gary D. Schmidt, The Wednesday Wars
Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wish it were possible.
— Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves
A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
— Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage." ~Samuel Johnson
— Edward M. Hallowell, Dare to Forgive: The Power of Letting Go & Moving on
I bought you something" Willows blurts out."You bought...What?"Willow closes her eyes for a second. She's a little surprised she's going to give it to him after all, but there's no going back now. She has to."At the bookstore." She reaches into her bag again, and pushes the package across the table towards him.Guy takes the book out of the bag slowly, Willow waits for him to look disappointed, to look confused that she would buy him such a battered, old-"I love it when used books have notes in the margins, it's the best," Guy says as he flips through the pages. "I always imagine who read it before me." He pauses and looks at one of Prospero's speeches. "I have way too much homework to read this now, but you know what? Screw it. I want to know why it's your favorite Shakespeare. Thank you, that was really nice of you. I mean, you really didn't have to.""But I did anyway," Willow says so quietly she's not even sure hears her.Hey," Guy frowns for a second. "You didn't write anything in here.""Oh, I didn't even think...I, well, I wouldn't even know what to write," Willow says shyly."Well, maybe you'll think of something later," he says.Willow watches Guy read the opening. There's no mistaking it. His smile is genuine, and she can't help thinking that if she can't make David look like this, at least she can do it for someone.
— Julia Hoban, Willow
Girlfriends and boyfriends come and go.The good times had with them are easily forgotten. But best friends stay in your heart forever.
— Jennifer Jabaley, Crush Control
Good female friendships are the strongest relationships in the world.
— Jessie Elliot, Girls Dinner Club
It is good to dress in fair clothes to dine with friends. It honors your host, if you are a guest; and your guest if you are a host. And both adorn the feast, and so celebrate the gifts of the world.
— Alison Croggon
A true best friend loves you even when it seems like you've gone off the deep end.
— Liz Fenton, The Status of All Things
I was a man before I was a king, and no true man walks away when a friend needs him.
— David Gemmell, Fall of Kings
Was it okay? Adam had turned down so many offers of help from Gansey. Money for school, money for food, money for rent. Pity and charity, Adam had thought. For so long, he'd wanted Gansey to see him as an equal, but it was possible that all this time, the only person who needed to see that was Adam. Now he could see that it wasn't charity Gansey was offering. It was just truth. And something else: friendship of the unshakable kind. Friendship you could swear on. That could be busted nearly to breaking and come back stronger than before.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue
We can't choose our blood, but we can choose those who run importance in our lives.
— Alina Baker
Having friends was really important, wasn't it? Even if sometimes they did stuff which upset you?
— Helen Salter, Does Snogging Count as Exercise?
That men of this kind despise women, though a not uncommon belief, is one which hardly appears to be justified. Indeed, though naturally not inclined to 'fall in love' in this direction, such men are by their nature drawn rather near to women, and it would seem that they often feel a singular appreciation and understanding of the emotional needs and destinies of the other sex, leading in many cases to a genuine though what is called 'Platonic' friendship. There is little doubt that they are often instinctively sought after by women, who, without suspecting the real cause, are conscious of a sympathetic chord in the homogenic which they miss in the normal man.
— Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women
That's the way girls are isn't it? They swear eternal friendship, and then as soon as a man's in the case it's all forgotten.
— Jude Morgan, Indiscretion
I can take everything on her face at face value, and that's valuable in a friend.
— David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Nothing gives you confidence like being a member of a small, weirdly specific, hard-to-find demographic.
— Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
Wayne: You wanna know why I really came to find you?Waxilliam: Why?Wayne: I thought of you happy in a comfy bed, resting and relaxing, spending the rest of your life sipping tea and reading papers while people bring you food and maids rub your toes and stuff.Waxilliam: And?Wayne: And I just couldn't leave you to a fate like that...I'm too good a friend to let a mate of mine die in such a terrible situation.Waxilliam: Comfortable?Wayne: No. Boring.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Alloy of Law
When you meet an extraordinary person, it’s like they get inside you, under your ribs, and shuffle everything inside you around until they find space for greatness to grow. But extraordinary people always get away. And when they leave, they take that little part of you with them. Suddenly you find yourself with a gap in your chest that you don’t know how to live with. Suddenly you’re frightened of being yourself without them.
— Chloe Rattray, Sacré Noir
If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be almost all friendships would be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely perfect.
— Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
Thank goodness, we can choose our friends. We have to take our relatives as they are, and be thankful…
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams
A writer is a dangerous friend. Everything you say, all of your life and experience, is fodder for our writing. We mean you no harm, but what you know and what you’ve done is unavoidably fascinating to us. Being friends with a writer is a bit like trying to keep a bear as a pet. They’re wonderful, friendly creatures, but they play rough and they don’t know their own strength or remember that they have claws. Choose the stories you tell to your writer friends carefully.
— Randy Murray
I have unclasp'd to thee the book even of my secret soul.
— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
For I hope my Friends will pardon me, when I declare, I know none of them without a Fault; and I should be sorry if I could imagine, I had any Friend who could not see mine. Forgiveness, of this Kind, we give and demand in Turn.
— Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun.... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how.... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.'When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name...
— Diana Wynne Jones, Conrad's Fate
Where's the point in fighting and slaying if you can make a friend out of anybeast instead of a foe?
— Brian Jacques, Taggerung
What a luxury a cat is, the moments of shocking and startling pleasure in a day, the feel of the beast, the soft sleekness under your palm, the warmth when you wake on a cold night, the grace and charm even in a quite ordinary workaday puss. Cat walks across your room, and in that lonely stalk you see leopard or even panther, or it turns its head to acknowledge you and the yellow blaze of those eyes tells you what an exotic visitor you have here, in this household friend, the cat who purrs as you stroke, or rub his chin, or scratch his head.
— Doris Lessing, Old Age of El Magnifico
The Amoeba?" she asked Aiden."The gang," he said, tossing his hand to indicate all around. "Mypeople. A large amorphous mass that keeps on changing size, hasn'tmuch apparent use, sometimes makes you sick, and occasionally breaksoff into smaller parts that act exactly like the parent.
— Annette Curtis Klause, Blood and Chocolate
If you are a guild, take care of your friends. That is all I have to say.
— Hiro Mashima
Depressing thought: my friends were the girls I ate lunch with, all buddies from kindergarten who knew one another so well we weren't sure if we even liked one another anymore.
— Lauren Groff, Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories
Every great day has a story and a song!
— Faith Reese Martin, White Doe in the Mist: The Mystery of the Lost Colony
Friendship is more than talent. It is more than government. It is almost the equal of family. Never forget that. If you had built up a wall of friendship you wouldn't have to ask me to help. - Don Corleone
— Mario Puzo, The Godfather
Now Doon seemed to care for his new friends more than he did for her. Every time she thought about him she felt a thud of pain, like a bruised place inside her.
— Jeanne DuPrau, The People of Sparks
Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn't exist. We met before we were born and we'll probably still know each other after we die. At least, that's the way we're planning it.
— Alice Hoffman, Local Girls
Friendship is something that gets harder to understand, every damn year of my life.Friendship is like a kind of algebra test that nobody passes. In my worst moods, I think the best you can say is that a friend is anyone you don't despise.
— Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
Houdini, the magician who debunked magic, could not bear to see the great rationalist [Arthur Conan] Doyle enchanted by ghosts and frauds. And so he did what any friend would: He set out to prove spiritualism false and rob his friend Doyle of the only comforting fiction that was keeping him sane. It was the least he could do.
— John Hodgman, That is All
Because you're my friend, wingnut.
— John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
I was the Duff. And that was a good thing. Because anyone who didn't feel like the Duff must not have friends. Every girl feels unattractive sometimes. Why had it taken me so long to figure that out? Why had I been stressing over that dumb word for so long when it was so simple? I should be proud to be the Duff. Proud to have great friends who, in their minds, were my Duffs.
— Kody Keplinger, The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend
Friends never turn as enemies. If they did, they were never your friends at all.
— Hark Herald Sarmiento
By the way, Doctor, I shall want your cooperation.''I shall be delighted.''You don't mind breaking the law?''Not in the least.''Nor running a chance of arrest?''Not in a good cause.''Oh, the cause is excellent!''Then I am your man.''I was sure that I might rely on you.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia
Maybe we've grown out of each other.
— David Nicholls, One Day
The test we must set for ourselves is not to march alone but to march in such a way that others will wish to join us.
— Hubert H. Humphrey
I’m gonna take a nap, Heaven,” he said, wanting away from her to clear his head. He didn’t like feeling uncomfortable in his house.“Haven,” she corrected him as he started to walk away.“I know,” he said. “I kinda like Heaven though.”She turned to him, and their eyes met for the first time since he’d walked into the room. “Me, too.
— J.M. Darhower, Sempre
A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time and never gotten anywhere.
— Joe Abercrombie
There comes a time in your life when you can no longer put off choosing. You have to choose one path or the other. You can live safe and be protected by people just like you, or you can stand up and be a leader for what is right. Always, remember this: People never remember the crowd; they remember the one person that had the courage to say and do what no one would do.
— Shannon L. Alder
That's right. You'll like Owl. He flew past a day or two ago and noticed me. He didn't actually say anything, mind you, but he knew it was me. Very friendly of him. Encouraging."Pooh and Piglet shuffled about a little and said, "Well, good-bye, Eeyore" as lingeringly as they could, but they had a long way to go, and wanted to be getting on."Good-bye," said Eeyore. "Mind you don't get blown away, little Piglet. You'd be missed. People would say `Where's little Piglet been blown to?' -- really wanting to know. Well, good-bye. And thank you for happening to pass me.
— A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner
What If I still want to go?" "Then you'll go," he said. "But I wanted you to know the danger." "There's always danger." His green eyes met mine. I was starting to see It, how It could happen-Caleb and me.
— Anna Carey, Eve
A White Tiger keeps no friends. It's too dangerous.
— Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
It's and old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.
— Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
It's like, you can't trust anybody, and if somebody you know doesn't fuck you over it's just because the price of selling you down the river was never high enough.
— Jay McInerney, Story of My Life
If more people recognized the difference between friendship and mere attraction, or how love must partake of both to prosper, I expect there'd be more happy people." "And a lot fewer poems and plays," I said, laughing as I splashed about in the scented water.
— Sherwood Smith
So they were pen pals now, Emma composing long, intense letters crammed with jokes and underlining, forced banter and barely concealed longing; two-thousand-word acts of love on air-mail paper. Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions and she was clearly putting far too much time and energy into them. In return, Dexter sent her postcards with insufficient postage: ‘Amsterdam is MAD’, ‘Barcelona INSANE’, ‘Dublin ROCKS. Sick as DOG this morning.’ As a travel writer, he was no Bruce Chatwin, but still she would slip the postcards in the pocket of a heavy coat on long soulful walks on Ilkley Moor, searching for some hidden meaning in ‘VENICE COMPLETELY FLOODED!!!!
— David Nicholls
Martin is your best friend, isn't he?' a sweet and well-intentioned girl once said when both of us were present: it was the only time I ever felt awkward about this precious idea, which seemed somehow to risk diminishment if it were uttered aloud.
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
You hardly know me. Why do you want me to come with you?""Who knows? Perhaps you remind me just a bit of—""Someone you used to know?" Alec interjected skepti
— Lynn Flewelling, Luck in the Shadows
My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.""You are mistaken," said he gently, "that is not good company; that is the best. Good company requires only birth, education, and manners (...)
— Jane Austen, Persuasion
True friendship is worth more than can be measured, a quality forever to be treasured.True friends will staunchly stand beside each other,as loyally brother shieldeth brother,remaining firm in spite of war and strife,in poverty or sickness, throughout life.True friendship doth endure while comrades agefrom boy to youth, from warrior to sage.
— Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Fallowblade
In the midst of aches in the joints, anxiety over the payment of bills, concern for the safety of those you love, envy of the rich, fear of robbers, dog-weariness at the end of a long day, and the unacceptable slipping away of youth, there does occasionally appear, like a ray of light piercing the clouds, a moment of joy. Perhaps you have entered the house and sat down before removing your boots. A friend has pressed a drink into your hands, and is telling you the latest news. You see from his face that he's glad you've come in; and you are glad too. Glad to be sitting down, glad of the warming glow of the dirnk, glad of your friend's furrowed brow and eager speech. For this moment, nothing more is required. It is in its way unimprovable. This is what I mean by the Great Enough.
— William Nicholson, The Society of Others
Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people- there are many of them- who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling around them. Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour- flirting- and if carried far enough, it is punishable by law. But no law- not public opinion, even- punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable. Was she one of these?
— E.M. Forster, Howards End
I wish I could say we all lived happily ever after. I can't. But I can say we lived. Our love for Nate lives, and he's left us this piece of himself in his art; it was his gift to us. We know him through his art, and I can take comfort in that. I guess the thing about high school is, it's the moment when you start to cross from a being a kid to being an adult, and this journey to know yourself begins. Nate's journey ended to early, and I thought I had to run away to some far-off land to start mine. But, for now, it seems to me that I have enough to explore right here. There's a whole continent to discover in myself, and I know that it's love - love for my parents, my friends, my brother, and my art - that will guide me. Love will be my map.
— Lisa Ann Sandell, A Map of the Known World
What if someone picks on me?" I askedThen I'll pick on them".What if someone picks my nose?" I asked.The I'll pick your nose, too" Rowdy said.
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
‎Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget.
— G. Randolf
To remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off
— Christopher Hitchens
She shocks the hell out of me when she asks, "Did you get engaged, Jade? She looks at me seriously. It's really hard for me not to just laugh hysterically in her face, but I refrain from doing so because I'm a good friend, and I realize that she's in distress. But her next question very nearly blows me away.
— Jillian Dodd, That Boy
The cult of friendship disturbs me. It's like our quality is supposed to be measured by the number of friends we have. For me, it's quite the inverse. When somebody says "I'm friends with everyone" I just assume they have the spine of your average jellyfish and the integrity of your average soap dish. "I have tons of close friends!" Ok, then you obviously have no standards. "I've slept with lots of people!" Good, I will shake your hand from inside this Hazmat suit. It's like you have to have friends or you're nothing, and you gotta have lots of friends, and the more friends you have the more value you have. This Is a way of lowering our standards to fit in. I'm a big fan of quality over quantity. Everyone wants to look at their life like it's a beer commercial they can just climb into. The larger the circle of friends the more alcohol is involved to blind yourself to the fact that you cant stand most of these assholes.
— Stefan Molyneux
Actually, I think it's the opposite. We know each other so well there isn't anything left to say. Sometimes it's nice just sitting here with you all, thinking. It's only best friends who can be comfortable with silence, wouldn't you say?
— Benjamin Wood, The Bellwether Revivals
Sometimes it is only a True Friend who knows what we mean when we try to speak. Somebody who has spent a lot of time with us, and listens carefully to what we are trying to say, and tries to understand.
— Cressida Cowell, How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse
Tragedy, he precieved, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.
— George Orwell, 1984
I think a friend is someone who helps you change for the better. And whether you see them once a day or once a year, if it's a true friend, it doesn't matter.
— Kristin Levine, The Lions of Little Rock
If I was harsh with you, it was because I cannot bear to see you treat yourself as if you are worth nothing. Whatever part you might act to the contrary, I see you as you really are, my blood brother. Not just better than you pretend to be, but better than most people could hope to be.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince
Often you shall think your road impassable, sombre and companionless. Have will and plod along; and round each curve you shall find a new companion.
— Mikhail Naimy, The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery Which Was Once Called the Ark
I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty—everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?
— E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
Friends don’t build cages for each other.
— Karen Marie Moning, Iced
I hate it when people say they’re trying to be your friend. You shouldn’t have to try to be somebody’s friend. Either you like someone or you don’t. Either you want them as a friend or not. Making friends isn’t like trying for the lead in the school play.
— Emily Wing Smith, Back When You Were Easier to Love
It's asking us our names," Falkor reported."I'm Atreyu!" Atreyu cried."I'm Falkor!" cried Falkor.The boy without a name was silent.Atreyu looked at him, then took him by the hand and cried: "He's Bastian Balthazar Bux!""It asks," Falkor translated, "why he doesn't speak for himself.""He can't," said Atreyu. "He has forgotten everything."Falkor listened again to the roaring of the fountain."Without memory, it says, he cannot come in. The snakes won't let him through."Atreyu replied: "I have stored up everything he told us about himself and his world. I vouch for him."Falkor listened."It wants to know by what right?""I am his friend," said Atreyu.
— Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
He slouches,' DeeDee contributes.'True--he needs to work on his posture,' Thelma says.'You guys,' I say.'I'm serious,' Thelma says. 'What if you get married? Don't you want to go to fancy dinners with him and be proud?''You guys. We are not getting married!''I love his eyes,' Jolene says. 'If your kids get his blue eyes and your dark hair--wouldn't that be fabulous?''The thing is,' Thelma says, 'and yes, I know, this is the tricky part--but I'm thinking Bliss has to actually talk to him. Am I right? Before they have their brood of brown-haired, blue-eyed children?'I swat her. "I'm not having Mitchell's children!''I'm sorry--what?' Thelma says.Jolene is shaking her head and pressing back laughter. Her expressing says, Shhh, you crazy girl!But I don't care. If they're going to embarrass me, then I'll embarrass them right back. 'I said'--I raise my voice--'I am not having Mitchell Truman's children!'Jolene turns beet red, and she and DeeDee dissolve into mad giggles.'Um, Bliss?' Thelma says. Her gaze travels upward to someone behind me. The way she sucks on her lip makes me nervous.'Okaaay, I think maybe I won't turn around,' I announce.A person of the male persuasion clears his throat.'Definitely not turning around,' I say. My cheeks are burning. It's freaky and alarming how much heat is radiating from one little me.'If you change your mind, we might be able to work something out,' the person of the male persuasion says.'About the children?' DeeDee asks. 'Or the turning around?''DeeDee!' Jolene says.'Both,' says the male-persuasion person.I shrink in my chair, but I raise my hand over my head and wave.'Um, hi,' I say to the person behind me whom I'm still not looking at. 'I'm Bliss.'Warm fingers clasp my own.'Pleased to meet you,' says the male-persuasion person. 'I'm Mitchell.''Hi, Mitchell.' I try to pull my hand from his grasp, but he won't let go. 'Um, bye now!'I tug harder. No luck. Thelma, DeeDee, and Jolene are close to peeing their pants.Fine. I twist around and give Mitchell the quickest of glances. His expressions is amused, and I grow even hotter.He squeezes my hand, then lets go. 'Just keep me in the loop if you do decide to bear my children. I'm happy to help out.' With that, he stride jauntily to the food line.Once he's gone, we lost it. Peals of laughter resound from our table, and the others in the cafeteria look at us funny. We laugh harder.'Did you see!' Thelma gasps. 'Did you see how proud he was?''You improve his posture!' Jolene says.'I'm so glad, since that was my deepest desire,' I say. 'Oh my God, I'm going to have to quit school and become a nun.''I can't believe you waved at him,' DeeDee says.'Your hand was like a little periscope,' Jolene says. 'Or, no--like a white surrender flag.''It was a surrender flag. I was surrendering myself to abject humiliation.''Oh, please,' Thelma says, pulling me into a sideways hug. 'Think of it this way: Now you've officially talked to him.
— Lauren Myracle, Bliss
Stop regretting relationships that once brought you great joy.
— Joseph Simmons
Always surround yourself with friends that have plenty of light in them. That way, you will always have candles around you when days are dark.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want another.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue
That kind of friendship doesn't just materialize at the end of the rainbow one morning in a soft-focus Hollywood haze. For it to last this long, and at such close quarters, some serious work had gone into it. Ask any ice-skater or ballet dancer or show jumper, anyone who lives by beautiful moving things: nothing takes as much work as effortlessness.
— Tana French, The Likeness
Ove çould not in all honesty remember how it all started. It wasn't the sort of dispute where you did remember. It was more an argument where the little disagreements had ended up so entangled that every new word was treacherously booby-trapped, and in the end it wasn't possible to open one's mouth at all without setting off at least four unexploded mines from earlier conflicts. It was the sort of argument that had just run, and run, and run. Until one day it just ran out.
— Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove
This is the real way a friendship ends. Not with some huge screaming row, but with a gradual withdrawal. You’d think it would be less painful this way.
— Cat Clarke, Torn
Hassan couldn't read a first-grade textbook but he'd read me plenty. That was a little unsettling but also sort of comfortable to have someone who always knew what you needed.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Thunderstorms are as much our friends as the sunshine.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Friends come into our lives and friends leave our lives. But friends never leave our hearts. And best friends always get to stay in the best places in our hearts.
— John M. Simmons, The Marvelous Journey Home
What madness, to love a man as something more than human! I lived in a fever, convulsed with tears and sighs that allowed me neither rest nor peace of mind. My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry. Everything that was not what my friend had been was dull and distasteful. I had heart only for sighs and tears, for in them alone I found some shred of consolation.
— Augustine of Hippo
I feel as if something has been torn suddenly out of my life and left a terrible hole. I feel as if I couldn't be I — as if I must have changed into somebody else and couldn't get used to it. It gives me a horrible lonely, dazed, helpless feeling. It's good to see you again — it seems as if you were a sort of anchor for my drifting soul.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,All losses are restored and sorrows end.
— William Shakespeare
I don't want...to run away by myself... because no matter what...I'd rather be together with everyone...
— Hiro Mashima
To know a person in his home is not to know him at all: to meet him on a country road with only his baggage is to at last contact the core, the inner cell of his personality.
— John Tibbetts
acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
— Ambrose Bierce
Esca tossed the slender papyrus roll onto the cot, and set his own hands over Marcus's. "I have not served the Centurion because I was his slave," he said, dropping unconsciously into the speech of his own people. "I have served Marcus, and it was not slave-service...my stomach will be glad when we start on this hunting trail.
— Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth
Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can't have too many friends because then you're just not really friends.
— Truman Capote
Trouble is a sieve through which we sift our acquaintances. Those too big to pass through are our friends.
— Arlene Francis
I need them and they need me to need them
— Rosie Thomas, Iris & Ruby
I possess the faculty of enjoying the company of those I - of my friends as well in silence as in conversation.
— Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
My friendships, they are a very strong part of my life, they are as light as gossamer but also they are as strong as steel. And I cannot throw them off, nor altogether do with them or without them. And I love them at the point where they say: It is nice to see you again. And I love them too at the point when they say: Good-bye, come again soon. The rhythm of friendship is a very good rhythm.
— Stevie Smith, Novel on Yellow Paper
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too?
— C.S. Lewis
To think that we might easily have gone through life not knowing each other, missing all this free flow of love and ideas and warmth and sharing... We share really almost everything. (Avis DeVoto to Julia Child)
— Joan Reardon, As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto: Food, Friendship, and the Making of a Masterpiece
..he had trampled her poor, pining heart, and the wound was still raw, even these many years later.
— Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
It is in the dark times that the light of friendship shines brightest. (The Walk - Chapter 19, Page 122
— Richard Paul Evans
And then he says something like this ... "I would die for you. But I won't live for you." Something like that. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people.
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
In the consciousness that another mind reflects your thought, you find the keenest satisfaction. Here is the high office of a friend, and in these high experiences is the point of attachment.-- 
— Samuel McChord Crothers
Some of the most thrilling things in life are done on impulse.
— Syrie James, The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen
A true friend is the one who knowseverything about you and still loves you. Eventually, people will forget the things you said or did, but the feelingsyou woke up in them they will never forget!
— Danka V., The Unchosen Life
One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.
— Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones
I'll be your friend so long as you're not crap
— Colin Firth
We never actually have serious conversations about anything for more than 20 seconds. So there’s a beautiful superficiality to our relationship which sometimes gets covered up by all the genuine affection flowing back and forth.
— Kamila Shamsie, Kartography
And I don’t even like you, but the pain of life without you is biting.
— Coco J. Ginger
They adore you beacause they think you offer up your friendship and ask for nothing in return. But that's not true-' He took a deep breath. 'You do ask for something. You ask that we never expect you to need us.
— Kamila Shamsie, Kartography
We have different interests,fit into different cliques, but the length of our friendship makesmost of that unimportant. You go through enough with a personover a long enough period of time and they just become a part ofwho you are.
— Lindsey Leavitt, Sean Griswold's Head
Reuven listen to me. The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher. Do you remember the other.""Choose a friend," I said."Yes. You know what a friend is, Reuven? A Greek philosopher said that two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul."I nodded."Reuven, if you can, make Danny Saunders your friend.""I like him a lot, abba.""No. Listen to me. I am not talking about only liking him. I am telling you to make him your friend and to let him make you his friend.
— Chaim Potok, The Chosen
And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more ...
— Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake
At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague or subordinate. Not among Friends. It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Friendship...is not something you learn in school,but if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship you really haven't learned anything.
— Oscar Wilde
A friend is not the shadow that mimics you, but the one who casts all shadows away.
— Shannon L. Alder
Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of--something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possesed your soul have been but hints of it--tantalizing glimspes, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest--if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself--you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the things we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
If your heart tends to force friends to do as you say,seed of discord is being planted in your relationship.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
What our closest friends do for us is to teach us true selflessness. We learn that while it might be safer for them if we keep them out, true friendship means letting them in. We cannot decide for them what they are willing to suffer with us and for us. While we certainly don't want to see our friends suffer, friendship isn't about protecting each other from pain so much as it is about helping each other to become what God has called us to be.
— Mark Mossa, Already There: Letting God Find You
No," I say. "I didn't know that," and as I say it I feel flooded with bitterness at all the things Ingrid kept secret from me.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
See now, for a good blade, one that will not betray the man in battle, rods of hard and soft iron must be heated and braided together. Then is the blade folded over and hammered flat again, and maybe yet again, many times for the finest blades... So the hard and soft iron are mingled without blending, before the blade is hammered up to its finished form and tempered, and ground to an edge that shall draw blood from the wind. So comes the pattern, like oil and water that mingle but do not mix. Yet it is the strength of the blade, for without the hard iron the blade would bend in battle, and without the soft iron it would break.
— Rosemary Sutcliff, The Shining Company
She was afraid that it was a moral issue, and that was one of his weaknesses. He was Salander’s friend. She knew her brother. She knew that he was loyal to the point of foolhardiness once he had made someone a friend, even if the friend was impossible and obviously flawed. She also the friend was impossible and obviously flawed. She also knew that he could accept any number of idiocies from his friends, but that there was a boundary and it could not be infringed. Where exactly this boundary was seemed to vary from one person to another, but she knew he had broken completely with people who had previously been close friends because they had done something that he regarded as beyond the pale. And he was inflexible. The break was for ever.
— Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, "Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more." Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own?
— Ralph Waldo Emerson