c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
— Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself.
— Frank Crane
Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.
— Dorothy Parker
Friends are a strange, volatile, contradictory, yet sticky phenomenon. They are made, crafted, shaped, molded, created by focused effort and intent. And yet, true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless.Best friends are formed by time.Everyone is someone's friend, even when they think they are all 
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Once upon a time they was two girls," I say. "one girl had black skin, one girl had white."Mae Mobley look up at me. She listening."Little colored girl say to little white girl, 'How come your skin be so pale?' White girl say, 'I don't know. How come your skin be so black? What you think that mean?'"But neither one a them little girls knew. So little white girl say, 'Well, let's see. You got hair, I got hair.'"I gives Mae Mobley a little tousle on her head."Little colored girl say 'I got a nose, you got a nose.'"I gives her little snout a tweak. She got to reach up and do the same to me."Little white girl say, 'I got toes, you got toes.' And I do the little thing with her toes, but she can't get to mine cause I got my white work shoes on."'So we's the same. Just a different color', say that little colored girl. The little white girl she agreed and they was friends. The End."Baby Girl just look at me. Law, that was a sorry story if I ever heard one. Wasn't even no plot to it. But Mae Mobley, she smile and say, "Tell it again.
— Kathryn Stockett, The Help
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 Sr.
7 things negative people will do to you. They will... 1. Demean your value
— 2. Destroy your image3. Drive you crazily!4. Dispose your dreams!5. Discredit your imagination!6. Deframe your abilities and7. Disbelieve your opinions!Stay away from negative people!
Andrea raised her hand. “This is the hand that slapped Aunt B.”“Maybe you should have it gold-plated.”“Here, you can touch it, since you’re my best friend.
— Ilona Andrews, Magic Slays
Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults
—  greater to tell him his.
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
— William James
Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We're in one, of course, but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: "Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring!" And they will say: "Yes, that's one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn't he, dad?" "Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that's saying a lot."'It's saying a lot too much,' said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again. 'Why, Sam,' he said, 'to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you've left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. "I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn't they put in more of his talk, dad? That's what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn't have got far without Sam, would he, dad?"''Now, Mr. Frodo,' said Sam, 'you shouldn't make fun. I was serious.''So was I,' said Frodo, 'and so I am.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
Friends are honest with each other. Even if the truth hurts.-Maggie
— Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
You may not remember the time you let me go first. Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go. Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up. You may not remember any of those, but I do and this is what I have to say to you: Today, no matter what it takes, we ride home together.
— Brian Andreas, Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind
By chance we met, by choice we become friend
— Millie Huang
Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.
— Arthur Miller
I was tired of pretending that I was someone else just to get along with people, just for the sake of having friendships.
— Kurt Cobain
Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
In your entire life, you can probably count your true friends on one hand. Maybe even on one finger. Those are the friends you need to cherish, and I wouldn't trade one of them for a hundred of the other kind. I'd rather be completely alone than with a bunch of people who aren't real. People who are just passing time.
— Sarah Ockler, Fixing Delilah
Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.
— Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis
Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy.
— Dean Koontz
Girls will get together just to get together. Guys need an activity as an excuse. Otherwise it’s too homo for them to handle.
— Megan McCafferty, Sloppy Firsts
Everyone has a gift for something, even if it is the gift of being a good friend.
— Marian Anderson
A single rose can be my garden; a single friend, my world.
— Leo Buscaglia
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live.For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.And in th 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.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
A messy house is a must - it separates your true friends from other friends.Real friends are there to visit you not your house!
— Jennifer Wilson
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
There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
— Homer, The Odyssey
To think you could have been dreaming the cure for cancer," Blue said. "Look, Sargent," Ronan retorted, "I was gonna dream you some eye cream last night since clearly modern medicine's doing jack shit for you, but I nearly had my ass handed to me by a death snake from the fourth circle of dream hell, so you're welcome."Blue was appropriately touched. "Ah, thanks, man.""No problem, bro.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King
I don't like to give up on people when they need someone not to give up on them.
— Carroll Bryant
So when you're coldFrom the inside outAnd don't know what to do,Remember love and friendship, And warmth will come to you.
— Stephen Cosgrove, Gnome from Nome
She realized that Rowan saw each of those thoughts and more as he reached into his tunic and pulled out a dagger. Her dagger. He extended it to her, it's long blade gleaming as if he'd been secretly polishing and caring for it these months.And when she grasped the dagger, it's weight lighter than she remembered, Rowan looked into her eyes, into her very core of her, and said, 'Fireheart'.
— Sarah J. Maas, Heir of Fire
Because the difference between a friend and a real friend is that you and the real friend come from the same territory, of the same place deep inside you, and that means you see the world in the same kind of way. You know each other even before you do.
— Laura Pritchett, Sky Bridge
Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods.
— Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
Friends should be like books, few, but hand-selected. 
— C.J. Langenhoven
People aren’t always what you want them to be. Sometimes they disappoint you or let you down, but you have to give them a chance first. You can’t just meet someone and expect them to be everything you’re looking for and then be angry when they’re not every hope and aspiration you projected onto them. It’s foolish to believe that someone will be what you imagine them to be. And sometimes, when you give them a chance, they turn out to be better than you imagined. Different, but better.
— Chloe Rattray, Sacré Noir
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
— Henry David Thoreau
The Sun is such a lonely star. Whenever he comes out to see his friends, they all disappear.
— Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1
To throw away an honest friend is, as it were, to throw your life away
— Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Like a comet pulled from orbit, As it passes a sun. Like a stream that meets a boulder, Halfway through the wood. Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But because I knew you, I have been changed for good It well may be, That we will never meet again, In this lifetime. So let me say before we part, So much of me, Is made of what I learned from you. You'll be with me, Like a handprint on my heart. And now whatever way our stories end, I know you have re-written mine, By being my friend... Like a ship blown from its mooring, By a wind off the sea. Like a seed dropped by a skybird, In a distant wood. Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But because I knew you, Because I knew you, I have been changed for good.
— Stephen Schwartz, Wicked: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical
There's no way for them to take away my sadness, but they can make sure I am not empty of all the other feelings.
— David Levithan, Love Is the Higher Law
A friend is more than a therapist or confessor, even though a friend can sometimes heal us and offer us God's forgiveness. A friend is that other person with whom we can share our solitude, our silence, and our prayer. A friend is that other person with whom we can look at a tree and say, "Isn't that beautiful," or sit on the beach and silently watch the sun disappear under the horizon. With a friend we don't have to say or do something special. With a friend we can be still and know that God is there with both of us.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle.
— John Green, Paper Towns
Real friends are the ones you can count on no matter what.The ones who go into the forest to find you and bring you home.And real friends never have to tell you that they’re your friends.
— Morgan Matson, Since You've Been Gone
.. a friend is someone who inspires, who challenges, who sends you in search of some truer sense of yourself..
— Steve López, The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music
No matter how far you take it with your friends, whether you're fighting with them or you hate them for two months, you just really need them, because they're the ones who teach you the most about yourself.
— Kate Hudson
His hand closed automatically around the fake Horcrux but in spite of everything, in spite of the dark and twisting path he saw stretching ahead for himself, in spite of the final meeting with Voldemort he knew must come whether in a month in a year or in ten, he felt his heart lift at the thought that there was still one last golden day of peace left to enjoy with Ron and Hermione.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair.
— Pierce Brown, Golden Son
You know a real friend?Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.
— William S. Burroughs, Last Words: The Final Journals
Its easy to make frends if you let pepul laff at you.
— Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
They had battled and bloodied one another, they had kept secrets, broken hearts, lied, betrayed, exiled, they had walked away, said goodbye and sworn it was forever, and somehow, every time, they had mended, they had forgiven, they had survived. Some mistakes could never be fixed - some, but not all. Some people can't be driven away, no matter how hard you try. Some friendships won't break.
— Robin Wasserman, Greed
A friend is one who walks in when others walk out.
— Walter Winchell
We spent all those years talking about stuff we had in common, and the last few months noticing all the ways we were different and it broke both of our hearts.
— Nick Hornby
When you get tired of worrying and mourning your horse and trying not to be afraid, tell me and I'll do it for you a while so you can shut your eyes and sleep peaceful.
— Shannon Hale, The Goose Girl
Nico scowled. ‘It’s none of your business, but I don’t belong. That’s obvious. No one wants me. I’m a child of –’ ‘Oh, please.’ Will sounded unusually angry. ‘Nobody at Camp Half-Blood ever pushed you away. You have friends – or at least people who would like to be your friend. You pushed yourself away. If you’d get your head out of that brooding cloud of yours for once –
— Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
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
Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.
— Benjamin Franklin
Do not be content with showing friendship in words alone, let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path.
— Bahá'u'lláh
Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.
— Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it: nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.
— Jean de La Fontaine
It is absolutely okay with me if you need to keep some secrets. I've been thinking about this and I decided that a best friend is someone who, when they don't understand, they still understand.
— Nancy Werlin, Impossible
Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can't see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.
— Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You
the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.
— Abraham Lincoln
There are times when friendship feels like running down a hill together as fast as you can, jumping over things, spinning around, and you don't care where you're going, and you don't care where you've come from, because all that matters is speed, and the hands holding your hands.
— M.T. Anderson, Whales on Stilts: M. T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales
Female friendships that work are relationships in which women help each other belong to themselves.
— Louise Bernikow
There was a lot of apologizing going on, but I realized that was how it was with people you cared about. You forgave each other and moved on.
— Richelle Mead, Blood Promise
There it was, Eve supposed. There was the answer to why people got tangled up with people. Because when you were down, when you were wallowing, someone you mattered to would ask if you were okay.
— J.D. Robb, Promises in Death
Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become 'unity' conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.
— A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
— Jean de La Bruyère
Introverts treasure the close relationships they have stretched so much to make.
— Adam S. McHugh, Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture
You only really fall apart in front of the people you know can piece you back together.
— Sarah Dessen, Saint Anything
You know, Jacob, if it weren’t for the fact that we’re natural enemies and that you’re also trying to steal away the reason for my existence, I might actually like you.
— Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse
What a desperate, pathetic fool I was. Time after time, my "friends" had shown me their true colors. Yet, I still wanted to believe they were sorry for causing me pain. p. 128
— Jodee Blanco, Please Stop Laughing at Me... One Woman's Inspirational Story
There will always be people for and against you, and its pointless wasting time trying to win over some of the people who are against you. Spend time with people who are for you. Those realtionships are worth it.
— Cathy Hopkins
Best friends, no matter what they do or how much they hurt you, it only hurts as much as it does because they are your best friend. And none of us are perfect. Mistakes were made for best friends to forgive; it’s what makes being a best friend official.
— J.A. Redmerski, The Edge of Never
Just because I've gone and snagged myself a hot boyfriend doesn't mean I'm going to leave my bestfriend high and dry.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Crescendo
A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself
— Frances Ward Weller
It ain't no fun if the homies can't have none. 
— Snoop Dogg
The only true test of friendship is the time your friend spends on you.
— John Marsden, Circle of Flight
You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is. We know most of what Gandalf has told you. We know a good deal about the ring. We are horribly afraid–but we are coming with you; or following you like hounds.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some things just couldn't be protectd from storms. Some things simply needed to be broken off...Once old thing were broken off, amazingly beautiful thing could grow in their place.
— Denise Hildreth Jones
The most valuable gift you can receive is an honest friend.
— Stephen Richards
She told me later that her parents had told her to steer clear of me at school. "My mum said that nobody really knew where you came from. And that you might be dangerous." "Why didn't you listen to her?" I asked. "Because nobody knew where you came from, Simon! And you might be dangerous!" "You have the worst survival instincts." "Also, I felt sorry for you," she said. "You were holding your wand backwards.
— Rainbow Rowell, Carry On
Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own blindness. Such friendship is creative and critical
—  it is willing to negotiate awkward and uneven territories of contradiction and woundedness.
Many people walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.
— Windhy Puspitadewi, Confeito
Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
— Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, A Life for a Life
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
— Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Isabelle was holding an umbrella. It was clear plastic, decorated with decals of colorful flowers. It was one of the girliest things Simon had ever seen, and he didn’t blame Alec for ducking out from under it and taking his chances with the rain.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls
Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.
— Immanuel Kant
If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sakes rather than for our own.
— Charlotte Brontë, The Life of Charlotte Brontë
My friends are everything without me but I am nothing without my friends.
— Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday
Friendship however is a plant which cannot be forced -- true friendship is no gourd spring up in a night and withering in a day.
— Charlotte Brontë, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë
They called you the Glue""The Glue?""Yeah. Probably because you're kind of the glue that holds us all together
— James Dashner, The Scorch Trials
And he looked lonely enough that she said, 'If you like, you could be my friend'.
— Sarah J. Maas, Heir of Fire
Are not 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.
— C.S. Lewis
The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Senectute, De Amicitia
When twilight drops her curtain down And pins it with a star Remember that you have a friend Though she may wander far.
— L.M. Montgomery
…I'm so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me. It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward.
— Jim Butcher, White Night
One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
— Euripides
What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.
— Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two
Care to join me, Goodfellow?”“Oh, ice-boy. A moonlight stroll with you? Do you even have to ask?
— Julie Kagawa, The Lost Prince
It could be a meeting on the street, or a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is a flash of recognition and the embers of kinship glow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing.
— John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
...you'll find that being a friend is to like a person for who they are, even the parts you don't understand. You don't have to understand, or do the same, or live their lives for them. If you truly care for them, then you want them to be who they are; that was why you liked them in the first place.
— Terry Goodkind
We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.Even longer,' Pooh answered.”  Winnie-the-Pooh
— A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
A hug is worth a thousand words. A friend is worth more."True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
— Charles Caleb Colton
When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.
— Robin McKinley, Spindle's End
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
Only once you destroy who you think you are can you embrace who you truly are.
— Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil
The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone.
— James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
Go on, have a pasty," said Harry, who had never had anything to share before or, indeed, anyone to share it with. It was a nice feeling, sitting there with Ron, eating their way through all Harry's pasties, cakes, and candies (the sandwiches lay forgotten).
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
There is a twilight zone in our hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves-our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and our drives-large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness. This is a very good thing. We will always remain partially hidden to ourselves. Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That's a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility, but to a deep trust in those who love us. It is the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same
— Flavia Weedn
The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
It may...be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
It isn't such a bad thing to always know that someone on the other side of the world cares about you.
— Laura Fraser, An Italian Affair
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
— Samuel Johnson
Bittersweet? No, just bitter, the taste of your tongue.Words you can’t have back, so they linger.
— Coco J. Ginger
He was the strangest of strangers in that he was also her oldest friend.
— Ann Brashares
Here's what I think. We all want someone to build a fort with. We want somebody to swap crayons with and play hide-and-seek with and live out imaginary stories with. We start out getting that from our family. Then we get it from our friends. And then, for whatever reasons, we get it in our heads that we need to get that feeling- that intimacy- from a single someone else. We call if growing up. But really, when you take sex out of it, what we want is a companion. And we make that so damn hard to find.
— David Levithan, Are We There Yet?
I understand you, and I shall not attempt to make you change your mind. I am too old to want to improve the world. I have told you what I think, and that is all. I shall remain your friend even if you act contrary to my convictions, and I shall help you even if I disagree with you.
— Milan Kundera
A man trusts another man when he sees enough of himself in him.
— Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
It was almost comforting, this mutual acceptance of our secrets.
— Kiera Cass, The Elite
We approach the house and I wave at Jimmy. "And if he thinks he's eating with us, he's got another thing coming," my dad says.Jimmy approaches us and takes the shopping bags from me, looking inside them."Lamb roast. Am I invited?
— Melina Marchetta, Saving Francesca
The real frienship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.
— Rabindranath Tagore
Thomas was an annoying wiseass who tended to make everyone he met want to kill him, and when I have that much in common with someone, I can't help but like him a little.
— Jim Butcher, Blood Rites
You're the one who is weak. You will never know love or friendship. And I feel sorry for you.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I wanted to kill her and make her eat her fringe. And her knickers.
— Louise Rennison, Away Laughing on a Fast Camel
and it is hard to let go, to imagine alternatives, but you are bold with unknowing, you are ready to explore.
— Terra Elan McVoy, After the Kiss
If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.
— Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.
— Orson Scott Card, Hart's Hope
A bolt of warmth, fierce with joy and pride and gratitude, flashed through me like sudden lightning. I don’t care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching—they are your family. And they were my heroes.
— Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty
I don't feel that way anymore," Nico muttered. "I mean... I gave up on Percy. I was young and impressionable, and I- I don't..."His voice cracked, and Jason could tell the guy was about to get teary-eyed. Whether Nico had really given up on Percy or not, Jason couldn't imagine what it had been like for Nico all those years, keeping a secret that would've been unthinkable to share in the 1940s, denying who he was, feeling completely alone- even more isolated than other demigods."Nico," he said gently, "I've seen a lot of brave things. But what you did? That was maybe the bravest.
— Rick Riordan, The House of Hades
Never give up on someone. Sometimes the answers you are looking for are the same answers another person is looking for. Two people searching together are always better than one person alone.
— Shannon L. Alder
Friendship is love without wings.
— George Gordon Byron
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these indeed the sun shone brightly.
— Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
— Michel de Montaigne
Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.
— Jane Austen, Emma
You're my closest friend and you're thousands of miles away.
— Anthony Horowitz, Scorpia Rising
Friends are supposed to act like harbor boats—let you know if you’re off course. But it ain’t always possible…
— Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
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
He sighed. "I don't think an apology will do, Mercy. Because an apology implies that you wouldn't do it again. And, under the circumstances, you wouldn't do anything differently, would you?"No.
— Patricia Briggs
She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position
—  it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.
If you didn't feel like your support system was strong enough, then getting yourself out of the situation was the best thing to do
— Lindsey Kelk, I Heart New York
A real friendship ought to introduce each person to unexpected weirdness in the other.
— Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget
ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?ESTRAGON: You let me go.
— Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me.Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.
— Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides
Here's the thing- I love you and I love her, but I swear to God I'll kick your ass if you hurt her.
— Katie McGarry, Dare You To
A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.
— Aesop, Aesop's Fables
You have some queer friends, Dorothy,' she said.The queerness doesn't matter, so long as they're friends,' was the answer
— L. Frank Baum, The Road to Oz
Love is friendship set to music.
— Jackson Pollock
That's what friends should do. cherish the good and pretend not to notice the harmless rest.
— Beth Hoffman, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.
— Francis Bacon
What's friendship's realest measure?I'll tell you. The amount of precious time you'll squander on someone else's calamities and fuck-ups.
— Richard Ford
If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.
— Christopher Morley
Some people you meet and they're your friend for a day. Some you meet and you never really know at all. And then there are those who get caught inside your soul and stay there forever.
— Melodie Ramone, After Forever Ends
My shadow serves as the friend I crave.
— Anna Akhmatova
I won’t let you have it. I won’t give you this moment. I won’t let you fill up this valuable organ...I own it. I won’t do it. I can’t think, I won’t think about it.
— Coco J. Ginger
I may be stupid, as you say, to believe in honour and friendship and loyalty without price. But these are virtues to be cherished, for without them we are no more than beasts roaming the land.
— David Gemmell, Shield of Thunder
Friends are those rare people who ask how we are, and then wait to hear the answer.
— Ed Cunningham
It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.
— Epicurus
The thing is, that when you're young, you always think you'll meet all sorts of wonderful people, that drifting apart and losing friends is natural. You don't worry, at first, about the friends you leave behind. But as you get older, it gets harder to build friendships. Too many defenses, too little opportunity. You get busy. And by the time you realize that you've lost the dearest best friend you've ever had, years have gone by and you're mature enough to be embarrassed by your attitude and, frankly, by your arrogance.
— Kate Jacobs, The Friday Night Knitting Club
Here's champagne for our real friends, and real pain for our sham friends.
— Mardy Grothe
What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?
— Richard Russo, Empire Falls
There are two kinds of friendship: the beneficial friendship and the erroneous friendship. The erroneous friendship balances on the principle of "the closer we are, the more okay it is for me to say anything I want to you and for me to treat you any way that I want to, and for me to disrespect you and take advantage of you" while a true friendship is rooted in this principle: "the closer we are, the more respect I have for you, the better I will treat you, the higher I will regard you, the more good things I will wish for you." You will know someone is a true friend by basis of observing their actions towards you as the friendship grows deeper. A true friend will continue to hold you in higher and higher regard while the error of a friend will see your goodwill and newfound fondness as basis to do and say whatever he/she wants, that is disrespectful and non-beneficial to you.
— C. JoyBell C.
My friends call me by my name.""You don't have any friends.""I don't want you to be my friend, Selia, or my servant, not now. I thought you were both. You have let me know I was wrong. So are you to treat me so. You are wrong.
— Shannon Hale, The Goose Girl
Did you just tell us you're gay?" Asks Nick"Yes.""Okay," he says. Abby swats him. "What?""That's all you're going to say? Okay?""He said not to make a big deal out of it," Nick says. "What am I supposed to say?""Say something supportive. I don't know. Or awkwardly hold his hand like I did. Anything"Nick and I look at each other."I'm not holding your hand," I tell him, smiling a little."All right"--he nods--"but know that I would.
— Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. ...We tell the story to get them back, to capture the traces of footfalls through the snow.
— Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
Then, suddenly again, Christopher Robin, who was still looking at the world, with his chin in his hand, called out "Pooh!" "Yes?" said Pooh. "When I'm--when--Pooh!" "Yes, Christopher Robin?" "I'm not going to do Nothing any more." "Never again?" "Well, not so much. They don't let you." Pooh waited for him to go on, but he was silent again. "Yes, Christopher Robin?" said Pooh helpfully. "Pooh, when I'm--you know--when I'm not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?" "Just me?" "Yes, Pooh." "Will you be here too?" "Yes Pooh, I will be really. I promise I will be Pooh." "That's good," said Pooh. "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred." Pooh thought for a little. "How old shall I be then?" "Ninety-nine." Pooh nodded. "I promise," he said. Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt Pooh's paw. "Pooh," said Christopher Robin earnestly, "if I--if I'm not quite--" he stopped and tried again-- "Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?" "Understand what?" "Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come on!" "Where?" said Pooh. "Anywhere." said Christopher Robin.So, they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.
— A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner
I feel a horror for exaggerated love or friendship. It's just too well demonstrated to me that when the moment comes that one asks something, or has need of something, the responce is not worth a biscuit.
— Brian Thompson, A Monkey Among Crocodiles: The Life, Loves And Lawsuits Of Mrs Georgina Weldon
The only true currency in this bankrupt world are the moments you share with someone when you're uncool.
— Cameron Crowe
We both grew so used to each other, so comfortable with the naturalness and ease of our friendship, that we became sloppy about keeping our relationship a secret. It was not that we were physically demonstrative or obviously in love, more that it had become impossible for us to hide our close involvement. We had gradually acquired the unmistakable air of old-love: finishing each other's sentences and speaking to each other with an offhand, presuming intimacy that was eventually noticed.
— Kate Kerrigan, The Miracle of Grace
If the portraits of our absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew our memory of them and relieve our regret for their absence by a false and empty consolation, how much more pleasant are letters which bring us the written characters of the absent friend.
— Héloïse d'Argenteuil, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse
Listen to me, Amin," I said slowly. "Listen to me very carefully. Nothing is the same. Nothing will ever be the same again. There lives on this earth a woman who can be my friend and my lover. Do you understand that? Do you understand what a marvelous thing that is?""A friend is a friend," Uthman interrupted, "and a woman is a woman. You can't have them in one person. The whole world knows that.""If that's what the whole world knows, ...then the whole world is wrong. I believed the whole world, and I lost her.
— Barbara Cohen, Seven Daughters and Seven Sons
There are very few friends that will lie down with you on empty streets in the middle of the night, without a word. No questions, no asking why, just quietly lay there with you, observing the stars, until you're ready to get back up on your feet again and walk the last bit home, softly holding your hand as a quiet way of saying “I'm here”.It was a beautiful night.
— Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles; in search for The Great Perhaps
All we really want is for no one to have a boring life, to be impressive, so we can be impressed. ~ on the friends we choose.
— Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I have come to this lonely place and here is this other," was the substance of the thing felt.
— Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Friendship is the wine of life. 
— Edward Young
The friends who met here and embraced are gone,Each to his own mistake;
— W.H. Auden
Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
— P.G. Wodehouse, Carry on, Jeeves
Sometimes friends make mistakes. Grievous ones that cry out for us to stay and prove we are true friends.
— Beth Bernobich
Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.
— Baltasar Gracián
It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie--I found that out. So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.HUCK FINN.I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth,well known to all intelligent people.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler
And Isi always listened, never told Enna she had been foolish, never said hollow things like 'You'll be all right.' . . . Isi saw Enna's struggle and her sadness, and she understood.
— Shannon Hale, Enna Burning
I don't like to commit myself about Heaven and Hell, you see, I have friends in both places.
— Mark Twain
Your friends will believe in your potential, your enemies will make you live up to it.
— Tim Fargo
It's all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving our friends?
— Willa Cather, My Mortal Enemy
Wherever it is you may be, it is your friends who make your world.
— Chris Bradford, The Way of the Sword
Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back
— Blaise Pascal
now I'm told that this is life, that pain is just a simple comprimise so we can get what we want out of it. Would someone care to classify a broken heart and some twisted minds so I can find someone to rely on?
— Hayley Williams
Never mind, said Hachiko each day. Here I wait, for my friend who’s late. I will stay, just to walk beside you for one more day.
— Jess C. Scott, Skins, Animal Stories
God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.
— Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably
— William Penn
Small Acts of Kindness are Priceless
— M.G. Wells
She was my friend and I loved her and relied on her, even though there were days when her moodiness and fragility frightened me, because they reminded me of my own tenuous grasp on life.
— Julie Metz, Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal
A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck.
— David Nicholls, One Day
We come back to the same people to learn something about how we have changed. We want to be assured that we have changed. We so want our pictures to paint differently than they do.
— Heather Duffy Stone, This Is What I Want to Tell You
It takes a long time to grow an old friend.
— John Leonard
Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.
— Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations...entangling alliances with none
— Thomas Jefferson
Dia wrinkled her nose. “Gross. You need a decent girl, one that can straighten you out.”“I don't need to be straightened out,” Carmine said. “Why drown in love when you can have so much fun swimming in lust?
— J.M. Darhower, Sempre
So Sonia was not my only or even my first best friend. She was the last. It wasn t that I hadn t made friends since just that I thought myself past the age of that particular kind of friendship. Adult friendship doesn t grant you an exclusive isn t meant to be ranked above romance and family. I couldn t imagine ever living that moment again when you say with a shy and hopeful pride You re my best friend. The other person says it back and there you have chosen each other out of everyone else in the world. 
— Leah Stewart, The Myth of You and Me
Maybe I was naïve to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything.
— Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care