Quotes for the Journey: Friendship I didn't find my friends; the good God gave them to me. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friends are an aid to the young, to guard them from error; to the elderly, to attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action; to those in the prime of life, to assist them to noble deeds.       -Aristotle     So long as we love, we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no person is useless while he or she has friends.       -Robert Louis Stevenson     Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.       -Saint Thomas Aquinas     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.      -Oliver Wendell Holmes     Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts.  It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.        -Thomas Hughes      Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.  True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.       -George Washington

I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses.        -Katherine Mansfield

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.        -George Bernard Shaw

I want a warm and faithful friend, To cheer the adverse hour; Who ne'er to flatter will descend, Nor bend the knee to power,-- A friend to chide me when I'm wrong, My inmost soul to see; And that my friendship prove as strong For him as his for me. John Quincy Adams

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, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.       -George Eliot

We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our room tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that they shall not be wanting in the best property of all--friends?       -Ralph Waldo Emerson

[A] workable and effective way to meet and overcome difficulties is to take on someone else's problems. It is a strange fact but you can often handle two difficulties--your own and somebody else's--better than you can handle your own alone. That truth is based on a subtle law of self-giving or outgoingness whereby you develop a self-strengthening in the process.       -Norman Vincent Peale

The most I can do for my friends is simply to be their friend.  I have no wealth to bestow upon them.  If they know that I am happy in loving them, they will want no other reward.  Is not friendship divine in this?       -Henry David Thoreau

We rejoice in the joys of our friends as much as we do our own, and we are equally grieved at their sorrows.  Wherefore the wise people will feel toward their friends as they do toward themselves, and whatever labor they would encounter with a view to their own pleasure, they will encounter also for the sake of their friends.       -Cicero

To have a good friend is one of the highest delights of life; to be a good friend is one of the noblest and most difficult undertakings.       -Anon

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.  Shall I not call God, the beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts.       -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good friendships are fragile things and require as much care as any other fragile and precious thing.       -Randolph Bourne

It is the steady and merciless increase of occupations, the augmented speed at which we are always trying to live, the crowding of each day with more work than it can profitably hold, which has cost us, among other things, the undisturbed enjoyment of friends.  Friendship takes time, and we have no time to give it.       -Agnes Repplier (1894)

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

Oh, the miraculous energy that flows between two people who care enough to get beyond surfaces and games, who are willing to take the risks of being totally open, of listening, of responding with the whole heart.  How much we can do for each other!       -Alex Noble

I destroy my enemies by making them my friends.        -Abraham Lincoln

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.       -Dale Carnegie

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

You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he or she doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.       -Laurence J. Peter

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

Of all the gifts that wise Providence grants us to make life full and happy, friendship is the most beautiful.       -Epicurus

The reward of friendship is itself.  The person who hopes for anything else does not understand what true friendship is.       -Alfred of Rievaulx

Once I was very sick.  It was clear that the cure for this illness was in my own hands.  However, it involved two things that I found most difficult to do--exercise and good diet.  Most of the people I knew, aware of my detestation for broccoli and walking, never mentioned these hateful things.  Two of my closest friends, however, were really pests. "Good food, good food, walk, walk, walk."  I would have like to have killed them.  But, and this is the point, which of these were my real friends--those who were so nice that they never mentioned the hateful remedies or those who so loved my life that they made me miserable until I changed my ways?       -Edward Lavin

If friendship is firmly established between two hearts, they do not need to exchange news.       -Sa'ib of Tabriz

By friendship you mean the greatest love, the greatest usefulness, the most open communication, the noblest sufferings, the severest truth, the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds of which brave men and women are capable.        -Jeremy Taylor

True friendship is a plant of low growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.       -George Washington

Those who seek friends without faults stay forever without friends.       -Unattributed

There is no wilderness like a life without friends; friendship multiplies blessings and minimizes misfortunes; it is a unique remedy against adversity, and it soothes the soul.       -Baltasar Gracian

Make new friends, but keep the old; Those are silver, these are gold. New-made friendships, like new wine, Age will mellow and refine. Friendships that have stood the test-- Time and change--are surely best; Brow may wrinkle, hair grow gray; Friendship never knows decay. For 'mid old friends, tried and true, Once more we our youth renew. Joseph Parry

To have a good friend is one of the highest delights of life; to be a good friend is one of the noblest and most difficult undertakings.        -Unattributed

My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.        -Helen Keller

Without friends no one would choose to live, though they had all other goods.        -Aristotle

Friends are the sunshine of life.        -John Hay

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.       -Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Friends are lost by calling often and calling seldom.        -Scottish proverb

It's important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to our friendship that we are not.       -Mignon McLaughlin

The friend of my adversity I shall always cherish most.  I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.       -Ulysses S. Grant

Many a friendship -- long, loyal, and self-sacrificing-- rested at first upon no thicker a foundation than a kind word.       -Frederick W. Faber

It is great to have friends when one is young, but indeed it is still more so when you are getting old.  When we are young, friends are, like everything else, a matter of course. In the old days we know what it means to have them.       -Edvard Grieg

Genuine human friendship is on the basis of human affection, irrespective of your position.  Therefore, the more you show concern about the welfare and rights of others, the more you are a genuine friend.  The more you remain open and sincere, then ultimately more benefits will come to you.  If you forget or do not bother about others, then eventually you will lose your own benefit.        -the Dalai Lama

I have always differentiated between two types of friends: those who want proofs of friendship, and those who do not. One kind loves me for myself, and the others for themselves.       -Gerard de Nerval

Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.       -Czech proverb

The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from the other.       -Cyril Connolly

True friends don't sympathize with your weakness; instead they help summon your strength.        -unattributed

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.       -Anais Nin

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.        -George Santayana

Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society.        -Michel de Montaigne

Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies. . . and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia.        -William James

It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.        -Marlene Dietrich

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.       -Oprah Winfrey

A friend is someone who allows you distance but is never far away.       -Noah ben Shea

The happiest business in all the world is that of making friends, And no investment on the street pays larger dividends, For life is more than stocks and bonds, more love than rate percent, And those who give in friendship's name shall reap what they have spent. Unattributed

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.        -French proverb

Friendship is a topic that's dear to my heart, for I've always had a great number of problems with the whole concept. When I was young, our family moved regularly (military), so I never really learned how to be a friend on a long-term basis. I never had time to reach any level of comfort or security in a friendship. Add to this the great amount of fear that I have of people, and you get someone who had a very hard time establishing, maintaining, and nurturing friendships. The bottom line was that I didn't ever feel that people wanted to be around me--there was always something better that they'd rather be doing. So I didn't call someone and say "Let's go see a movie," or "Let's go hiking tomorrow." I wanted to, but I never did. So I ended up being alone, wishing I weren't.  Even now I still carry that fear as a part of me, but I can show my caring in spite of the fear--I haven't gotten rid of it, but usually I'm able to work with it, recognize it, and deal with it on my terms, not its terms.  It's not easy, though--there are still plenty of times when I feel I don't belong, when I feel that people would much rather be with someone else than with me. But more and more I learn the value of those people who will stand by me through anything, and the value of standing by my friends through anything.  More than anything else, I've learned to lower my expectations of my friends in one important area--I don't need constant affirmation that they consider me to be a friend.  I accept that I am a friend, and I don't need to hear it to believe it. Still, there are few people whom I would consider to be true friends.  Part of that is due to the type of person I am.  I'm not very extroverted, and I am somewhat guarded in my relations with others.  But I've come to realize that's okay, and that's part of who I am.  I would much rather have few good friends than many superficial friendships.  But I also know now that if I want more friends, it's up to me to make them, and not up to them to come to me and introduce themselves. If you're like I was and you want to have more friends, pick up the phone, or the next time you're talking to someone you'd like to be friends with, suggest a cup of coffee somewhere or a walk or a hike.  You'd be surprised how many people would like to be your friends, if only you'd let them.  If you're more comfortable with fewer friends, let that be and accept it.  No matter what, it's important that we treat others with the dignity and respect that our best friends deserve, and eventually we'll be able to call every person "friend," whether we know them or not. tom walsh

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