Friendships begin with liking or gratitude—roots that can be pulled up.

—George Eliot, 1876

As matron and mistress will differ in temper and tone, so will the friend be distinct from the faithless parasite.

—Horace, c. 20 BC

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.

—Honoré de Balzac, 1847

There are people whom one loves immediately and forever. Even to know they are alive in the world with one is quite enough.

—Nancy Spain, 1956

Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

—Jane Austen, 1811

Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

—George Washington, 1783

Of my friends, I am the only one I have left.

—Terence, 161 BC

I count myself in nothing else so happy / As in a soul remembering my good friends.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1595

In meeting again after a separation, acquaintances ask after our outward life, friends after our inner life.

—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1880

A friend in power is a friend lost.

—Henry Adams, 1905

Friends are ourselves.

—John Donne, 1603

I have often said that if I wish to name-drop, I have only to list my ex-friends.

—Norman Podhoretz, 1999

He who has nothing has no friends.

—Greek proverb

Friend! It is a common word, often lightly used. Like other good and beautiful things, it may be tarnished by careless handling.

—Harriet Jacobs, 1861

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

—Gore Vidal, 1973

Friendship was given by nature to be an assistant to virtue, not a companion to vice.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 45 BC

The path of social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken friendships.

—H.G. Wells, 1905

Friendship’s a noble name, ’tis love refined.

—Susanna Centlivre, 1703

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them.

—Evelyn Waugh, 1963

True friendship withstands time, distance, and silence.

—Isabel Allende, 2000

In real friendship the judgment, the genius, the prudence of each party become the common property of both.

—Maria Edgeworth, 1787

Friendship! Sir, there can be no such thing without an equality.

—George Farquhar, 1702

I am weary of friends, and friendships are all monsters.

—Jonathan Swift, 1710

Friendship is a plant that loves the sun—thrives ill under clouds.

—Bronson Alcott, 1872

One’s friends are divided into two classes, those one knows because one must and those one knows because one mustn’t.

—Sybil Taylor, 1922

Friendship itself will not stand the strain of very much good advice for very long.

—Robert Wilson Lynd, 1924

A broken friendship may be soldered but will never be sound.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732

Real friends offer both hard truths and soft landings.

—Anna Quindlen, 2012

No real friendship without absolute liberty.

—George Sand, 1866

A friend who is very near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.

—George Ade, 1902

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

—George Santayana, c. 1914

There is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, / And say my glory was I had such friends.

—W.B. Yeats, 1937

Friends are fictions founded on some single momentary experience.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1864

Friendship is not possible between two women, one of whom is very well dressed.

—Laurie Colwin, 1978

In life our absent friend is far away: / But death may bring our friend exceeding near.

—Christina Rossetti, 1881