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


False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us when we walk in
sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into shade."

--Bovee


I don't remember when I first began
To call you "friend."  One day, I only know,
The vague companionship that I'd seen grow
so imperceptibly, turned gold, and ran
In tune with all I'd thought, or dared to plan.

--Florence Steigerwalt


The Christian surely means to be kind and considerate in Heaven!  But why
not here on earth and in these trying circumstances where perhaps his
friends and neighbors need it most?

--Bolton Jones


Friendship, indeed, is one of the greatest boons God can bestow on man.
It is a union of our finest feelings; a disinterested binding of hearts,
and a sympathy of two souls.  It is an indefinable trust we repose in one
another, a constant communication between two minds, and an unremitting
anxiety for each other's souls.

--James Langdon Hill


The language of friendship is not words, but meanings.  It is an
intelligence above language.

Do not keep the alabaster box of your love and friendship sealed up until
your friends are dead.  Fill their lives with sweetness.  Speak approving,
cheering words while their ears can hear them, and while their hearts can
be thrilled and made happier.  The kind things you mean to say when they
are gone, say before they go.

--George William Childs


Never cast aside your friends if by any possibility you can retain them.
We are the weakest of spendthrifts if we let one friend drop off through
inattention, or let one push away another, or if we hold aloof from one
for petty jealousy or heedless slight or roughness.  Would you throw away
a diamond because it pricked you?  One good friend is not to be weighed
against the jewels of the earth.  If there is coolness or unkindness between
us, let us come face to face and have it out.  Quick before the love grows
cold.

--anonymous


The light of friendship is like the light of phosphorous, seen plainest
when all around is dark.

--Grace Noll Crowell


The friend who holds up before me the mirror, conceals not my smallest
faults, warns me kindly, reproves me affectionately, when I have not
performed my duty, he is my friend, however little he may appear so.  But if
a man praises and lauds me, never reproves me, overlooks my faults, and
forgives them before I have repented, he is my enemy, however much he may
appear my friend.

--Johann Gottfried van Herder


If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not
mind a bit.  But if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to share it, I
should feel it most bitterly.  If he shut the doors of the house of mourning
against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted, so
that I might share in what I was entitled to share.

--Oscar Wilde


Said Mrs. Browning, the poet, to Charles Kingsley, the novelist,
"What is the secret of your life?  Tell me, that I may make mine beautiful
also."  Thinking a moment, the beloved author replied, "I had a friend."

There is a vast difference between putting your nose in other people's
business and putting your heart in other people's problems.

He who seeks a friend without a fault remains without one.

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Friendship is a cozy shelter from life's rainy days.

A friend is a present you give yourself.

--Robert Louis Stevenson


It costs to be a friend or to have a friend.  There is nothing else in life
except motherhood that costs so much.  It not only costs time, affection,
patience, love, but sometimes a man must even lay down his life for his
friends. There is no true friendship without self-abnegation, self-sacrifice.

--Anna R. Brown Lindsay


Friendship is the positive and unalterable choice of a person whom we have
singled out for qualities that we most admire.

--Abel Bonnard


In the progress of personality, first comes a declaration of independence,
then a recognition of interdependence.

--Henry Van Dyke


Constantly look for a new friend, a truly first-class person, one who has
the courage to criticize, to demand your best self, a person who has
different interests and different beliefs from yours, a friend for whom you
can render a constructive service.  Devote energy toward making such
friends. Retain them, never let them go, and continue making new friends
until you die.

--William Terhune


Friends shoud be chosen by a higher principle of selection than any wordly
one.  They should be chosen for character, for goodness, for truth
and trustworthiness, because they have sympathy with us in our best thoughts
and holiest aspirations, because they have community of mind in the things
of the soul.

--Hugh Black


We do not make friends as we make houses, but discover them as we do the
arbutus, under the leaves of our lives, concealed in our experience.

--William Rader


We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed.  As in filling
a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over,
so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one that makes the heart run
over.

--Samuel Johnson


In the hour of distress and misery the eye of every mortal turns to
friendship. In the hour of gladness and conviviality, what is our want?  It
is friendship.  When the heart overflows with gratitude or with any other
sweet and sacred sentiment, what is the word to which it would give
utterance?  A friend.

--Walter Savage Landow


It is possible for two people who have wide differences of preference
and opinion, of habits, of teaching, of training, of background and belief
to enjoy the company of each other in many ways.  Indeed, a diversity of
friendships is one of life's real enrichments.  To learn of the
goodness of those who are unlike--their worth, their sincerity, their good
hearts, their good minds, their good company--is rich and rewarding.  It is
wonderful to have a wide range of choice friends who can be counted on,
friends who can be enjoyed and loved and trusted.  Such is the meaning of
friendship.

--Richard L. Evans


It is a noble and great thing to cover the blemishes and excuse the failings
of a friend; to draw a curtain before his weaknesses and to display his
perfections; to bury his shortcomings in silence but to proclaim his
virtues on the housetop.

--Robert South


The friend is the person whom one is in need of and by whom one is needed.

--Arthur Christopher Benson


Three men are my friends:  he that love me, he that hates me, and he that is
indifferent to me.  Who loves me teaches me tenderness.  Who hates me
teaches me caution. Who is indifferent to me teaches me self-reliance.

--These Times


Life is a sweeter, stronger, fuller, more gracious thing for the friend's
existence, whether he be near or far.  If the friend is close at hand,
that is best; but if he is far away he is still there to think of, to
wonder about, to hear from, to write to , to share life and experience with,
to serve, to honor, to admire, to love.

--Arthur Christopher Benson


True friends are those who, when you've make a fool of yourself, don't think
you've done a permanent job.

It is smart to pick your friends--but not to pieces

A true friend is one who thinks you're a good egg even though you're
half-cracked.

Friendship, in its truest sense, is next to love the most abused of words.
One may call many "friend" and be still ignorant of that sentiment, cooler
than passion, warmer than respect, more just and generous than either,
which recognizes a kindred spirit in another, and, claiming its right, keeps
it sacred by the wise reserve that is to friendship what the purple bloom is
to the grape, a charm which once destroyed can never be restored.

--J. Alcott


A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us
all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.

--Henry David Thoreau


A friend is one in whom we can confide.  The secret chambers of our soul
open to his touch on the latch.

--J. E. Dinger


A blessed thing it is to have a friend; one human sould whom we can trust
utterly; who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of
all our faults; who will speak the honest truth to us, while the world
flatters us to our face, and laughs at us behind our back; who will
give us counsel and reproof in a day of prosperity and self-conceit; but
who, again, will comfort and encourage us in days of difficulty and sorrow,
when the world leaves us alone to fight our own battle as we can.

--Charles Kingsley