At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I've grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.

Dale Carnegie

Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.

David Foster Wallace

...in real life I always seem to have a hard time winding up a conversation or asking somebody to leave, and sometimes the moment becomes so delicate and fraught with social complexity that I'll get overwhelmed trying to sort out all the different possible ways of saying it and all the different implications of each option and will just sort of blank out and do it totally straight -- 'I want to terminate the conversation and not have you be in my apartment anymore' -- which evidently makes me look either as if I'm very rude and abrupt or as if I'm semi-autistic and have no sense of how to wind up a conversation gracefully... I've actually lost friends this way.

David Foster Wallace

This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with depression is that it's such a self-centered illness - Dostoevsky shows that pretty good in his "Notes from Underground". The depression is painful, you're sapped/consumed by yourself; the worse the depression, the more you just think about yourself and the stranger and repellent you appear to others.

David Nicholls

In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right.

Dorothy Koomson

Far too many people opened their hearts and lives at the drop of a hat. Why give someone that power over you? Why endow them with the ability to hurt you that much? Let someone in and you were asking for an emotional kicking some day.

Dorothy Koomson

Share too much and someone can hurt you.

Haruki Murakami

I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.

Instead of things I'm good at, it might be faster to list the things I can't do. I can't cook or clean the house. My room's a mess, and I'm always losing things. I love music, but I can't sing a note. I'm clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and I can't tell left from right half the time. When I get angry, I tend to break things. Plates and pencils, alarm clocks. Later on I regret it, but at the time I can't help myself. I have no money in the bank. I'm bashful for no reason, and I have hardly any friends to speak of.

Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies … the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.

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Henri J.M. Nouwen

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.

Henry David Thoreau

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.

Henry Miller

When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.

Holly Black

Cardan grins at me as though we've been great friends all our lives. I forgot how charming he can be--and how dangerous that is.

Horace

To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it those who have, fear it.

Hunter S. Thompson

I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on Fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed. My father taught me that, along with a few other things that have kept my life interesting.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.

Jean de la Fontaine

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it: nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.

Jeanette Winterson

Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.

Why not keep this resource at your fingertips?

Jennifer A. Nielsen

The saddest thing is there won’t be anyone to miss us when we’re gone. No family, no friends, no one waiting at home.”“It’s better that way,” I said. “It’ll be easier for me, knowing my death doesn’t add to anyone’s pain.”“If you can’t give anyone pain, then you can’t give them joy either.”

Jennifer Aniston

I think it's important to have closure in any relationship that ends - from a romantic relationship to a friendship. You should always have a sense of clarity at the end and know why it began and why it ended. You need that in your life to move cleanly into your next phase.

Where would you be without friends? The people to pick you up when you need lifting? We come from homes far from perfect, so you end up almost parent and sibling to your friends - your own chosen family. There's nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing.

Jennifer Elisabeth

For so many years, I couldn’t understand why every time I thought that someone finally loved me, like… for real, they would eventually turn to vapor. Every person whom I’ve ever loved is trapped inside of my chest. I’ve breathed all of them in so deeply that I’ve nearly choked and died on every soul that I’ve ever given myself to.

Jim Morrison

People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.

Jodi Picoult

I know how difficult it can be when the image you've had of something doesn't match its reality; when the friend beside you turns into a monster.

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John Steinbeck

Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.

Kristin Hannah

To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can't let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.

L.M. Montgomery

Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by happiness that is not your own.

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.

Langston Hughes

I loved my friend. He went away from me. There's nothing more to say. The poem ends. Soft as it began-I loved my friend.

Larry Flynt

The two most misused words in the entire English vocabulary are love and friendship. A true friend would die for you, so when you start trying to count them on one hand, you don't need any fingers.

Mandy Hale

It makes no sense to try to extend a friendship that was only meant to be a season into a lifetime.

You will evolve past certain people. Let yourself.

Marie Rutkoski

If you won’t be my friend, you’ll regret being my enemy.

Marilyn Manson

If you want to find out who your real friends are, sink the ship. The first ones to jump aren't your friends.

Matthew Quick

And I still love you in my own fucked-up way. I miss you, I really do. Can we still be friends?

Meg Cabot

But as you age, you lose other, even more important things, like friends-hopefully only bad friends, who maybe weren't as good for you as you once thought. With luck, you'll be able to hang on to your true friends, the ones who were always there for you.... even when you thought they weren't. Because friends like that are more precious then all the tiaras in the world

Mike Norton

Never hold resentments for the person who tells you what you need to hear; count them among your truest, most caring, and valuable friends.

Oprah Winfrey

If friends disappoint you over and over, that's in large part your own fault. Once someone has shown a tendency to be self-centered, you need to recognize that and take care of yourself; people aren't going to change simply because you want them to.

Orson Welles

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.

Patrick Rothfuss

There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other is to lend.

Richard Bach

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.

Salman Rushdie

Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.

Sam Harris

Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?

Sara Shepard

Always sleep with one eye open. Never take anything for granted. Your best friends might just be your enemies.

Silvia Cartwright

There is no glory in war, yet from the blackness of its history, there emerge vivid colours of human character and courage. Those who risked their lives to help their friends.

Soren Kierkegaard

I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent.

Stephen Chbosky

I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend. I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like.

Stephen Chbosky

Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.

Stephen King

Hug and kiss whoever helped get you - financially, mentally, morally, emotionally - to this day. Parents, mentors, friends, teachers. If you're too uptight to do that, at least do the old handshake thing, but I recommend a hug and a kiss. Don't let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.

I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you?

Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.

Stephenie Meyer

I said it would be better if we weren’t friends, not that I didn’t want to be.

Tupac Shakur

Sometimes when I'm alone. I Cry, cause I am on my own. The tears I cry are bitter and warm. They flow with life but take no form. I Cry because my heart is torn. I find it difficult to carry on. If I had an ear to confide in, I would cry among my treasured friend, but who do you know that stops that long, to help another carry on.The world moves fast and it would rather pass by .Then to stop and see what makes one cry, so painful and sad. And sometimes... I Cry and no one cares about why.

V.E. Schwab

Anoshe was a word for strangers in the street, and lovers between meetings, for parents and children, friends and family. It softened the blow of leaving. Eased the strain of parting. A careful nod to the certainty of today, the mystery of tomorrow. When a friend left, with little chance of seeing home, they said anoshe. When a loved one was dying, they said anoshe. When corpses were burned, bodies given back to the earth and souls to the stream, those left grieving said anoshe. Anoshe brought solace. And hope. And the strength to let go.

Voltaire

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

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