Life Celebration Quotes
Significant Others, Partners & Friendship
Philosophical Insights on Friendship
A.A. Milne
"Friendship," said Christopher Robin, "Is a very comforting thing to have."
Adriana Trigiani
But what Mom never told me is that along the way, you find sisters, and they find you. Girls are cool that way.
Albert Camus
Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead. Walk beside me… just be my friend.
Anne Carson
Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me. Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.
Anne Lamott
Your experiences will be yours alone. But truth and best friendship will rarely if ever disappoint you.
Anne Sexton
Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.
Annie Barrows
We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us.
Aphra Behn
That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.
Ani DiFranco
Strangers are exciting, their mystery never ends. But, there's nothing like looking at your own history in the faces of your friends.
Aristotle
Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence for these wish well alike to each other equal good, and they are good in themselves.
Brené Brown
Our stories are not meant for everyone. Hearing them is a privilege, and we should always ask ourselves this before we share: "Who has earned the right to hear my story?" If we have one or two people in our lives who can sit with us and hold space for our shame stories, and love us for our strengths and struggles, we are incredibly lucky. If we have a friend, or small group of friends, or family who embraces our imperfections, vulnerabilities, and power, and fills us with a sense of belonging, we are incredibly lucky.
Charles Kingsley
A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults.
Charlotte Brontë
There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.
Cicero
Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.
Dale Carnegie
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Danica McKellar
I wasn't in school often enough to really belong to a 'clique,' but my friends all studied hard and got pretty good grades. They were good people with self-respect. I still like to be friends with people I admire something about I really believe that we become like the people we're surrounded by, so I choose my friends carefully!
David Byrne
I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it's a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right 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 then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
E. M. Forster
I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
Edith Sitwell
Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.
Ed Cunningham
Friends are those rare people who ask how we are, and then wait to hear the answer.
Emilie Autumn
It gives me strength to have somebody to fight for; I can never fight for myself, but, for others, I can kill.
Emily Henry
My best friends taught me a new kind of quiet, the peaceful stillness of knowing one another so well you don’t need to fill the space. And a new kind of loud: noise as a celebration, as the overflow of joy at being alive, here, now.
Emily Wing Smith
Being soaked alone is cold. Being soaked with your best friend is an adventure.
Epicurus
It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.
Eugene Kennedy
The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?
Euripides
Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.
Frances Ward Weller
A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
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 Herbert
The best mirror is an old friend.
Graeme Rodaughan
Never give up on your friends. Never give up your faith in them. It's when everything is worse than you could ever imagine it could be, that you'll need your friends the most.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
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.
Hanya Yanagihara
I know my life's meaningful because" - and here he stopped, and looked shy, and was silent for a moment before he continued - " because I'm a good friend. I love my friends, and I care about them, and I think I make them happy.”
Helen Keller
I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
Henry David Thoreau
Friends…they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
Henry Ford
My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
Henry Ward Beecher
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.
Homer
The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.
Hubert H. Humphrey
The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.
Why not keep this resource at your fingertips?
James Lecesne
This is how it works. I love the people in my life, and I do for my friends whatever they need me to do for them, again and again, as many times as is necessary. For example, in your case you always forgot who you are and how much you're loved. So what I do for you as your friend is remind you who you are and tell you how much I love you. And this isn't any kind of burden for me, because I love who you are very much. Every time I remind you, I get to remember with you, which is my pleasure.
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James Patterson
A friend of mine once defined love as finding someone you can talk to late into the night.
Jane Austen
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
Jane Fonda
Women’s friendships are like a renewable source of power.
Jayne Anne
Phillips Talk between women friends is always therapy...
Jeffrey Archer
Some people standby you in your darkest hour while others walk away; only a select few march towards you and become even closer friends.
Jim Morrison
A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.
Johanna Lindsey
What is a friend if not someone you feel close to, someone you like being with, someone you can confide in and share pleasure with?
John Wooden
Friendship is two-sided. It isn't a friend just because someone's doing something nice for you. That's a nice person. There's friendship when you do for each other. It's like marriage - it's two-sided.
Jon Katz
I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.
Kahlil Gibran
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 the 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.
Kristin Hannah
That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were there, making you laugh even in your darkest hours.
That was what a best friend did: hold up a mirror and show you your heart.
Laurell K. Hamilton
Friends don't count the cost of favors.
Lauren Oliver
A good friend keeps your secrets for you. A best friend helps you keep your own secrets.
That's the thing about best friends. That's what they do. They keep you from spinning off the edge.
Libba Bray
And for a moment, I understand that I have friends on this lonely path; that sometimes your place is not something you find, but something you have when you need it.
Lois Wyse
A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.
Louisa May Alcott
A faithful friend is a strong defense; And he that hath found him hath found a treasure.
Mark Glamack
If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it.
Mark Twain
The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.
Marlene Dietrich
It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.
Matthew Kelly
The people we surround ourselves with either raise or lower our standards. They either help us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves or encourage us to become lesser versions of ourselves. We become like our friends. No man becomes great on his own. No woman becomes great on her own. The people around them help to make them great. We all need people in our lives who raise our standards, remind us of our essential purpose, and challenge us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves.
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Mia Sheridan
I'm here for you. I'm here because of you. I'm here because you saw me, not just with your eyes, but with your heart. I'm here because you wanted to know what I had to say and because you were right...everyone does need friends.
Michelle Obama
Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts ... good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don't hurt. They're not painful. That's not just with somebody you want to marry, but it's with the friends that you choose. It's with the people you surround yourselves with.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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.
Olivia Wilde
A good friend reminds you of your brilliance.
P.C. Cast
If you have good friends, no matter how much life is sucking, they can make you laugh.
Plutarch
I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
Pythagoras
Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Seth Brown
True friends will always push you towards the great possibilities of your future, false friends will always chain you to the mistakes in your past.
Shauna Niequist
We sometimes choose the most locked up, dark versions of the story, but what a good friend does is turn on the lights, open the window, and remind us that there are a whole lot of ways to tell the same story.
Stacey Lee
Maybe what matters is not so much the path as who walks beside you.
Stephanie Perkins
And I realize... it’s okay. It’s okay if St. Clair and I never become more than friends. His friendship alone has strengthened me in a way that no one else’s ever has. He swept me from my room and showed me independence. In other words, he was exactly what I needed. I won’t forget it. And I certainly don’t want to lose it.
Stephen Chbosky
Sam and Patrick looked at me. And I looked at them. And I think they knew. Not anything specific really. They just knew. And I think that's all you can ever ask from a friend.
Stephen Fry
If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.
Steve López
... a friend is someone who inspires, who challenges, who sends you in search of some truer sense of yourself…
Steve Maraboli
If you hang out with chickens, you're going to cluck and if you hang out with eagles, you're going to fly.
Taylor Jenkins Reid
All I will say is that you show up for your friends on their hardest days. And you hold their hand through the roughest parts. Life is about who is holding your hand and, I think, whose hand you commit to holding.
Taylor Jenkins Reid
But if you have to go, then go. Go if it hurts. Go if it's time. Just go knowing you were loved, that I will never forget you, that you will live in everything Connor and I do. Go knowing I love you purely, Harry, that you were an amazing father. Go knowing I told you all my secrets. Because you were my best friend.
Terry Goodkind
... 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.
Thomas Fuller
No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend till he is unhappy.
Timothy Ferriss
But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn't making you stronger, they're making you weaker.
Vincent van Gogh
Close friends are truly life's treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.
Virginia Woolf
Some people go to priests, others to poetry. I go to my friends.
Walter Winchell
A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
William Arthur
Ward A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.
William Shakespeare
He that is thy friend indeed, He will help thee in thy need: If thou sorrow, he will weep; If thou wake, he cannot sleep: Thus of every grief in heart He with thee doth bear a part.These are certain signs to know. Faithful friend from flattering foe.
