Friendship Quotes to Live By
“What is a friend? I will tell you. It is a person with whom you dare to be yourself. Your soul can be naked with him. He seems to ask of you to put on nothing, only to be what you are. He does not want you to be better or worse. When you are with him, you feel as a prisoner feels who has been declared innocent. You do not have to be on your guard. You can say what you think, so long as it is genuinely you. He understands those contradictions in your nature that lead others to misjudge you. With him you breathe freely. You can avow your little vanities and envies and hates and vicious sparks, your meannesses and absurdities and, in opening them up to him, they are lost, dissolved on the white ocean of his loyalty. He understands. You do not have to be careful. You can abuse him, neglect him, tolerate him. Best of all, you can keep still with him. It makes no matter. He likes you. He is like fire that purges to the bone. He understands. You can weep with him, sin with him, laugh with him, pray with him. Through it all – and underneath – he sees, knows and loves you.
A friend? What is a friend?
Just one, I repeat, with whom you dare to be yourself.” –C. Raymond Beran
“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
“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” –Aristotle
“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” –Walter Winchell
“Don’t walk in front of me because I may not follow.
Don’t walk behind me because I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.” –Albert Camus
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is a last drop that makes it run over; so in series of kindnesses, there is a last one that makes the heart run over.” –James Boswell
“Be careful how you judge people, most of all friends. You don’t sum up a man’s life in one moment.” – Al Pacino (in “City Hall“)