51 Inspiring Friendship Quotes

Friendship is a beautiful bond that has the power to uplift, encourage, and bring immense joy to our lives. Whether it's the shared laughter, the supportive shoulder during tough times, or the countless memories created together, friends make every moment meaningful. In this collection, we've gathered 51 of the most inspiring quotes about friendship that capture the essence of these cherished relationships. These quotes celebrate the joy and strength found in true companionship, offering reflections that resonate with the heart. Whether you want to express gratitude to a dear friend or simply reflect on the value of friendship, these words can illuminate the significance of those special bonds.

1. “You can go through life and make new friends every year - every month practically - but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.” - Alexander McCall Smith

2. “How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it. How many slices in a bread? Depends how thin you cut it. How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live 'em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give 'em.” - Shel Silverstein

3. “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” - Abraham Lincoln

4. “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations...entangling alliances with none” - Thomas Jefferson

5. “It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.” - Mahatma Gandhi

6. “I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. [...] Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person, the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We could prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.” - Vladimir Nabokov

7. “New friends can often have a better time together than old friends.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

8. “Friends are supposed to act like harbor boats—let you know if you’re off course. But it ain’t always possible…” - Rebecca Wells

9. “Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.” - Orson Scott Card

10. “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.-Jeremy Malory-” - Johanna Lindsey

11. “Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.” - William T. Sherman

12. “It is possible to cause seemingly biochemical changes through human emotional involvement. You literally have changed his chemistry by being his friend.” - Steve Lopez

13. “it’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.” - Barack Obama

14. “[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken.The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender's enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other.” - Orson Scott Card

15. “When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…” - Christopher Hitchens

16. “That men of this kind despise women, though a not uncommon belief, is one which hardly appears to be justified. Indeed, though naturally not inclined to 'fall in love' in this direction, such men are by their nature drawn rather near to women, and it would seem that they often feel a singular appreciation and understanding of the emotional needs and destinies of the other sex, leading in many cases to a genuine though what is called 'Platonic' friendship. There is little doubt that they are often instinctively sought after by women, who, without suspecting the real cause, are conscious of a sympathetic chord in the homogenic which they miss in the normal man.” - Edward Carpenter

17. “When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.” - Robin McKinley

18. “Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people- there are many of them- who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling around them. Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour- flirting- and if carried far enough, it is punishable by law. But no law- not public opinion, even- punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable. Was she one of these?” - E.M. Forster

19. “Whatever it means to be a friend, taking a black eye for someone has to be in it.” - Gary D. Schmidt

20. “The King once said to me, 'Harold, you stand above all other men.' I said, 'No, Sire. I want nothing more than to stand shoulder to shoulder with my men. I am nothing without them.” - Elizabeth Alder

21. “2NOTES“You broke your other appointment, didn’t you?”“I did not! I told you on the phone—these people canceled at the last minute—”“Oh, Geo dear, come off it! You know, I sometimes think, about you, whenever you do something really sweet, you’re ashamed of it afterwords! You knew jolly well how badly I needed you tonight, so you broke that appointment. I could tell you were fibbing, the minute you opened your mouth! You and I can’t pull the wool over each other’s eyes. I found that out, long ago. Haven’t you—after all these years?”“I certainly should have,” he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally accepted bit of nonsense it is that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you.” - Christopher Isherwood

22. “It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.” - Epicurus

23. “Sincere deeds invite new friends.” - Toba Beta

24. “I was flipping channels, watching this cheerleading program on MTV. They took a field hockey girl and “transformed” her into a cheerleader by the end of the show. I was just wondering: what if she liked field hockey better?” - Jess C. Scott

25. “Amicu certus in re incerta cernitur' [A true friend is a friend when in difficulty]” - Quintus Ennius

26. “I was a man before I was a king, and no true man walks away when a friend needs him.” - David Gemmell

27. “Zavolio sam ga, znam po tome što mi je postao potreban, što nisam zamjerio ničemu ma šta da je rekao i učinio, i što mi je sve njegovo postalo važno. Ljubav je valjda jedina stvar na svijetu koju ne treba objašnjavati ni tražiti joj razlog.” - Meša Selimović

28. “Meghan pushed her chocolate cheesecake across the table to me. I hadn’t gotten paid yet for November, so I had only ordered coffee. “Here,” she said.“Don’t you want it?”“Sure I want it. I ordered it. But I’m giving it to you.”“Why?”Meghan stood up and got me a fork. “Remember what Nora said about love? In your movie?”“Love is when you have a really amazing piece of cake, and it’s the very last piece, but you let him have it,” I said.“So it’s really amazing cake,” said Meghan. “And I want you to have it.” - E. Lockhart

29. “Actually, I think it's the opposite. We know each other so well there isn't anything left to say. Sometimes it's nice just sitting here with you all, thinking. It's only best friends who can be comfortable with silence, wouldn't you say?” - Benjamin Wood

30. “I wish I could say we all lived happily ever after. I can't. But I can say we lived. Our love for Nate lives, and he's left us this piece of himself in his art; it was his gift to us. We know him through his art, and I can take comfort in that. I guess the thing about high school is, it's the moment when you start to cross from a being a kid to being an adult, and this journey to know yourself begins. Nate's journey ended to early, and I thought I had to run away to some far-off land to start mine. But, for now, it seems to me that I have enough to explore right here. There's a whole continent to discover in myself, and I know that it's love - love for my parents, my friends, my brother, and my art - that will guide me. Love will be my map.” - Lisa Ann Sandell

31. “We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter” - Allen Ginsberg

32. “Lena realized that a fundamental layer of their happiness depended on the four of them being close to one another. Their lives were independent and full. Their friendship was only one aspect of their lives, but it seemed to give meaning to all the others.” - Ann Brashares

33. “A friend is more to be longed for than the light; I speak of a genuine one. And wonder not: for it were better for us that the sun should be extinguished, than that we should be deprived of friends; better to live in darkness, than to be without friends” - John Chrysostom

34. “The Bible talks primarily of two kinds of angels- Cherubim and Seraphim. But there is a third kind of angel. If you ever find yourself troubled, suffering or in despair, God may send you this third type of angel. These angels are called...'friends.” - José N. Harris

35. “You want a friend in this city? [Washington, DC.] Get a dog!” - Harry S. Truman

36. “If frienship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.” - Abraham Lincoln

37. “Soon, the two of them would leave this spot. . . walk into the house and into a whole changed world. . . ” - Marisa de los Santos

38. “George looked at her for a long moment. Finally he replied, "And why do you find it so hard to think someone might like you and want to do things for you?” - Tamora Pierce

39. “Wadera ka beta, Saeen toh saeen , saeen ky dost b saeen..” - Bilal Nasir Khan

40. “Surgeons are a singular brotherhood, Adam. To us, people aren't sacred beings crafted in the Almighty's image, no, people are joints of meat; diseased, leathery meat, yes, but meat ready for the skewer & the spit." He mimicked my usual voice, very well. "'But why *me*, Henry, are we not friends?' Well, Adam, even friends are made out of meat.” - David Mitchell

41. “Let's pretend for just one moment that could actually happen. You close your eyes and I'll close mine and let's dream the same dream across the Atlantic, lighting up the darkness between us. Can you see it, Stu? Can you see us up there, shining in all the black?” - Annabel Pitcher

42. “I’ve heard it said, that people, come into our lives for a reason. Bringing something we must learn and we aren’t, to help us most to grow, if we let them, and we help them in return. Well I don’t know if I believe that’s true, but I know I’m who I am today because I knew you” - Stephen Schwartz

43. “I'd rather strive for the kind of interview where instead of me asking to introduce myself to society, society asks me to introduce myself to society.” - Criss Jami

44. “and then I realized there was no one else to call, which was the saddest thing. The only person I really wanted to talk to about Augustus Water's death was Augustus Water.” - John Green

45. “You‘re my best friend. You‘re the only somebody I got.” - Damon Suede

46. “A friend drops their plans when you're in trouble, shares joy in your accomplishments, feels sad when you're in pain. A friend encourages your dreams and offers advice--but when you don't follow it, they still respect and love you.” - Doris Wild Helmering

47. “There are few things worse than mistaking an enemy for a friend.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

48. “Yet sometimes being a friend meant letting people do things that hurt, like putting distance between you, just because it made them happy.” - Ann Aguirre

49. “[Karen:] Why would you want to be friends with him?[Rylie:] He has good insight into the male psyche. Besides, he's fun to talk to. [Karen:] He's fun to screw, too, that doesn't mean it's a good idea.” - Jessica Lave

50. “He was like the other half of myself,' says Boris...Ulrich says, 'You haven't lost {him}, you know. I don't know if it helps to say that. I lost a friend once myself, and I know how it goes.'He'll find his way inside you, and you'll carry him onward. Behind your heartbeat, you'll hear another one, faint and out of step. People will say you are speaking his opinons, or your hair has turned like his.'There are no more facts about him -- that part is over. Now is the time for essential things...Gradually you'll grow older than him, and love him as your son.'You'll live astride the line that separates life from death. You'll become experienced in the wisdom of grief. You won't wait until people die to grieve for them; you'll give them their grief while they are still alive, for then judgment falls away, and there remains only the miracle of being.” - Rana Dasgupta

51. “In a world full of cynics, critics, and competitors, we get to choose instead to be cheerleaders for others.” - Shelley Hendrix