friends quotes

  • Mr Wickham isblessedwith suchhappymanners asmay ensure his making friendswhether he may be equally capable of retaining them, is less certain.

    -Jane Austen
      Pride and Prejudice, ch.18.

  • Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants, but not always best subjects, for they are light to run away, and almost all fugitives are of that condition.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.8,'Of Marriage and the Single Life'.

  • Who can I tear to pieces, if not my friends?† If they were not my friends, I could not do such violence to them.

    - Francis Bacon
    Quoted in  John Russell Francis Bacon (1979).

  • Friends part foreverwild geese lost in cloud

    - Matsuo Basho
    c.1689  On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho, no.219 (translated by Lucien Stryk).

  • It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.

    - George Berkeley
      Maxims Concerning Patriotism.

  • Just foraword'neutrality'aword which inwartimehas so often been disregardedjust for a scrap of paper Great Britain isgoing to make war on a kindred nation who desires nothing better than to be friends with her.

    -Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg
      On Britain's reaction to the German invasion of neutral Belgium, 4  Aug. Quoted in British Documents on the Origins of the War1898^1914 (1926), vol.11.

  • The poor is hated even of his own neighbour: but the rich hath many friends.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Proverbs14:20.

  • A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Proverbs18:24.

  • And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Luke16:9.

  • This is my commandment,That ye love one another, as I have loved you.Greater lovehathnomanthanthis, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St  John15:12^13.

  • Future, n.That periodoftimeinwhichouraffairsprosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

    - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
      The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

  • When you come to the end of a perfect day, And you sit alone with your thought, While the chimes ring out with a carol gay For the joy that the day has brought, Do you think what the end of a perfect day Can mean to a tired heart, When the sun goes down with a flaming ray, And the dear friends have to part?

    - CarrieJacobs Bond
      'A Perfect Day'.

  • Weil ich ihm nicht traue, sind wir befreundet. Because I don't trust him, we are friends.

    - Bertolt Eugen Friedrich Brecht
      Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder ('Mother Courage and her Children'), sc.3.

  • All the friends that I loved and wanted to reward are dead, and all the enemies that I hated and I had marked out for punishment are turned to my friends.

    -James Buchanan
      Onfinally achieving his country's highest politicaloffice at the age of 65.

  • I've inherited100 percent of his enemies and only50 per cent of his friends.

    - GeorgeW(alker) Bush
      Of the influence of his father, former President George Bush, on his campaign for governor. In the Washington Times, 12 Oct.

  • Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home; Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends, He had the passion and the power to roam.

    -Rochdale
    ^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza13.

  • How to Win Friends and Influence People.

    - Dale originally Dale Carnagey Carnegie
      Title of book.

  • I amyet what I am, none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes.

    -John Clare
      'I  Am'.

  •    Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness on the brain. 226

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'Christabel', pt.2.

  •    You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

    - Sir William Neil pseudonym Cassandra Connor
      Lord Jim, ch.34.

  • As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls, to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, The breath goes now, and some say, no: 280 So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity of our love.

    -John Donne
    c.1595^1605  'A  Valediction: Forbidding Mourning', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

  • Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.

    - (George) Norman Douglas
      South Wind, ch.20.

  • Dear, why should you command me to my rest, When now the night doth summon all to sleep? Methinks this time becometh lovers best; Night was ordained together friends to keep.

    - Michael Drayton
      Ideas Mirrour, sonnet 37.

  • Sure there's contagion in the tears of friends.

    -John Dryden
      All for Love, or The World Well Lost, act1.

  •    Adieu, mes amis. Je vais a'   la gloire! Farewell, my friends. I am going to glory!

    - Isadora originally Angela Duncan Duncan
      Last words, shortly before she broke her neck when her long scarf caught in the wheels of her open-topped Bugatti sportscar. Quoted in Mary Desti Isadora Duncan's End (1929), ch.25.

  • There can be no law if we were to invoke one code of international conduct for those who oppose us and another for our friends.

    - Dwight D(avid) Eisenhower
      Speech on the Suez crisis, 31 Oct.

  • To my friends pictured within.

    - Sir Edward Elgar
      Dedication to the Enigma Variations.

  • When you've reached myage, and your friends are beginning to worry about you, blind dates are a way of life.

    -JuliusJ Epstein
      Pete'n Tillie.

  • And I'm afraid, reading this passage now, That everything I knew has been destroyed By those whom I admired but never knew; The laughing soldiers fought to their defeat And I'm afraid most of my friends are dead.

    -James Fenton
      'In a Notebook'.

  • An quicquam melius amicas divinitas mortalibus concesserit nescio. I do not know if the divinity has provided mortals with anything better than friends.

    -Gerbert later Pope Sylvester II
      Letter to  Abbot Gerald of  Aurillac.

  • Ach da ich irrte, hatt' ich viel Gespielen, Da ich dich kenne, bin ich fast allein. Ah! while I erred I had many friends. Now that I know you, I am alone.

    -JohannWolfgang von Goethe
    Gedichte, Zuneigung (published1910).

  • I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.

    - Oliver Goldsmith
      She Stoops to Conquer, act1, sc.1.

  • You are honored by your friends†distinguished by your enemies. I have been very distinguished.

    -J(ohn) Edgar Hoover
    Address to the House Sub-Committee on  Appropriations. Quoted in Curt Gentry  J Edgar Hoover (1991).

  • With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For manya rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfoot lad.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
      A Shropshire Lad, no.54.

  • Now hollow fires burn out to black And lamps are guttering low. Square your shoulders, lift your pack, And leave your friends and go. Oh, never fear, man, nought's to dread Look not left nor right. In all the endless road you tread, There's nothing but the night.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
    Quoted in Bernard Levin Hannibal's Footsteps (1985).

  • For a politician rises on the backs of his friends (that's probably all they're good for), but it's through his enemies he'll have to govern afterwards.

    - Richard Arthur Warren Hughes
    The Fox in the Attic, bk.2, ch.20.

  • Les livres sont des amis froids et s u" rs. Books are cold and certain friends.

    -Victor Marie Hugo
      Les Mise  rables, vol.1, bk.5, ch.3.

  • Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he isgrowing old.

    -Washington Irving
      Bracebridge Hall,'Bachelors'.

  • How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.4.

  •    Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we aretooluckyor toosuccessfulor toopretty, ourmisery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.

    - Erica ne  e Mann Jong
      How To SaveYour Own Life.

  • My friends should drink a dozen of Claret on myTomb.

    -John Keats
      Letter to Benjamin Bailey,14  Aug.

  •    Le mensonge et les vers de tout temps sont amis. Lies and literature have always been friends.

    -Jean de La Fontaine
      Fables, pt.2, no.1,'Contre ceux qui ont le gou"   t difficile'.

  • Dans l'adversite   de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous de  pla|"t pas. In the misfortune of our best friends, we always find something which is not displeasing to us.

    - Fran c° ois, 6th Duc de La Rochefoucauld
      Re  flexions, ou sentences et maximes morales, no.99.

  • A man should have dinner with his friends, and the commanding general has no friends.

    - Curtis Emerson LeMay
    On declining to dine with a group of colonels. Recalled on his death,1 Oct1990.

  • Oh I get by with a little help from my friends, Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends.

    -Paul
      'With a Little Help From My Friends'.

  •    'But do care a bit for flattery, my lady,'said De Craye.''Tis the finest of the Arts; we might call it moral sculpture. Adepts in it can cut their friends to any shape they like.'

    - George Meredith
      De Craye to Lady Busshe. The Egoist, ch.36.

  • Nay, good sir, be not so violent; with speed I cannot render satisfaction Unto the dear companion of my soul, Virginity, whom I thus long have lived with, And part with it so rude and suddenly. Can such friends divide, never to meet again, Without a solemn farewell?

    -Thomas Middleton
      The Changeling (with William Rowley), act1, sc.1.

  • My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends It gives a lovely light.

    - Edna St Vincent Millay
      A Few Figs From Thistles,'First Fig'.

  • Money couldn't buy friends but you got a better class of enemy.

    - Spike Milligan
      Puckoon, ch.6.

  • All other parts remaining as they were, And they, so perfect in their misery, Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, But boast themselves more comely than before And all their friends, and native home forget To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.

    -John Milton
      Of Odysseus's men changed to beasts by Circe. Comus,  A Mask, l.72^7.

  • Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but†a wicked race of deceivers†took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely formintoathousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled bodyof Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb, still as they could find them.We have not yet found them all†nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.

    -John Milton
      Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

  • In politics, madame, you need two things: friends, but above all an enemy.

    - (Martin) Brian Mulroney
      Remark made to a journalist following the by-election victory of Liberal leader  Jean Chre  tien,10 Dec, quoted two days later by Graham Fraser in The Globe and Mail.

  • Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.

    - Lewis Mumford
    The Brown Decades, p.3.

  • The friends of totalitarianism in this country tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      'The Prevention of Literature', in Polemic,  Jan.

  • Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris. So long as you are fortunate, you will count many

    -Ovid full name Publius OvidiusNaso   4317

  • You can always tell that the crash is coming when I start getting tender about Our Dumb Friends.Three highballs and I think I'm St Francis of Assisi.

    - Dorothy ne  e Rothschild Parker
      Here Lies,'Just a Little One'.

  • Deeper and deeper, one's love of old friends; Fewer and fewer, one's dealings with young men.

    -Po Chu«  -I
      Old Age.

  • I make a pact with you,Walt Whitman I have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father I am old enough not to make friends.

    - Ezra Loomis Pound
      Lustra,'A Pact'.

  • Friends To borrow my books and set wet glasses on them.

    - Edwin Arlington Robinson
      Captain Craig,'Captain Craig', pt.2.

  • Below him, in the town among the trees, Where friends of other days had honored him, A phantom salutation of the dead Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.

    - Edwin Arlington Robinson
    Avon's Harvest,'Mr Flood's Party'.

  • Por las verdades se pierden los amigos, e per las non dezir se fazen desamigos. Telling the truth loses you friends; not telling it gains you enemies.

    -Juan Ruiz
    c.1330  Libro de Buen Amor, stanza165.

  • You have no part with lads who fought And laughed and suffered at my side. Your fugues and symphonies have brought No memory of my friends who died.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'Dead Musicians'.

  • They have spoken lightly of my deathless friends, (Lamps for my gloom, handsguiding where I stumble,) Quoting, for shallow conversational ends, What Shelley shrilled, what Blake once wildly muttered† How can they use such names and be not humble?

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      The Heart'sJourney, pt.15,'Grandeur of Ghosts'.

  • He that is without name, without friends, without coin, without country, is still at least a man; and he that has all these is no more.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      Rob Roy to Francis Osbaldistone. Rob Roy, ch.21.

  • Have you not heard When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, His best friends hear no more of him?

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Letter to Maria Gisborne' l.235^7.

  • We know that you, the organized workers of the country, are our friends† As for the rest, they do not matter a tinker's curse.

    - Emanuel Shinwell, Baron Shinwell
      Trade union conference,7 May.

  • Exercise? I get it on the golf course.When I see my friends collapse, I run for the paramedics.

    - Red (Richard) Skelton
    Attributed.

  • I cannot remember things I once read A few friends, but theyare in cities. Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup Looking down for miles Through high still air.

    - Gary Sherman Snyder
      Riprap,'Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout'.

  • They lounge at corners of the street And greet friends with a shrug of shoulder And turn their pockets out, The cynical gestures of the poor.

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'MovingThrough the Silent Crowd'.

  • A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends; and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish; and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.

    -Jonathan Swift
      A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country.

  • There was a poor poet named Clough, Whom his friends all united to puff, But the public, though dull, Had not such a skull As belonged to believers in Clough.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Essays and Studies,'MatthewArnold'.

  • The Americans are our best friends, whether we like it or not.

    - Robert Thompson
    Oft-quotedremark recalledby Peter C Newman in HomeCountry (1973).

  • Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life.

    - (John) Jeremy Thorpe
      On Harold Macmillan's sacking of several Cabinet members, House of Commons.

  • Oh,iftheQueenwereaman,shewouldliketogoandgive those Russians, whose word one cannot believe, such a beating! We shall never be friends again till we have it out.

    -Victoria in full  Alexandrina Victoria
      Letter to Lord Beaconsfield,10 Jan.

  • Some people swim lakes, others climb flagpoles, some join monasteries, but we, my friends, who have considered suicide take our daily walk with death and are not lonely. In the end it brings more honesty and care than all the democratic parliaments of tricks.

    - Phyllis Webb
      EvenYour Right Eye,'To FriendsWho HaveAlso Considered Suicide'.

  • Find me but guilty, sever head from body, We'll part good friends.

    -John Webster
      TheWhite Devil, act 3, sc.2.

  • Mr Bernard Shaw has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by all his friends.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
    Quoted inW B Yeats Autobiographies (1955).

  • Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.

    - (Adeline) Virginia ne  e Stephen Woolf
      Jacob's Room, ch.5.

  • Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death Percivalothers through sheer inability to cross the street.

    - (Adeline) Virginia ne  e Stephen Woolf
    TheWaves.

  • Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind.

    -William Wordsworth
      'ToToussaint L'Ouverture', l.13^14 (published in the Morning Post 2 Feb).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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