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There’s a miracle of friendship that
dwells within the heart
And you don’t know how it happens
or where it gets its start
But the happiness it brings you
always gives a special lift
Any you realize that friendship
Is God’s most perfect gift.
-Anon.
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Friendship is like a prism through which the many variations of beauty are revealed in our lives.
-Anon.
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"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."
-Anon.
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A memory lasts forever.
Never does it die.
True friends stay together.
And never say goodbye.
-Anon.
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A man should choose a friend who is better than himself. There are plenty of acquaintances in the world; but very few real friends.
-Chinese Proverb
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Announcements of others' joy are invitations to one's own misery.
-Anon.
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"When I find myself fading, I close my eyes and realize my friends are my energy."
-Anon.
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"The road to a friend's house is never long."
-Danish proverb
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"Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."
-Muhammad Ali
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Friendships are different from all other relationships. Unlike acquaintanceship, friendship is based on love. Unlike lovers and married couples, it is free of jealousy. Unlike children and parents, it knows neither criticism nor resentment. Friendship has no status in law. Business partnerships are based on a contract. So is marriage. Parents are bound by the law. But friendships are freely entered into, freely given, freely exercised.
-Stephen Ambrose
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In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
-Aristotle
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From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
-Hilaire Belloc, "Dedicatory Ode" Sonnets and Verse (1923)
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Friendship, “the wine of life,” should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed; and it is consolatory to think, that although we can seldom add what will equal the generous first growths of our youth, yet friendship becomes insensibly old in much less time than is commonly imagined, and not many years are required to make it mellow and pleasant. Warmth will, no doubt, make a considerable difference. Men of affectionate temper and bright fancy will coalesce a great deal sooner than those who are cold and dull.
-James Boswell
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"A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely."
-Pam Brown
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"Friends are treasures."
-Horace Bruns
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"An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind."
-Buddha
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"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
-Albert Camus
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There is no more sure tie between friends than when they are united in their objects and wishes.
[Latin: Neque est ullum certius amicitiae vinculum, quam consensus et societas consiliorum et voluntatum]
-Marcus Tullius Cicero, Oratio Pro Cnoeo Plancio (II)
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It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.
-Colette, The Pure and the Impure, 1932
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"But Oh! The blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearless 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."
http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eletrs/vwwp/craik/craik-poem1866.html
-Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, A Life for a Life, 1866
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I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
-George Eliot, In a letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones, wife of the artist Edward Burne-Jones, 1875
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O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched.
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series, 1841
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"He who has a thousand friends
Has not a friend to spare,
While he who has one enemy
Shall meet him everywhere."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, -- so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=129&Itemid=161
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays "Friendship", 1841
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The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life.
-Edward Everett Hale
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"A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same."
-Elbert Hubbard
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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.
-Langston Hughes
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My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.
-Lee Iacocca
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"Friendship, 'the wine of life,'" said Boswell, "should, like a well-stocked cellar, be thus continually renewed." And Dr. Johnson added to this "A man, Sir, should keep his friendships in constant repair."
-Samuel Johnson
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"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?"
-Eugene Kennedy
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...friendship...is essential to intellectuals. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.
-Mary McCarthy
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All men have one refuge, a good friend, with whom you can weep and know that he does not smile.
-Menander
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When twilight drops her curtain down
And pins it with a star
Remember that you have a friend
Though she may wander far.
-Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of the Green Gables: Chapter XVII -- A New Interest in Life
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We have been friends together,
In sunshine and in shade;
Since first beneath the chestnut-trees
In infancy we played.
But coldness dwells within thy heart,
A cloud is on thy brow;
We have been friends together—
Shall a light word part us now?...
...We have been sad together,
We have wept, with bitter tears,
O’er the grass-grown graves, where slumber’d
The hopes of early years.
The voices which are silent there
Would bid thee clear thy brow;
We have been sad together—
Oh! what shall part us now?
-Caroline Norton, We Have Been Friends Together
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Those we hold most dear never truly leave us ... they live on in the kindnesses they showed, the comfort they shared and the love they brought into our lives.
-Isabel Norton
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In my friend, I find a second self.
-Isabel Norton
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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.
-Henri Nouwen
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The friends I made have slipped and strayed.
And who's the one that cares
A trifling lot and best forgot -
And that's my tale, and theirs.
Then if my 'friendships break and bend
There's little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die.'
-Dorothy Parker, The Leal
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"We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence."
-Joseph Roux
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Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
-Peter Ustinov, Dear Me, 1977
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"We all lose friends.. we lose them in death, to distance and over time. But even though they may be lost, hope is not. The key is to keep them in your heart, and when the time is right, you can pick up the friendship right where you left off. Even the lost find their way home when you leave the light on."
-Amy Marie Walz, [quotation submitted to Quoteland.com]
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"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow grow, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation."
-George Washington
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There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.
-Edith Wharton
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You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.
-E.B. (Elwyn Brooks) White, Charlotte, in “Charlotte’s Web”
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"True friends stab you in the front."
-Oscar Wilde
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Books about Friends
