"The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship."

  — Ralph Waldo Emerson

 "My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake."

  — Aristotle

 "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."

  — C.S. Lewis

 "A friend to all is a friend to none."

  — Aristotle

 "Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"

  — Abraham Lincoln

 "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."

  — Aristotle

 "Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find."

  — Shakespeare

 "All friendly feelings toward others come from the friendly feelings a person has for himself."

  — Aristotle

 "Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities."

  — C.S. Lewis

 "Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit."

  — Aristotle

 "Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success."

  — Oscar Wilde

 "Friendship with a man is friendship with his virtue, and does not admit of assumptions of superiority."

  — Mencius

 "The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden."

  — Goethe

 "A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends."

  — Friedrich Nietzsche

 "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

 "Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends."

  — Epicurus

 "My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever."

  — George R.R. Martin

 "Be careful whom you associate with. It is human to imitate the habits of those with whom we interact. We inadvertently adopt their interests, their opinions, their values, and their habit of interpreting events."

  — Epictetus

 "Misfortune shows those who are not really friends."

  — Aristotle

 "I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better."

  — Plutarch

 "The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question 'Do you see the same truth?' would be 'I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend,' no Friendship can arise - though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers."

  — C.S. Lewis

 "Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do."

  — Goethe

 "Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods."

  — Aristotle

 "When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass – may pass in the first half hour – into erotic love. Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later. And conversely, erotic love may lead to Friendship between the lovers. But this, so far from obliterating the distinction between the two loves, puts it in a clearer light. If one who was first, in the deep and full sense, your Friend, is then gradually or suddenly revealed as also your lover you will certainly not want to share the Beloved’s erotic love with any third. But you will have no jealousy at all about sharing the Friendship. Nothing so enriches an erotic love as the discovery that the Beloved can deeply, truly and spontaneously enter into Friendship with the Friends you already had; to feel that not only are we two united by erotic love but we three or four or five are all travelers on the same quest, have all a common vision."

  — C.S. Lewis