This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"A soul exasperated by its ills, falls out with everything, with its friend and itself." - Joseph Addison
"If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius." - Joseph Addison
"In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest; for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud." - Joseph Addison
"O Friend, hope for Him whilst you live, know whilst you live, understand whilst you live; for in life deliverance abides. If your bonds be not broken whilst living, what hope of deliverance in death? It is but an empty dream that the soul shall have union with Him because it has passed form the body; if He is found now, He is found then; if not, we do not but go to dwell in the City of Death." - Kabir, also Kabīra NULL
"When you part from your friend, you grieve not; for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain." - Kahlil Gibran
"It is much easier patiently—and tolerantly—to avoid the person you have injured than to approach him as a friend. You need courage for that." - Ludwig Wittgenstein, fully Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
"Nothing in human life is more rarely found, nothing more dearly possessed. No loss is more chilling or more dangerous that of a friend." - Marsilio Ficino
"There are, in fact, few strong predictors of happiness than a close, nurturing, equitable, intimate, lifelong companionship with one’s best friend." - Martin Seligman, Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman
"There are, in fact, few stronger predictors of happiness than a close, nurturing, equitable, intimate, lifelong companionship with one's best friend." - Martin Seligman, Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman
"The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear." - Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
"A book is the most delightful companion.. An inanimate thing, yet it talks... It stimulates your latent talents. There is in the world no friend more faithful and attentive, no teacher more proficient... It will join you in solitude, accompany you in exile, serve as a candle in the dark, and entertain you in you loneliness. It will do you good, and ask no favor in return. It gives, and does not take." - Moses ibn Ezra, fully Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, known as ha-Sallah "Writer of penitential prayers"
"If we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster." - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature." - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Hold a true friend with both your hands." - Nigerian Proverbs
"I must disclaim his friendship who ceases to be a friend to himself." - Oliver Goldsmith
"It is no flattery to give a friend a due character; for commendation is as much the duty of a friend as reprehension." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"Beware of covetousness, which is a malady, diseaseful, incurable. Intimacy with it is impossible, it makes the sweet friend bitter, it alienates the trusted one from his master, it makes father and mother mad… it divorces a man’s wife." - Ptah-hotep, aka Ptahhotpe or Ptah-Hotep NULL
"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily time-worn yoke of their opinions." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A friend is one before whom I may think aloud." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where molt the wings which bear it farther than suns and stars. He who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of their men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time worn yoke of their opinions." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only way to have a friend is to be one." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A political victory, a rise in rents, the recovery of your sickness, or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, Therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; Therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"I need my enemy in my community. He keeps me alert, vital... But beyond what we specifically learn from our enemies, we need them emotionally; our psychic economy cannot get along well without them... Our enemy is as necessary for us as is our friend. Both together are part of authentic community." - Rollo May, fully Rollo Reese May
"The friend who understands you, creates you." - Romain Rolland
"My friend is he who will tell me my fault in private." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"A flatterer is said to be a beast that biteth smiling. But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend." - Walter Raleigh, fully Sir Walter Raleigh
"If any friend desire thee to be his surety, give him a part of what thou hast to spare; if he press thee further, he is not thy friend at all, for friendship rather chooseth harm to find itself than offereth it. If thou be bound for a stranger, thou art a fool; if for a merchant, thou puttest thy estate to learn to swim." - Walter Raleigh, fully Sir Walter Raleigh
"A man's wisdom is his best friend; folly his worst enemy." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
"The greatest pleasure in life is love; the greatest possession is health; the greatest ease is sleep; and the greatest medicine is a true friend." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
"On the science of beauty everywhere - Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forthe and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may." - Socrates NULL
"Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. It is well worth while to learn how to win the heart of a man the right way... Excite them by your civilities, and show them that you desire nothing more than their satisfaction; oblige with all your soul that friend who has made you a present of his own." - Socrates NULL
"Reprove thy friend privately; commend him publicly." - Solon NULL
"One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession." - Sophocles NULL
"Brahman is a shoreless ocean. Shakti is the omnipresent, interdependent action of its waves... As long as Her inscrutable Will keeps consciousness manifest through the human form, one is tempted to think that there are two realities - the formless God and these confusing mirror images called the universe. But no, my friend, there are no such twoness whatsoever. There is no super-knowledge separate from or opposed to ordinary ignorance. There is not day as a reality apart from night. There is only wholeness or completeness - beyond night or day, beyond ignorance or knowledge, yet containing both, manifesting both. How to describe this dynamic plenitude? Not with words from any scripture or philosophy. What is simply is!" -
"Semantics teaches us to watch our prejudices... Semantics is the propagandist's worst friend." - Stuart Chase
"Who is the bravest hero? He who turns his enemy into a friend." - Midrash or The Midrash NULL
"He who honors a friend for the sake of gain will ultimately leave him in disgrace." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL
"Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend's friend has a friend; be discreet." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL
"Who is mighty? He who makes of an enemy a friend." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL