This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The best preacher is the heart; the best teacher is time; the best book is the world; the best friend is God." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL
"Who is mighty? He who turns an enemy into his friend." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL
"The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant, not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant, not the master of the man who made it." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"It has become a kind of habit to look at things with the intention of getting something. We call it “pragmatism,” and we say that the truth is something that pays. If we meditate in order to get to the truth, it seems we will be well paid. In meditation, we stop, and we look deeply. We stop just to be there, to be with ourselves and with the world. When we are capable of stopping, we begin to see and, if we can see, we understand. Peace and happiness are the fruit of this process. We should master the art of stopping in order to really be with our friend and with the flower." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"Make not a bosom friend of a melancholy soul: he'll be sure to aggravate thy adversity, and lessen thy prosperity. He goes always heavy loaded; and thou must bear half. He's never in a good humor; and may easily get into a bad one, and fall out with thee." - Thomas Fuller
"Make not a bosom friend of a melancholy soul; he will be sure to aggravate thy adversity, and lessen your prosperity. He goes always heavy loaded; and thou must bear half. He is never in a good humor; and may easily get into a bad one, and fall out with thee." - Thomas Fuller
"No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend till he is unhappy." - Thomas Fuller
"Be a Friend to thyself, and others will be so too." - Thomas Fuller
"Make it thy chief Design and thy great Business, not to be Rich and Great: but so to live in this World as that thou mayest reasonably believe thou has God for thy Friend." - Thomas Fuller
"A good friend is my nearest relation." - Thomas Fuller
"Be a friend to thyself, and others will do so too." - Thomas Fuller
"To lose a friend is to suffer the loss of worlds, and to be lacking in friendship altogether is to be cut off, in a deeply felt way, from a richly self-defining way of being in the world." - Thomas Moore
"No man is a true Christian who does not think constantly of how he can lift his brother, how he can assist his friend, how he can enlighten mankind, how he can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which he lives." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"The doer of the favor is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift." - Thucydides NULL
"I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. Love a friend, a wife, something – whatever you like – you will be on the way to knowing more about Him; that is what I say to myself. But one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence; and one must always try to know deeper, better, and more. That leads to God, that leads to unwavering faith." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
"A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities." - William A. Ward, fully William Arthur Ward
"Let a man’s talents and virtues be what they may, we only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself. We cannot enjoy the good qualities of a friend if he seems to be none the better for them." - William Hazlitt
"The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery." - William Hazlitt
"We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love." - William Hazlitt
"Fate is the friend of the good, the guide of the wise, the tyrant of the foolish, the enemy of the bad." - William Rounseville Alger
"If you want to help pull a friend out of the mire, don't hesitate to get a little dirty." - Baal Shem Tov, given name Yisroel ben Eliezer
"Be more prompt to go to a friend in adversity than in prosperity." - Chilon of Lacedemon NULL
"Where minds differ and opinions swerve there is scant a friend in that company. " - Elizabeth I NULL
"A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies." - Gustave Flaubert
"He that ceaseth to be a friend never was a good one. " - Henry George Bohn
"He who puts a friend to public shame is as guilty as a murderer." - Hebrew Proverbs
"The difficulty is not that great to die for a friend, the hard part is finding a friend worth dying for. " - Henry Home, Lord Kames
"A friend in power is a friend lost. " - Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams
"Seneca closed the vast circle of his knowledge by learning that a friend in power was a friend lost. " - Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams
"There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone. " - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Of all possessions a friend is the most precious. " - Herodotus NULL
"Judge not thy friend until thou standest in his place." - Hillel NULL
"Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other." - Honoré de Balzac
"Nobody who is afraid of laughing, and heartily too at his friend, can be said to have a true and thorough love for him; and, on the other hand, it would portray a sorry want of faith to distrust a friend because he laughs at you. Few men, I believe, are much worth loving in whom there is not something well worth laughing at." - J. C. Hare (1795-1855) and A. W. Hare
"Make a friend when you don't need one." - Jamaican Proverbs
"Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable. " - Jean de La Fontaine
"Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world. " - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself. " - Jim Morrison
"There are no laws, there are no rules, just grab your friend and love him." - Jim Morrison
"All beings, including each one of us, enemy and friend alike, exists in patterns of mutuality, inter-connectedness, co-responsibility and ultimately in unity." - Joan Halifax, fully Roshi Joan Jiko Halifax
"My friend shows what I can do, and my foe what I should." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
"Such is friendship, that through it we love places and seasons; for as bright bodies emit rays to a distance, and flowers drop their sweet leaves on the ground around them, so friends impart favor even to the places where they dwell. With friends even poverty is pleasant. Words cannot express the joy which a friend imparts; they only can know who have experienced. A friend is dearer than the light of heaven, for it would be better for us that the sun were exhausted than that we should be without friends." - John Chrysotom
"Detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance." - John Webster
"Detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance." - John P. Webster
"Peer pressure is not a monolithic force that presses adolescents into the same mold... generally choose friend whose values, attitudes, tastes, and families are similar to their own. In short, good kids rarely go bad because of their friends." - Laurence Steinberg