This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never." - Charles Caleb Colton
"True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship never." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism; if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined; if the latter, gross and sensual." - Charles Caleb Colton
"True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"We must never forget that international friendship is achieved through rumors ignored, propaganda challenged and exposed; through patient loyalty to those who have proved themselves worthy of it; through help freely given, where help is need and merited... Peace is more a product of our day-to-day living than of a spectacular program, intermittently executed." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"It is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this scene also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity." - Francis Bacon
"But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air, and it is sweet as the hawthorn; shut it up, and it cankers and breeds worms." - George MacDonald
"A friend’s only gift is himself, and friendship is not friendship, it is not a form of free or liberal society, if it does not terminate in an ideal possession, in an object loved for its own sake. Such objects can be ideas only, not forces, for forces are subterranean and instrumental things, having only such value as they borrow from their ulterior effects and manifestations... We are not to look now for what makes friendship useful, but for whatever may be found in friendship that may lend utility to life." - George Santayana
"Friendship may indeed come to exist without sensuous liking or comradeship to pave the way; but unless intellectual sympathy and moral appreciation are powerful enough to react on natural instinct and to produce in the end the personal affection which at first was wanting, friendship does not arise." - George Santayana
"True friendship is a slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation." - George Washington
"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 growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation." - George Washington
"I have three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship and three for society." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"The language of friendship is not words but meanings." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship." - Henry Ward Beecher
"It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship." - Henry Ward Beecher
"It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend of his faults… To speak painful truth through loving words – that is friendship." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Religion is life, philosophy is thought; religion looks up, friendship looks in. We need both thought and life, and we need that the two shall be in harmony." - James Freeman Clarke
"A friendship that makes the least noise is very often the most useful; for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one." - Joseph Addison
"The true happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self; and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions; it loves shade and solitude, and naturally haunts groves and fountains, fields and meadows; in short, it feels everything it wants within itself, and receives no addition from multitudes of witnesses and spectators. On the contrary, false happiness loves to be in a crowd, and to draw the eyes of the world upon her. She does not receive satisfaction from the applauses which she gives herself, but from the admiration which she raises in others. She flourishes in courts and palaces, theaters and assemblies, and has no existence but when she is looked upon." - Joseph Addison
"Now friendship may be thus defined: a complete accord on all subjects human and divine, joined with mutual good will and affection. And with the exception of wisdom, I am inclined to think nothing better than this has been given to man by the immortal gods." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"There are those who find the “chief good” in virtue. Well, that is a noble doctrine. But the very virtue they talk of is the parent and preserver of friendship, and without it friendship cannot possibly exist." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"All I can do is to urge you to put friendship ahead of all other human concerns, for there is nothing so suited to man's nature, nothing that can mean so much to him, whether in good times or in bad… I am inclined to think that with the exception of wisdom, the gods have given nothing finer to men than this." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"The capacity for friendship usually goes with highly developed civilizations. The ability to cultivate people differs by culture and class; but on the whole, educated people have more ways to make friends." - Margaret Mead
"Friendship with a man is friendship with his virtue, and does not admit of assumptions of superiority." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
"I must disclaim his friendship who ceases to be a friend to himself." - Oliver Goldsmith
"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come in relation with a person, the more necessary tact and courtesy become." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"The vulgar herd estimate friendship by its advantages." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
"In the friendship of the lover there is no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you. “Just as the wolf loves the lamb, so the lover adores his beloved.”" - Plato NULL
"There is a dishonor in being overcome by the love of money, or of wealth, or of political power, whether a man is frightened into surrender by the loss of them, or, having experienced the benefits of money and political corruption, is unable to rise above the seductions of them. For none of these are of a permanent or lasting nature; not to mention that no generous friendship ever sprang from them." - Plato NULL
"I hate the prostitution of the word friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Love is strongest in pursuit; friendship in possession." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The glory of Friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to ne when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The glory of Friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship. My friends have come unsought. The great God gave them to me." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What is hell? To live in slavery to others. How is heaven attained? The attainment of heaven is the freedom from cravings. What is a person’s duty? To do good to all beings. What are worthless as soon as they are won? Honor and fame. What brings happiness? The friendship of the holy. What destroys craving? Realization of one’s true self. Who are our enemies? Our sense-organs, when they are uncontrolled. Who are our friends? Our sense-organs, when they are controlled. Who has overcome the world? He who has conquered his own mind." - Adi Shankara, aka Śaṅkara Bhagavatpādācārya and Ādi Śaṅkarācārya
"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 broken friendship may be soldered, but will never be sound." - Thomas Fuller
"Virtue hath few Platonick Lovers. Virtue is a Man's both Guard and Glory. Virtue is built upon it self... Virtue is more persecuted by the Wicked, than encouraged by the Good... Virtue is seldom followed gratis. Virtue is the only Ground for Friendship to be built upon... Virtue merits Veneration, wherever she appears. Virtue respects not Blood and Alliance. Virtue scorns a Lie for its Defence." - 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
"Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after." - William Hazlitt
"The soil of friendship is worn out with constant use." - William Hazlitt
"To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind." - William Hazlitt
"Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements." - William Hazlitt
"Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after." - William Hazlitt
"By far the larger part of it comes in life itself through the two great primary channels of action and experience — the work that we do and the relations we sustain in love and friendship to other lives." - Edward Howard Griggs