This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Believe me, a thousand friends suffice thee not; In a single enemy thou has more than enough." - Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, simply known as Ali NULL
"People who lead fulfilling lives generally have found a sense of “home” in what they do. They have a philosophy of life that connects them to a larger vision. They accept that life is a continuing challenge. More often than not, they are able to live according to their own schedules, choosing work that is interesting and complex enough to keep them engaged. They get excited about being effective and about being stretched to learn new things. They have a few good friends who understand their vision and perhaps even share common aspirations. They are not driven by urgency, competition, or the demands of the ego." - Carol Adrienne
"The fact that we cannot see our friends or communicate with them after the transformation, which we call death, is no proof that they cease to exist." - Walter Dudley Cavert
"Whatever you are it is your own friends who make your world." - William James
"There are only three things to teach: Simplicity, patience, and compassion. Simplicity in action and thoughts, will return you to the source of your being. Patience with friends and enemies alike, will give you harmony with the way things are. Compassion with yourself, will settle all the differences between you and other beings in the world." - Peter W. Jedlicka
"I have just three thins to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Friendship involves intimacy, sharing and mutual support... Most often, boys cultivate friendships around activities… Girls look for friends with whom they can share inner sentiments, communicate, and generally feel comfortable. They are much less compelled to justify a relationship on the basis of shared recreational agendas… It is not that boys don’t want to communicate intimately with other boys, nor is it true that girls shun joint activities. To the contrary, both needs pertain to both groups, but there are significant differences in the extent to which they determine and frame relationships." - Mel Levine, formally Melvin D Levine
"A prince… who wishes to guard against conspiracies should fear those on whom he has heaped benefits quite as much, and even more, than those whom he has wronged; for the latter lack the convenient opportunities which the former have in abundance. The intention of both is the same for the thirst of dominion is as great as that of revenge, and even greater. A prince, therefore, should never bestow so much authority upon his friends but that there should always be a certain distance between them and himself, and that there should always be something left for them to desire." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
"The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away." - Wilson Mizner
"Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship. If Absence be not Death, neither is it theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as Friends do the Seas; they live in one another still." - William Penn
"They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship. If absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal. " - William Penn
"Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer." - Mario Puzo, fully Mario Gianluigi Puzo
"In time of prosperity friends will be plenty. In times of adversity not one among twenty." - John Ray or Wray
"Forget your enemies. It's your friends you frustrate that cause all the problems." - Michael J. Tucker
"Future, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured." - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
"If, then, being is in itself desirable for the supremely happy man (since it is by its nature good and pleasant), and that of his friends very much the same, a friend will be one of the things that are desirable. Now that which is desirable form him must have, or he will be deficient in this respect. The man who is to be happy will therefore need virtuous friends." - Aristotle NULL
"Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends?... With friends men are more able both to think and to act." - Aristotle NULL
"Between friends there is no need of justice." - Aristotle NULL
"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 NULL
"The man with a host of friends who slaps on the back everybody he meets is regarded as the friend of nobody." - Aristotle NULL
"We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us." - Aristotle NULL
"Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately... They have as yet met with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward... They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and hate too much, and the same thing with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it." - Aristotle NULL
"Anonymous: How should we behave to friends? Aristotle: As we should wish them to behave to us." - Aristotle NULL
"Aristotle - Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit." - Aristotle NULL
"Without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods." - Aristotle NULL
"It seems to me that the one privilege of friendship is "to quench the fiery darts of the wicked," to make the best of friends, to encourage and believe in them, to hand on the pleasant things." - A.C. Benson, fully Arthur Christopher “A.C.” Benson
"Prosperity makes friends and adversity tries them." - Author Unknown NULL
"Friends provoked become the bitterest of enemies." - Baltasar Gracián
"Trust the friends of to-day as if they will be enemies to-morrow." - Baltasar Gracián
"Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion. Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart. I set it down as a fact that if all men know what each said to the other, there would not be four friends in the world." - Blaise Pascal
"I lay it down as a fact that, if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. This appears from the quarrels to which indiscreet reports occasionally give rise." - Blaise Pascal
"Imagination cannot makes fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable." - Blaise Pascal
"Some men are more beholden to their bitterest enemies than to friends who appear to be sweetness itself. The former frequently tell the truth, but the latter never." - Cato the Elder, Marcus Porius Cato, aka Censorius (the Censor), Sapiens (the Wise), Priscus (the Ancient) NULL
"He that openly tells his friends all that he thinks of them, must expect that they will secretly tell his enemies much that they do not think of him." - Charles Caleb Colton
"If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen as a pygmy." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral; and the only thing which we most want, happens to the be the only thing we never purchase - our coffin." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude." - Charles Caleb Colton
"If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sake rather than our own." - Charlotte Brontë
"From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things - the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals - and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery. Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them. And so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue. The animals had rights - the right of man’s protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, and the right to freedom, and the right to man’s indebtedness - and in recognition of these rights the Lakota never enslaved an animal, and spared all life that was not needed for food and clothing. This concept of life and its relations was humanizing, and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. The Lakota could despise no creature, for all were of one blood, made by the same hand, and filled with the essence of the Great Mystery. In spirit, the Lakota were humble and meek. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” - this was true for the Lakota, and from the earth they inherited secrets long since forgotten. Their religion was sane, natural, and human." -
"Whenever you do a thing, act so that it will give your friends no occasion for regret and your foes no cause for joy." - Chinese Proverbs