Friendship is undoubtedly one of life’s most rewarding treasures. From our earliest years in school, as we learn to get along with others, through adolescence, early adulthood, and every stage of life, friendships teach us, nurture us, and bring us some of life’s greatest joys. Since understanding the value of friendship begins early, we’ve gathered some of our favorite inspiring and thought-provoking friendship quotes to encourage your students to think deeply about this important lifelong pursuit.
There are so many great ways to incorporate these friendship quotes into your lessons. Try using these quotes as prompts for journal entries, debate topics, to help students brainstorm conflict resolution strategies, or just to use as general inspiration for your students.
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Quotes About the Value of Friendship
Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship. —Samuel Johnson
Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm. —Augustine Birrell
Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief. —Cicero
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years. —Richard Bach
Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
Of friendship, love, and liberty,
Ere I was old! —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence. —Sydney Smith
Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious. —Thomas Aquinas
Friendship embraces innumerable ends; turn where you will it is ever at your side; no barrier shuts it out; it is never untimely and never in the way. —Cicero
Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society. —Michel de Montaigne
I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we know. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship is evanescent in every man’s experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers. —Henry David Thoreau
Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it. —Cicero
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine. —Thomas Jefferson
I know that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other. —Michel de Montaigne
All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity. —Cicero
Perhaps love is only the highest symbol of friendship, as all other things seem symbols of love. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing. —Elie Wiesel
There is no more precious experience in life than friendship. —Eleanor Roosevelt
I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light. —Helen Keller
True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world. —Mahatma Gandhi
Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love. —Charles Péguy
Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul, sweet’ner of life, and solder of society. —Robert Blair
Friendship is Love without wings. —Lord Byron
Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspir’d. —Homer
Not for the body, but for the heart; companion and company are needed. —Sanu Sharma
A friend who offers help without asking for explanations is a treasure beyond price. —Robert A. Heinlein
Yes’m, old friends is always best, ’less you can catch a new one that’s fit to make an old one out of.—Sarah Orne Jewett
There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship. —Thomas Aquinas
Meaning of Life Friendship Quotes
One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, and compassion. —Simone de Beauvoir
Our triumphs seem hollow unless we have friends to share them, and our failures are made bearable by their understanding. —James Rachels
Friendship needs no words—it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness. —Dag Hammarskjöld
Some friendships are made by nature, some by contract, some by interest, and some by souls. —Jeremy Taylor
Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to a family and clan, whose blood is in your own veins. —Charles Eastman
No human relation gives one possession in another—every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone. —Kahlil Gibran
For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship. —Elie Wiesel
Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil. —Voltaire
Friends are born, not made. —Henry Adams
A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth. —Charles Darwin
Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship. —Epicurus
Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God’s best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of going out of one’s self and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another. —Thomas Hughes
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. —John 15:13
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. —Anaïs Nin
A friend is worth all hazards we can run. —Edward Young
Chance makes our parents, but choice makes our friends. —Jacques Delille
The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships. —Abraham Lincoln
Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance, whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice. —David Elkind
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence. —Sydney Smith
Quotes About Life Without Friendship
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods. —Aristotle
A man without friends is like a body without a soul. —Italian Proverb
What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. —Cicero
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage. —Samuel Johnson
I feel the need of relations and friendship, of affection, of friendly intercourse. … I cannot miss these things without feeling, as does any other intelligent man, a void and a deep need. —Vincent van Gogh
True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost. —Charles Caleb Colton
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. —Aristotle
Quotes on How To Build Friendships
If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own. —Charlotte Brontë
Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor, busy men can usually command. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing. —Anacharsis
If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere. —Zig Ziglar
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
We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. —James Boswell
Friends need to tell each other the hard truth, and friendships require mutual respect. —John Kerry
The only way to have a friend is to be one. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
As in the case of wines that improve with age, the oldest friendships ought to be the most delightful. —Cicero
The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other. —Samuel Johnson
The foundation of friendship demands the greatest likeness of human souls and hearts. —Ludwig van Beethoven
True and perfect Friendship is, to make one heart and mind of many hearts and bodies. —Pythagoras
Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be. —Mahatma Gandhi
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. —Henry David Thoreau
If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair. —Samuel Johnson
A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no other law nor kindness. —Henry David Thoreau
It is prudent to pour the oil of delicate politeness upon the machinery of friendship. —Colette
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise. —Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. —Kahlil Gibran
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity. —Samuel Johnson
Friendship is never established as an understood relation. It is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest imagination and of the rarest faith! —Henry David Thoreau
Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness. —G.K. Chesterton
I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship. —Pietro Aretino
Distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it. —Aristotle
I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing. —Katherine Mansfield
Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. —Kahlil Gibran
Lighthearted Friendship Quotes
Friends are like melons. Shall I tell you why? To find one good, you must a hundred try. —Claude Mermet
Love is only chatter, friends are all that matter. —Gelett Burgess
Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. —George Eliot
Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one. —Oscar Wilde
Your friend is that man who knows all about you, and still likes you. —Elbert Hubbard
An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship. —Oscar Wilde
Friendship, I have said, is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself …” —C.S. Lewis
Friendship Quotes From Children’s Books
Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world. —L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love. —Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Jo’s eyes sparkled, for it is always pleasant to be believed in, and a friend’s praise is always sweeter than a dozen newspaper puffs. —Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
It’s not enough to be friendly. You have to be a friend. —R.J. Palacio, Wonder
“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing.” —E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
Anybody can look at you. It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see. —John Green, Turtles All the Way Down
Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend. —Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
Friends are the family you choose. —Jess C. Scott, The Other Side of Life
How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live ’em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give ’em. —Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic
Friendship Quotes From A.A. Milne and Winnie-the-Pooh
I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen. —Winnie-the-Pooh
Hallo! I’ve found somebody just like me. I thought I was the only one of them. —Tigger
A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference. —Eeyore
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
“Pooh!” he whispered.
“Yes, Piglet?”
“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”
A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside. —Pooh Bear
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