Quotes about friendship

I had a tolerably large number of acquaintances, but only two chosen friends, Diderot and Grimm. Owing to the desire, which I always feel, to bring together all who are dear to me, I was so devoted a friend of both, that it was unavoidable that they should soon become equally devoted to each other.

Such has ever been my lot; no sooner have I brought together separate friends of my own, than they have infallibly combined against me.

We both instinctively knew never to share weakness until you understood it. ‘Share only strength’ was an unspoken motto between us.

What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence.

If there are soldiers who miss the fury of combat, who find themselves tortured by the desire to return to its flames, I cannot number myself in their company. I have no wish ever to return to Keating or to Afghanistan, and most of my men feel the same. However, the bond that kept us together as a unit, a team, is something that I long for and continue to cherish. It is also something that is very much alive.

Most people think the three of us are friends, since we’re almost always seen together. But we’re not friends. Our relationship is a transaction.

We achieve freedom when we let go of the weight of societal expectations, and when we find our people – those who love us, care for us, and hold us up when we start slipping.

I would learn later that Akin could keep himself neatly folded in while he drew out other people. He was the kind of person that many claimed as a dear friend. Many of those people did not even know him, but they never knew they did not know him.

For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don't need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers – but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens.

Sometimes it is only a true friend who knows what we mean when we try to speak.

"Are we friends today?" she asked him.

"There's a level, Justin, on which we're always friends. Then there's a level on which we can't be."

There was always a manic energy about Loonie, some strange hotwired spirit that made you laugh with shock. He hurled himself at the world. You could never second-guess him and once he embarked upon something there was no holding him back. Yet the same stuff you marvelled at could really wear you down. Some Mondays I was relieved to be back on the bus to school.