Friendship, Defined

Friendship, Defined

 
  1. Acquaintances … they’re like weeds; they grow up around the real friends and choke them off —Christopher Isherwood
  2. A broken friendship, like a broken cup, can be mended but it will never be perfect again —Anon

    This can be traced to the Latin proverb “A broken friendship may be soldered but will never be sound.”

  3. A cheerful friend is like a sunny day which spreads its brightness on all around —Sir John Lubbock
  4. Choose your friends like your books, few but choice books —James Howell
  5. The false friend is like the shadow of a sundial —French proverb
  6. False friends, like birds, migrate in cold weather —Anon
  7. The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roastbeef; love like being enlivened with champagne —Samuel Johnson
  8. A friendless man is like a left hand without a right —Hebrew proverb
  9. Friends are like fiddle strings: they must not be screwed too tight —Claude Mermet
  10. Friends are like fiddle-strings, they must not be screwed too tight —John Ray’s Proverbs
  11. Friends are like melons. Shall I tell you why? To find one good, you must a hundred try —Claude Mermet
  12. Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves —Oliver Goldsmith
  13. Friendship is a sheltering tree —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  14. Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies —Aristotle
  15. Friendship is like money, easier made than kept —Samuel Butler
  16. Friendship is like a treasury; you cannot take from it more than you put into it —Benjamin Mandelstamm
  17. Friendship is like two clocks keeping time —Anon
  18. Friendship is love without his wings —Lord Byron
  19. A friendship like a soft pillow that made her feel secure and bolstered —Mary Gordon
  20. Friendship, like credit, is highest where it is not used —Elbert Hubbard
  21. Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermission —Samuel Johnson
  22. Friendship, like love, is but a name —John Gay
  23. Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed —Ralph Waldo Emerson
  24. The friendship of a great man is like the shadow of a bush soon gone —French proverb
  25. A group of good friends is like the relatives you wish you’d been born with —Anon

    A twist in simile form of, “You can’t pick your relatives, but you can pick your friends.”

  26. A hollow friendship is like a hollow tooth —it’s always best to have it out at once —Punch, 1862
  27. I find friendship … like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man’s milk and restorative cordial —Thomas Jefferson
  28. An old friendship is like old wine; the longer it lasts the stronger it grows —Antonio Perez
  29. Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless and distasteful —William Hazlitt
  30. Some friends are like the shadow; they follow us when our sun shines —Moses. Ephraim Kuh

    A variation of this attributed to Christian Nestell Bovee is, “False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shadow.”

  31. Some friends are like a sun-dial: useless when the sun sets —Judah Jeiteles
  32. An untried friend is like an uncracked nut —Russian proverb