They say friends are your chosen family, the wine to your life, the yin to your yang, but what does friendship really mean to you?
It could represent all of the above, or it could evoke memories of those close to your heart. In either case, it's always good to be reminded of the VIPs in your own life. Likewise, it's a good idea to remind your besties how important they are to you.
For centuries, famous authors, poets, and everyone in between have tried to put friendship into words. Whether you're celebrating a special occasion or simply want to remind your best friend how wonderful they are, our collection of friendship quotes will get you started.
There are true friendship quotes to help you recognize those who have been there for you through thick and thin, as well as funny friendship quotes to make your best friend laugh.
Explore the entire collection below to find the ideal friendship quote for your bestie. Once you've found a few you like, send them along with a sweet treat to your BFF.
Quotes About Friendship
1. “A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.” ~ Leo Buscaglia
2. “In a friend you find a second self.” ~ Isabelle Norton
3. “One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.” ~ Euripides
4. “Friends are the family you choose.” ~ Jess C. Scott
5. “Good friends are like stars, you don’t always see them, but you know they are there.” ~ Christy Evans
6. “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” ~ Abraham Lincoln
7. “To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.” ~ Dr. Seuss
8. “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience, this is the ideal life.” ~ Mark Twain
9. “A friend can tell you things you don’t want to tell yourself.” ~ Frances Ward Weller
10. “Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.” ~ Euripides
True Friendship Quotes
11. “Only a true friend would be that truly honest.” ~ Shrek
12. “Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.” ~ Jean de La Fontaine
13. “One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.” ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
14. “A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they’re not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they’re not so bad.” ~ Arnold H. Glasgow
15. “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” ~ Arnold H. Glasgow
16. “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” ~ Walter Winchell
17. “True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.” ~ David Tyson
18. “True friendship is never serene.” ~ Marquise de Sevigne
19. “Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget.” ~ G. Randolf
20. “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” ~ Thomas Aquinas
Cute Friendship Quotes
21. “A true friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be anywhere else.” ~ Len Wein
22. “Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other’s little failings.” ~ Jean de La Bruyère
23. “My definition of a friend is somebody who adores you even though they know the things you’re most ashamed of.” ~ Jodie Foster
24. “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
25. “You can always tell a real friend: when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.” ~ Laurence J. Peter
26. “The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it.” ~ Hubert H. Humphrey
27. “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.” ~ Alfred Tennyson
28. “All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon the sand.” ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
29. “There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.” ~ Linda Grayson
30. “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” ~ Muhammad Ali
Deep Friendship Quotes
31. “No friendship is an accident.” ~ O. Henry, Heart of the West
32. “There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.” ~ Samuel Johnson
33. “No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” ~ Alice Walker
34. “Friendship like ours doesn’t solve life challenges but because of our friendship, I know the challenges are not mine alone.” ~ C. Sampson
35. “Things are never quite as scary when you have a best friend.” ~ Bill Watterson
36. “I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” ~ Helen Keller
37. “Friendship is like a glass ornament, once it is broken it can rarely be put back together exactly the same way.” ~ Charles Kingsley
38. “People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.” ~ Joseph F. Newton Men
39. “A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.” ~ William Shakespeare
40. “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” ~ Bob Marley
Short Friendship Quotes
41. “The best mirror is an old friend.” ~ George Herbert
42. “Friendship is the wine of life.” ~ Edward Young
43. “It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.” ~ Marlene Dietrich
44. “Love is friendship set on fire.” ~ Jeremy Taylor
45. “True friends are always together in spirit.” ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery
46. “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” ~ Confucius
47. “Friends are honest with each other. Even if the truth hurts.” ~ Sarah Dessen
48. “Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” ~ Aristotle
49. “A friend to all is a friend to none.” ~ Aristotle
50. “True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.” ~ St. Jerome
Funny Friendship Quotes
51. “Friendship is selfless love, care, respect, and honor not a profitable opportunity.” ~ Santosh Kalwar
52. “Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
53. “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~ Marcel Proust
54. “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” ~ Tennessee Williams
55. “Most of us don’t need a psychiatric therapist as much as a friend to be silly with.” ~ Robert Brault
56. “The only true test of friendship is the time your friend spends on you.” ~ John Marsden
57. “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
58. “One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.” ~ Mindy Kaling
59. “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” ~ Elisabeth Foley
60. “Friendship is all about trusting each other, helping each other, loving each other and being crazy together.” ~ O. Henry
Friends Forever Quotes
61. “A friend is someone who makes it easy to believe in yourself.” ~ Heidi Wills
62. “A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.” ~ Donna Roberts
63. “We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.” ~ Sylvia Plath
64. “A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself.” ~ Frank Crane
65. “There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.” ~ John Holmes
66. “When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.” ~ Donald Miller
67. “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.” ~ Anais Nin
68. “There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.” ~ William Hazlitt
69. “If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.” ~ Maxwell Maltz
70. “Anything is possible when you have the right people there to support you.” ~ Misty Copeland
Beautiful Quotes on Friendship
71. “Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.” ~ Socrates
72. “The world is not a pleasant place to be without someone to hold and be held by.” ~ Nikki Giovanni
73. “Of all possessions a friend is the most precious.” ~ Herodotus
74. “Some people go to priests. Others to poetry. I to my friends.” ~ Virginia Woolfe
75. “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.” ~ Toni Morrison
76. “A good friend is like a four-leaf clover; hard to find and lucky to have.” ~ Irish Proverb
77. “True friends are like diamonds — bright, beautiful, valuable, and always in style.” ~ Nicole Richie
78. “How beautiful it is to find someone who asks for nothing but your company.” ~ Brigitte Nicole
79. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~ Marcel Proust
80. “When the world is so complicated, the simple gift of friendship is within all of our hands.” ~ Maria Shriver
Long Distance Friendship Quotes
81. “Make new friends, but keep the old; Those are silver, these are gold.” ~ Joseph Parry
82. “Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.” ~ Ed Cunningham
83. “There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound.” ~ Diana Cortes
84. “Time doesn’t take away from friendship, nor does separation.” ~ Tennessee Williams
85. “There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met.” ~ Jim Henson
86. “True friends are never apart, maybe in distance, but never in heart.” ~ Helen Keller
87. “Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life–and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.” ~ Dean Koontz
88. “Only a true best friend can protect you from your immortal enemies.” ~ Richelle Mea
89. “.. a friend is someone who inspires, who challenges, who sends you in search of some truer sense of yourself..” ~ Steve Lopez
90. “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” ~ A.A. Milne
New Friendship Quotes
91. “Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.” ~ Aristotle
92. “Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.” ~ Oscar Wilde
93. “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
94. “When a woman becomes her own best friend, life is easier.” ~ Diane von Furstenburg
95. “We need old friends to help us grow old and new friends to help us stay young.” ~ Letty Cottin Pogrebin
96. “Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair.” ~ Pierce Brown
97. “The great thing about new friends is that they bring new energy to your soul.” ~ Shanna Rodriguez
98. “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” ~ C.S. Lewis
99. “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
100. “Some people arrive and make such a beautiful impact on your life, you can barely remember what life was like without them.” ~ Anna Taylor
Meaningful Friendship Quotes
101. “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12.” ~ Stand by Me
102. “A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.” ~ Douglas Pagels
103. “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
104. “Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.” ~ Thomas J. Watson
105. “People will walk in and walk out of your life, but the one whose footstep made a long lasting impression is the one you should never allow to walk out.” ~ Michael Bassey Johnson
106. “Friends should be like books, few, but hand-selected.” ~ C.J. Langenhoven
107. “Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” ~ Albert Camus
108. “A friend is one of the best things you can be and the greatest things you can have.” ~ Sarah Valdez
109. “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
110. “The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
Friendship Quotes for Instagram
111. “A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.” ~ Jim Morrison
112. “Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.” ~ Khalil Gibran
113. “Fate chooses your relations, you choose your friends.” ~ Jacques Delille
114. “Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.” ~ Woodrow T. Wilson
115. “Friends are medicine for a wounded heart and vitamins for a hopeful soul.” ~ Steve Maraboli
116. “My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” ~ Henry Ford
117. “If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.” ~ Winnie the Pooh
118. “If you have two friends in your lifetime, you’re lucky. If you have one good friend, you’re more than lucky.” ~ S.E. Hinton
119. “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.” ~ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
120. “Friends are the siblings God never gave us.” ~ Mencius
121. “Friendship is one mind in two bodies.” ~ Mencius
122. “Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare — and precious as a pearl.” ~ Tahar Ben Jelloun
123. “Where there are friends, there is wealth.” ~ Titus Maccius Plautus
124. “A friend is what the heart needs all the time.” ~ Henry van Dyke
125. “A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.” ~ Elbert Hubbard
Which of these best friendship quotes did you like the most?
Friendship is important to us in many ways. They boost our sense of belonging and purpose while also increasing our self-confidence. A good friend will also boost your happiness and assist you in dealing with the stress that comes with life's ups and downs.
I hope these friendship quotes provided you with some inspiration and insight into the people you surround yourself with and why they are so important in your life. Allow them to be unique and worthwhile.
What were your favorite friendship quotes and sayings? What other friendship quotes would you add to the list? Please let us know in the comments below.