50 Friendship Quotes to Appreciate the Value of a Real Friend

Having a best friend is a rare and awesome gift, one that keeps giving over the course of a lifetime. And while in many cases a best friend can be your partner - or even your dog or cat - there is something unique and amazing about building up a human connection outside your family. 

Friendship brings you up when you’re down, inspires you when you’re in a rut, and best friends offer you more than support; they also provide an opportunity to give as well as to receive. Indeed, sometimes, there’s nothing better than a friend who needs your help! 

Many of us have treated our best friend the way we want to be treated ourselves, a habit that can enrich your life in incredible ways. Best friends can seem to hold the world together for us, and in a way they are like a four leaf clover: hard to find, and a sign of good fortune! 

Your best friend is someone you should support through thick and thin, no matter what. And because a best friend is something hard to find in this world, if you’ve got one or more in your life, hold on tight! 

So how do you tell your best friend how much you love them? How do you express your gratitude to a good friend? How do we let them know that they make our souls blossom, and they are the someone in our lives that make it all seem okay? With some friendship quotes, of course!

A good friend is like the light in the darkness, so scroll down below and get inspired by the friendship quote that is perfect for your special human.

Appreciate Your Best Friend With the Following Friendship Quotes

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.

SENECA (more Seneca quotes)

True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.

DAVID TYSON

Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.

MARK TWAIN (more Mark Twain quotes)

True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.

ST. JEROME

True friends are those rare people who come to find you in dark places and lead you back to the light.

UNKNOWN

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.

THOMAS AQUINAS

True friends stab you in the front.

OSCAR WILDE

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success!

DOUG LARSON

A true friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be anywhere else.

LEN WEIN

In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.

ANTHONY ROBBINS

A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.

WILLIAM PENN

Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can’t have too many friends because then you’re just not really friends.

TRUMAN CAPOTE

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

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.

ELISABETH FOLEY

Best Friends: Your Chosen Family

While friendship is often completely original, most possess a few common traits. For example, best friends are very loyal. They don’t switch sides when it is convenient. A true friend never gets jealous, and a real friend will never bail on you because they have something more interesting to do. 

A best friend becomes your go-to person because you know you can trust them. You feel comfortable enough around them to act silly or say whatever you want to say, and there’s never any need to pretend with a good friend because in their company you can be whoever you want to be. 

A best friend knows the real you, accepts you just as you are, and if your life is like a garden, a single friend is like the life-giving rain that helps your flowers bloom.  They’re the one that overlooks your broken fence and admires your garden. A single friend can make all the difference. 

Here are some more friendship quotes to continue your journey of inspiration. Will you write them a hand-written note? Spell out how much your friend means to you with icing on a cake you made from scratch?

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU (more Henry David Thoreau quotes)

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

WALTER WINCHELL

If you have one true friend you have more than your share.

THOMAS FULLER

True friends are like diamonds — bright, beautiful, valuable, and always in style.

NICOLE RICHIE

Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.

JEAN DE LA FONTAINE

Picking a best friend who stands up for what she believes in, is true to herself and allows you to be yourself without judgement of how ‘cool’ you are? Well, now you’re picking a friend for life.

RENEE OLSTEAD

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.

BERNARD MELTZER

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT (more Eleanor Roosevelt quotes)

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

True friendship resists time, distance, and silence.

ISABEL ALLENDE

The real test of friendship is can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?

EUGENE KENNEDY

If you can survive 11 days in cramped quarters with a friend and come out laughing, your friendship is the real deal.

OPRAH WINFREY

A true friend is forever a friend.

GEORGE MACDONALD

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 (more Muhammad Ali quotes)

You find out who your real friends are when you’re involved in a scandal.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR (more Elizabeth Taylor quotes)

Quotes for Friends That Make a Difference

Let us be grateful for our friends, and open to new possibilities.  After all, your future bestie could be one of the new friends who’ve just met you recently for the first time, like Meghan Markle and Serena Williams!

The deep and lasting human connection we call friendship is special, and should be treated as such, no matter what form it takes. It could be that you enjoy moments of silence with your bestie that you don’t with anyone else. Sometimes, a great friendship means you don’t have to say anything at all. 

On the other hand, your friendship with your best friend could be the type of relationship that makes you louder than ever. This special human connection might turn you into a wild person, always ready to party! Who knows!

Friends are the people who make us live our best lives, and anyone that understands your past believes the best about your future. A real friend represents a world where anything is possible. There are so many ways to express and find joy in a friendship, so take a look at a few more of our favorite friend quotes below, and find the one that inspires you the most so you can share it with them.

A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.

ARNOLD H GLASGOW

We just need to be kinder to ourselves. If we treated ourselves the way we treated our best friend, can you imagine how much better off we would be?

MEGHAN MARKLE

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

OPRAH

Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend.

BILL WATTERSON

Real friendship is when your friend comes over to your house and then you both just take a nap.

ANONYMOUS

Friends share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.

HENRI NOUWEN

Some people go to priests. Others to poetry. I to my friends.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead. Walk beside me… just be my friend.

ALBERT CAMUS

It's not that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but it's your best friends who are your diamonds. It's your best friends who are supremely resilient, made under pressure and of astonishing value. They're everlasting; they can cut glass if they need to.

GINA BARRECA

My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

JANE AUSTEN

Anything is possible when you have the right people there to support you.

MISTY COPELAND

Friendships are born on the field of athletic strife and the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.

JESSE OWENS

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Friends are the family you choose

JESS C SCOTT

The love that comes from friendship is the underlying facet of a happy life.

CHELSEA HANDLER

A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.

LEO BUSCAGLIA

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

RICHARD BACH

Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.

THOMAS ACQUINAS

Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.

AMY POEHLER