“Misfortune tests the sincerity of friends.”
— Aesop
“The arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other.”
— Michel de Montaigne
“In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain, but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it.”
— Albert Camus
“To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity.”
— Mary Shelley
“One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.”
— Henry Adams
“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is an element in friendship which doubles its charm and renders it indissoluble—a sense of certainty which is lacking in love.”
— Honoré de Balzac
“He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.”
— Victor Hugo