As author Linda Grayson once wrote, there’s nothing better than a friend … unless it’s a friend with chocolate! But really, whether they come bearing chocolate, wine, or just open arms to hug you with, good friends are the ones who show up for us in good times and bad, helping us celebrate the amazing and wonderful moments of our lives and holding our hands while we cry during the darkest. These friendship quotes remind us of just that. On International Friendship Day today (July 30, 2022), let’s take a moment to celebrate our best friends — whether it be the friend who shows up on your front stoop with their fave Crockpot meal, or the friend who is first to share the best deals with you.
I don’t know about you, but there have been some days where I just don’t know how I would have muddled through without my village of mom friends. While those relationships are newer friendships made through my children, I cherish those wonderful women just as much as I treasure my lifelong friends and the bonds I created in young adulthood with my college besties.
Whether you have best friends who have been a part of your life for a season or a decade or more, there’s no better time than the present to appreciate those special people in your life. With that in mind, we put together some of our favorite friendship quotes that honor the unique bond of friendship. Share them in your group text. Use them as your Instagram caption. Today is the day to celebrate the friends in your life — and what better way to celebrate than a thoughtful (and inexpensive) note to them?
Here are 101 quotes about friends to share with your besties!
101 Friendship Quotes
1. “Best friends are formed by time … Stick around long enough to become someone’s best friend.” — Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
2. “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 Winfrey
3. “A good friend is like a four-leaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have.” — Irish Proverb
4. “Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.” — Woodrow T. Wilson
5. “That was what a best friend did: hold up a mirror and show you your heart.” — Kristin Hannah, Firefly Lane
6. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust
7. “There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met.” — Jim Henson, “I’m Going To Go Back There Someday”
8. “True love is finding your soulmate in your best friend.” — Faye Hall, My Gift to You
9. “A true best friend may get you into trouble, but they will always be there to pull you out of it too.” ― Kaylee Stepkoski
10. “Your job won’t take care of you when you’ll be sailing through loneliness or going through a tragedy in life. Your friends will. Make good friends and stay in touch.” ― Chanda Kaushik
11. “Because with true friends, no one is keeping score. But it still feels good to repay them — even in the tiniest increments.” ― Emery Lord, The Start of Me and You
12. “Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm & constant.” — Socrates
13. “When life gives you best friends, use them.” ― Areej Farooq
14. “Life was meant for good friends and great adventures.” — Unknown
15. “Best friends are life’s truth tellers.” — T.J. Condon, Some Assembly Required
16. “Ten minutes with a genuine friend is better than years spent with anyone less.” — Crystal Woods
17. “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” — Tennessee Williams
18. “A true best friend loves you even when it seems like you’ve gone off the deep end.” ― Liz Fenton, The Status of All Things
19. “Best friends are those people who reveal to you what is wonderful inside of you, and you can all still laugh together.” ― Debasish Mridha
20. “Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.” — Ed Cunningham
21. “A sweet friendship refreshes the soul.” — Proverbs 27:9
22. “In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, for in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.” — Khalil Gibran
23. “Anyone can have a friend, but the one that would walk in a storm to find you is all you will ever need.” ― Shannon L. Alder
24. “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” ― Aristotle
25. “Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.” — Thomas J. Watson
26. “Friendship is not something that you seek but something that finds you.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, “On Friendship: A Satirical Essay”
27. “A true friend is one you can go extended periods without seeing or talking to, yet the moment that you are back in touch, it’s like no time has passed at all.” ― Ellie Wade, A Forever Kind of Love
28. “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
29. “Sometimes being with your best friend is all the therapy you need.” — Unknown
30. “I used to think someone needed to be my best friend before I’d burden her with my problems or my tears. Now I think those interactions — the sobfest or therapy session — are the encounters that earn someone BFF status.” ― Rachel Bertsche, MWF Seeking BFF
31. “I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” — Plutarch
32. “You find out who your real friends are when you’re involved in a scandal.” — Elizabeth Taylor
33. “If you are ever lucky enough to find a weirdo, never let them go.” — Matthew Gray Gubler
34. “They were beautiful shells, as white as the surf in the sea. When you held one up to your ear, you could hear the sound of your best friend talking to you, even if she was a thousand miles away.” — Alice Hoffman, Aquamarine
35. “The cheapest luxury in this world is the time you get to enjoy with your friends.” — Garima Soni
36. “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
37. “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” — Elisabeth Foley
38. “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
39. “Best friends are people hard to find, difficult to be, and impossible to live without. They are the people you get along with so easily in the journey called life.” ― Khushi Parwal
40. “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” — Walter Winchell
41. “No friendship is an accident.” — O. Henry, Heart of the West
42. “No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” ― Alice Walker
43. “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” ― Elbert Hubbard
44. “There is a reason why you are my best friend. Destiny.” ― Almira Bastari
45. “A friend can tell you things you don’t want to tell yourself.” — Frances Ward Weller
46. “A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.” — Unknown
47. “Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.” — Virginia Woolf, The Waves
48. “It’s not what we have in life, but who we have in our life that matters.” — Unknown
49. “A friend is one of the best things you can be and the greatest things you can have.” — Sarah Valdez
50. “True friendship is trading photos from toilets. It’s a willingness to be vulnerable and stupid and irreverent in a way that other people can’t accept and that you can’t accept from other people.” — Mike Wehner, The Girl Who Can Cook
51. “I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” ― Helen Keller
52. “True friends are like diamonds, precious and rare. Fake friends are like autumn leaves, found everywhere.” ― Ari Joseph
53. “A friend is one who overlooks your broken fence and admires the flowers in your garden.” — Unknown
54. “Silence makes the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts.” ― Margaret Lee Runbeck
55. “Just because I’m not there, doesn’t mean I’m not here for you.” ― Jacquelyn Middleton, Until the Last Star Fades
Best Friend Quotes to Make You Smile
56. “Your best friend is the person who not only knows all the important stories and events in your life but has lived through them with you. Your best friend isn’t the person you call when you are in jail; mostly likely, she is sitting in the cell beside you.” — Irene S. Levine, Best Friends Forever
57. “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.” — Henry David Thoreau
58. “But the thing with a best friend is that you’re never talking about nothing. Even when you’re talking about nothing, it’s something. The times when you think you’re talking about nothing, you’re actually talking about how you have someone with whom you can talk about nothing, and it’s fine.” — Jeff Zentner, Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee
59. What do you say to your best friend when you stand at the gates of the gates of hell? Nothing. If it’s your best friend, she already knows.” ― Eliza Crewe, Crushed
60. “Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
61. “Real friends were the kind where you pick up where you’d left off, whether it be a week since you’d seen each other or two years.” ― Jojo Moyes, One Plus One
62. “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.” — Bernard Meltzer
63. “Best friend: the one that you can be mad at only for a short period of time because you have important stuff to tell them.” — Unknown
64. “When life gives up on you, know that your best friend will always be there.” — TheKatAttack
65. “Friends are the family you choose.” — Jess C. Scott, The Other Side of Life
66. “A best friend is one who understands humour in your most weird jokes.” ― Himmilicious
67. “Best friends are forever. That’s why they’re called BFFs.” ― Lauren Conrad, Sweet Little Lies
68. “Best friends are the people in your life who make you laugh louder, smile brighter, and live better.” — Unknown
69. “There’s nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing.” — Jennifer Aniston
70. “The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” — Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude
71. “My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” — Henry Ford
72. “You have to have one person in your life that you know would never do anything to steer you wrong. They may disagree with you. They could even break your heart from time to time. But you have to have one person, at least, who you know will always tell you the truth.” — Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six
73. “True friends aren’t the ones who make your problems disappear. They are the ones who won’t disappear when you’re facing problems.” — Unknown
74. “False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports.” — Richard Burton
75. “Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
76. “True friends are always together in spirit.” — L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
77. “True friends are those who came into your life, saw the most negative part of you, but are not ready to leave you, no matter how contagious you are to them.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Infinity Sign
78. “In times of trouble, only true friends will still be with you.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita
79. “A friend is one who overlooks your broken fence and admires the flowers in your garden.” — Unknown
80. “It is during the most trying times in life that we get to see who our real friends are.” ― Germany Kent
81. “An acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear.” ― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
82. “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
83. “Friendship is accepting a person with all their qualities — good and bad.” — Mohanlal
84. “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship”
85. “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.” — Jane Austen
86. “Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world.” ― John Evelyn
87. “Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare — and precious as a pearl.” — Tahar Ben Jelloun
88. “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” — Arnold H. Glasow
89. “Friendship is when people know all about you but like you anyway.” — Unknown
90. “True friends chop the onions and cry together.” ― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
91. “Remember the friends who stuck with you when they thought you had nothing.” ― Joyce Rachelle
92. “I don’t know what I would have done so many times in my life if I hadn’t had my girlfriends.” — Reese Witherspoon
93. “Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.” ― Charles Lamb
94. “Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.” ― Jean de La Fontaine
95. “Friendship is a sheltering tree.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Youth and Age”
96. “True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.” — David Tyson
97. “I found out what the secret to life is — friends. Best friends.” — Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes
98. “The real test of friendship is: Can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy together those moments of life that are utterly simple?” — Eugene Kennedy
99. “It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.” — Marlene Dietrich
100. “How about ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’? Nope. It should be switched around and pointed out, instead, that your best friends are diamonds.” — Gina Barreca, It’s Not That I’m Bitter…
101. “A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.” — Donna Roberts
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