Ex Friendship Quotes

1. "Of all the alchemies of human connection--sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship--the strangest is this: You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of "I's," and a listening audience somehow turns each "I" into a "me." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature."
Author: Adam Gopnik

2. "Your experiences will be yours alone. But truth and best friendship will rarely if ever disappoint you."
Author: Anne Lamott

3. "It's rather the possibility of friendship, unencumbered by feelings of attraction or shyness; the possibility of working on the same wavelength, as it were, with someone who understands you because he's a boy as you are, or a girl as you are. Committee work stifles the imagination, because people have to work down to the common denominator of what would be minimally acceptable to everyone. But friendship exalts the imagination. Indeed it is one of the things that the ancients said friendship was for. Plato suggests in Symposium that one of the highest forms of friendship is one whose love issues forth in beautiful and virtuous deeds, for thus "the partnership between [the friends] will be far closer and the bond of affection far stronger than between ordinary parents, because the children that they share surpass human children by being immortal as well as more beautiful."
Author: Anthony Esolen

4. "The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship."
Author: Bernard Cornwell

5. "If I have fully diagnosed the cause and nature of your condition, you are wasting away in pining and longing for your former good fortune. It is the loss of this which, as your imagination works upon you, has so corrupted your mind. I know the many disguises of that monster, Fortune, and the extent to which she seduces with friendship the very people she is striving to cheat, until she overwhelms them with unbearable grief at the suddenness of her desertion"
Author: Boethius

6. "I find there are usually no extremes in relationships, even friendship. One is not always right or never wrong."
Author: Boone Brux

7. "I think the strangest thing that exists, is how there are seven billion people on the planet and yet, so many people can spend their whole lives looking for somebody to love and never, ever find that. There are so many things that we can find in other people— friendship, learning processes, enrichment— so many things, nevertheless, the most elusive and fragile of all the things we can possibly find in another human being, is love. To be the one that someone loves and for that person to be the one that you love. Why is this difficult to find? My answer is that, because out of the seven billion, there really is only one. You don't find something and make it work; you find the one and when you do, you work until it works. The problem is finding the one. Many, many people are born and die never finding that."
Author: C. JoyBell C.

8. "Confession can be good for the soul, but it can exact a heavy toll on friendships."
Author: C.D. Payne

9. "...no one can mark the exact moment at which friendship becomes love."
Author: C.S. Lewis

10. "Liking and Loves for the Sub-Human"Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory." Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection – if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all." p.17Friendship"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival." p.71"
Author: C.S. Lewis

11. "The evening I went for a walk. To walk for the sake of walking is something I seldom do.Inside my apartment I'd felt inexplicably anxious. I needed to talk to someone, to be reassured. Or perhaps I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world. Or it was neither of these--I was afraid I was dreaming. Indeed, considering the events of the day, it was likely that I was dreaming. I sometimes fly in my dreams, and each time I say to myself, "At last--it's happening in reality and not in a dream!"In any case, I needed to talk to someone, and I was alone. This is my habitual condition, by choice--or so I tell myself. Mere acquaintanceship leaves me unsatisfied, and few people are willing to accept the burdens and risks of friendship as I conceive of it."
Author: Daniel Quinn

12. "If someone told me that I could live my life again free of depression provided I was willing to give up the gifts depression has given me--the depth of awareness, the expanded consciousness, the increased sensitivity, the awareness of limitation, the tenderness of love, the meaning of friendship, the apreciation of life, the joy of a passionate heart--I would say, 'This is a Faustian bargain! Give me my depressions. Let the darkness descend. But do not take away the gifts that depression, with the help of some unseen hand, has dredged up from the deep ocean of my soul and strewn along the shores of my life. I can endure darkness if I must; but I cannot lie without these gifts. I cannot live without my soul.' (p. 188)"
Author: David Elkins

13. "This, then, is a story of Lincoln's political genius revealed through his extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes. He possessed an acute understanding of the sources of power inherent in the presidency, an unparalleled ability to keep his governing coalition intact, a tough-minded appreciation of the need to protect his presidential prerogatives, and a masterful sense of timing."
Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin

14. "That men of this kind despise women, though a not uncommon belief, is one which hardly appears to be justified. Indeed, though naturally not inclined to 'fall in love' in this direction, such men are by their nature drawn rather near to women, and it would seem that they often feel a singular appreciation and understanding of the emotional needs and destinies of the other sex, leading in many cases to a genuine though what is called 'Platonic' friendship. There is little doubt that they are often instinctively sought after by women, who, without suspecting the real cause, are conscious of a sympathetic chord in the homogenic which they miss in the normal man."
Author: Edward Carpenter

15. "Literature is love. I think it went like this: drawings in the cave, sounds in the cave, songs in the cave, songs about us. Later, stories about us. Part of what we always did was have sex and fight about it and break each other's hearts. I guess there's other kinds of love too. Great friendships. Working together. But poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling. Living in literature and love is the best thing there is. You're always home."
Author: Eileen Myles

16. "He was not surly by temperment, and in fact did not find it difficult to form friendships, nor to allow those friendships to deepen, once they had been formed; he simply preferred to answer to himself. He disliked all burdens of responsibility, most especially when those responsibilities were expected, or enforced--and friendship nearly always devolved into matters of debt, guilt, and expectation."
Author: Eleanor Catton

17. "There was this girl," I said. "l mean-" All of a sudden I felt flustered, and added, "We were just friends.""No such thing.""We were.""Look. Despite what you may have heard, people have sex all the time with people they don't love, or particulary care about, or sometimes can't even stand. So why in the world do people say that it's just friends, like it doesn't mean as much, if you're not having sex? Real friendship is true and forever and with all your heart. It's not Relationship Lite."
Author: Emily Horner

18. "Physical attraction did its part to glue them together, but something stronger than sexual attraction sealed the bond. When men and women grow apart, it is for the same reason they are drawn together; because they are finally, inherently too different. Friendships among women, on the other hand, were burdened by similarity."
Author: Galt Niederhoffer

19. "The most deadly fruit is borne by the hatred which one grafts on an extinguished friendship."
Author: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

20. "A black boy brought Wilson's gin and he sipped it very slowly because he had nothing else to do except to return to his hot and squalid room and read a novel - or a poem. Wilson liked poetry, but he absorbed it secretly, like a drug. The Golden Treasury accompanied him wherever he went, but it was taken at night in small doses - a finger of Longfellow, Macaulay, Mangan: 'Go on to tell how, with genius wasted, Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love...' His taste was romantic. For public exhibition he has his Wallace. He wanted passionately to be indistinguishable on the surface from other men: he wore his moustache like a club tie - it was his highest common factor, but his eyes betrayed him - brown dog's eyes, a setter's eyes, pointing mournfully towards Bond Street."
Author: Graham Greene

21. "We need a more peaceful world, growing out of more peaceful families and neighborhoods and communities. To secure and cultivate such peace, "we must love others, even our enemies as well as our friends." The world needs the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who are filled with the love of Christ do not seek to force others to do better; they inspire others to do better, indeed inspire them to the pursuit of God. We need to extend the hand of friendship. We need to be kinder, more gentle, more forgiving, and slower to anger. We need to love one another with the pure love of Christ. May this be our course and our desire."
Author: Howard W. Hunter

22. "Feminist psychologists have suggested that a toxic friendship is often one in which a women's own personal growth and individuation is sacrificed at the expense of the demands of the other person. Sometimes choosing oneself rather than the friendship is important for future personal growth and individuation. But women have a difficult time separating from each other because emotional connection is so highly valued and broken friendships are seen as failures."
Author: Irene S. Levine

23. "I'm learning to not be in such a hurry...I'm learning that the dishes will eventually get done...I'm learning it isn't just about me anymore...I'm learning people will not automatically offer help just because you think you deserve it...I'm learning forgiveness sometimes has to go both ways...I'm learning to enjoy all the small moments and not to always expect big ones...I'm learning lasting friendships really do last...I'm learning Love entails more patience and compassion...I'm learning today is a gift and not to be so worried about tomorrow...I'm learning if I'm not supposed to succeed at what I want now, then there must be more important things for me to do. I'm learning it is o.k. to always be learning!!!"
Author: Jacque Bliss All Things Bliss

24. "Here again, the difference between the effective and the virtual, between mourning and its possibility, seems fragile and porous. The anguished apprehension of mourning (without which the act of friendship would not spring forth in its very energy) insinuates itself a priori and anticipates itself; it haunts and plunges the friend, before mourning, into mourning. This apprehension weeps before the lamentation, it weeps death before death, and this is the very respiration of friendship, the extreme of its possibility. Hence surviving is at once the essence, the origin and the possibility, the condition of possibility of friendship; it is the grieved act of loving. This time of surviving thus gives the time of friendship."
Author: Jacques Derrida

25. "It's an odd term, 'girlfriend,' particularly for grown persons. And in practice it provides an even odder concept. Generally speaking, in adults it described a woman, not a girl, who was willing to provide sex, not friendship. In fact, from what I had observed it was quite possible for one to actively dislike one's girlfriend, although of course true hatred is reserved for marriage."
Author: Jeff Lindsay

26. "I dislike the phrase "Internet friends," because it implies that people you know online aren't really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance. Good friendships, online or off, urge us toward empathy; they give us comfort and also pull us out of the prisons of our selves."
Author: John Green

27. "My people - before I was changed - they exchanged this as a sign of devotion. It's a Claddagh ring. The hands represent friendship; the crown represents loyalty... and the heart... Well, you know... Wear it with the heart pointing towards you. It means you belong to somebody. Like this."
Author: Joss Whedon

28. "This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God."
Author: Julian Barnes

29. "Flaubert teaches you to gave upon the truth and not blink from its consequences; he teaches you, with Montaigne, to sleep on the pillow of doubt; he teaches you to dissect out the constituent parts of reality, and to observe the Nature is always a mixture of genres; he teaches you the most exact use of language; he teaches you not to approach a book in search of moral or social pills -- literature is not a pharmacopoeia; he teaches the pre-eminence of Truth, Beauty, Feeling and Style. And if you study his private life, he teaches courage, stoicism, friendship; the importance of intelligence, skepticism and wit; the folly of cheap patriotism; the virtue of being able to remain by yourself in your own room; the hatred of hypocrisy; distrust of the doctrinaire; the need for plain speaking."
Author: Julian Barnes

30. "I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one's life, change the nature and direction of one's work, and give final meaning and color to one's loves and friendships."
Author: Kay Redfield Jamison

31. "I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship."
Author: Laurence Sterne

32. "My incomparable beloved, Seven months you have been gone, and I fear you will never return. I await your brief, infrequent letters like a boy, desperate for any small indication that you remember I exist, hoping for evidence that you tire of that foreign land where you now live. I read your missives a hundred times for the slightest intimation that you will be coming home. The part of my mind that does nothing but wait grows daily, and soon nothing will be left to attend to life's duties. One word, my love, just one; that is all I seek. One word to let me know that you will not stay away forever, and that I will at least have your presence and friendship in my life, even if I can never have your passion and your love."--Julian Hampton to Penelope, Countess of Glasbury"
Author: Madeline Hunter

33. "The bonds between ourselves and another person exists only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying."
Author: Marcel Proust

34. "The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light. It seems like a metaphor for something. So much does. Ralph Waldo Emerson is excellent on this point.It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. Or marriage within friendship and love."
Author: Marilynne Robinson

35. "Weakness may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for, and deserves to be respected. Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship."
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft

36. "Aristotle uses a mother's love for her child as the prime example of love or friendship."
Author: Mortimer Adler

37. "In loneliness, in sickness, in confusion-the mere knowledge of friendship makes it possible to endure, even if the friend is powerless to help. It is enough that they exist. Friendship is not diminished by distance or time, by imprisonment or war, by suffering or silence. It is in these things that it roots most deeply. It is from these things that it flowers."
Author: Pam Brown

38. "You remember how he used to be girl on either arm? You really don't see that guy too much anymore. Why do you think that is? He's waiting for you. I know you're dealing with stuff but you cannot ask him to wait forever! Unless of course, you're okay with him pulling away.""What if it doesn't work out? What if it ends up like you and Javier?""Well at least we gave it a shot. And so it didn't work out, so what? Now, we can move on give or take the occasional booty call.""I just don't wanna lose what we have, you know?""Girl please! What exactly do you have, really?""A friendship.""No. What you and I have is a friendship. What you and castle have is a holding pattern. How long can you circle before the fuel runs out?"
Author: Richard Castle

39. "They had battled and bloodied one another, they had kept secrets, broken hearts, lied, betrayed, exiled, they had walked away, said goodbye and sworn it was forever, and somehow, every time, they had mended, they had forgiven, they had survived. Some mistakes could never be fixed - some, but not all. Some people can't be driven away, no matter how hard you try. Some friendships won't break."
Author: Robin Wasserman

40. "Let's think about living some day in a world made of friendship, with hearts beating with duty and feeling, and people and animals and trees and birds and lawns. We'll have a morality never written in a book. A morality that looks in surprise at what we do now and what we'll do in the future, what we think now and what we will think. Then we'll have a longer friendship, Bug-eyes. Then, don't worry. My friend Panço will agree. He won't talk about church morality. He'll tell his children about the extraordinary beauty of friendship."
Author: Sait Faik Abasıyanık

41. "You're weird," Nick grumbled, but he turned his face back to critically examine the new hand."You're weird," Jamie returned. "As soon as this whole magical war is over, I'm going to make us some friendship bracelets, and we will wear them everywhere because we are best friends.""Drop dead," said Nick, and Jamie looked serenely pleased."
Author: Sarah Rees Brennan

42. "006 was such an interesting character and the film really explored his friendship with Bond and how it all went wrong, so it was a very personal journey for both characters."
Author: Sean Bean

43. "… Damned is the soul that dies while the evil it committed lives on. And the most damned of allare those who see the evil coming for others and refuse to confront it. For it is not out of fear thatheroes are born, but rather out of their selfless love that will not allow them safety bought fromthe torture, death, and degradation of others. It is better to die in defense of another than to livewith the knowledge that you could have saved them but chose to do nothing.And to those who think that one person cannot make a difference, I say this … the deadliest tidalwave begins as an unseen ripple in a vast ocean. Live your life so that your integrity will motivateothers to strive for excellence long after you've passed on, and know that no good deed orsacrifice, or offer of sincere friendship or love, is ever forgotten by the one who receives it."
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

44. "I feel his arm Lightly Over me.He takes one of my outstretched hands.Draws it beneath my stomach."One more time..."This is not sex,Not friendship. SomethingStrangeSpecialIn the stillness of his breath,The waterlike way he moves.He is making a dance.We are making a dance."
Author: Stasia Ward Kehoe

45. "Although previous studies had suggested that friendship--male and female--could be a powerful antidote to stress, more recent research indicates that broken promises, dashed expectations, and other side effects of friendship gone wrong can actually raise the level of stress in our lives, often to disastrous effect."
Author: Susan Shapiro Barash

46. "It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship, but not your slave."
Author: Théophile Gautier

47. ". . . I realized with a growing and startling sense of clarity that the seminary was educating and training me for a world that no longer existed. Moreover, the posture of this particular brand of Christianity toward the surrounding culture was one of enormous suspicion and at times hostility. It seemed that part of this evolving designation involved a posture of entrenchment and argument toward culture. But I loved culture. I loved the freedom to engage with people for the purpose of friendship and dialogue, not simply evangelism."
Author: Tim Keel

48. "Defriending isn't just unrecognized by some social oversight; it's protected by its own protocol, a code of silence. Demanding an explanation wouldn't just be undignified; it would violate the whole tacit contract on which friendship is founded. The same thing that makes friendship so valuable is what makes it so tenuous: it is purely voluntary. You enter into it freely, without the imperatives of biology or the agenda of desire. Officially, you owe each other nothing."
Author: Tim Kreider

49. "Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan."
Author: Timothy Ferriss

50. "O, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us! Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt, Since riches point to misery and contempt? Who would be so mock'd with glory? or to live But in a dream of friendship? To have his pomp and all what state compounds But only painted, like his varnish'd friends? Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart, Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood, When man's worst sin is, he does too much good! Who, then, dares to be half so kind again? For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men. My dearest lord, bless'd, to be most accursed, Rich, only to be wretched, thy great fortunes Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind lord! He's flung in rage from this ingrateful seat Of monstrous friends, nor has he with him to Supply his life, or that which can command it. I'll follow and inquire him out: I'll ever serve his mind with my best will; Whilst I have gold, I'll be his steward still."
Author: William Shakespeare

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