Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none.
Friendship Quotes
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” is credited to Sun Tzu, and sometimes to Machiavelli or Petrarch. Wikiquote traces the wording most directly to a line spoken by Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II. It is flagged here as misattributed.
“Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies” is flagged too. It is credited to Voltaire, and to the Maréchal de Villars. One French source puts the words in the mouth of Gourville, a man writing as an exile.
For the sourced quotes, try Sydney Smith: “Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence” (from his memoir, 1855). Or Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), where old friends are always best, “’less you can catch a new one that’s fit to make an old one out of.”
Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship—never.
Both love and friendship are inferior to loyalty and honour.
Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.
Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the débris are friendship, fame, and love.
Friendship is the balm and cordial of life, and without it, ’tis a heavy load not worth sustaining.
Verily, the great man finds gold and rubies more easily come by than true friendship.
Nothing is more binding than the friendship of companions-in-arms.