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.”
True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
The difficulty is not so much to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.
The finest friendships are between those who can do without each other.
Got a lot of haters and a lot of homies; some friends and some phony.
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
A foe to God was ne'er true friend to man,
Some sinister intent taints all he does.
Friendships begin with liking or gratitude—roots that can be pulled up.
We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us.