Friendships come in all shapes and sizes.
When you find someone who is there for you through the highs and lows, knows just how to cheer you up on a bad day, and always laughs at your corny jokes, you know you've made a best friend for life.
Whether you're long-distance pals or lifelong buds, your closest friends understand you in a way that's often unexplainable. And when it comes to those connections, it's important to remind them of how much their companionship means to you.
To quote Elbert Hubbard, “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
Whether you're celebrating a milestone or struggling through a difficult stage, you can count on them to uplift you with words of wisdom and comfort.
Need help finding the right sentiments to express your love? Here are the best friendship quotes from celebrated authors, activists and other famous faces. We've got wise words about missing your BFF, short and sweet sayings that'll tug at their heartstrings, and iconic lines from movies centered around female friendship.
If you aren't exactly the sentimental type, you can always go with a funny quote instead. After all, humor is the way to the heart, right?
So, pick one of these quotes about friendship, then send them a text or post a tribute to Instagram. They're sure to love it — and, well, you.
Short and sweet friendship quotes
- “Some people go to priests, others to poetry. I go to my friends.” —Virginia Woolf
- “Wherever we are, it is our friends that make our world.” — Henry Drummond
- “Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.” — Kahlil Gibran
- “My friends are my estate.” — Emily Dickinson
- “Women’s friendships are like a renewable source of power.” — Jane Fonda
- “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” — Thomas Aquinas
- “Friends are the siblings God never gave us.” — Mencius
- “My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” — Henry Ford
- “A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.” — Jim Morrison
- “Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend.” — Bill Watterson, “Calvin and Hobbes”
- “Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.” — Benjamin Franklin
- “Words are easy, like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.” — William Shakespeare, “The Passionate Pilgrim”
- “Instead of loving your enemies — treat your friends a little better.” — E. W. Howe
- “The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “A good friend reminds you of your brilliance.” — Olivia Wilde
- “The best mirror is an old friend.” — George Herbert
- “Awards become corroded. Friends gather no dust.” — Jesse Owens
- “A good friend is like a four-leaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have.” — Irish Proverb
- “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world.” — John Evelyn
Funny friendship quotes
- “She’s my friend because we both know what it’s like to have people be jealous of us.” — Cher Horowitz, “Clueless”
- “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch?’” — A. A. Milne
- “Friendship is like peeing in your pants. Everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warm feeling inside.” — Robert Bloch
- “The capacity for friendship is God’s way of apologizing for our families.” — Jay McInerney
- “It’s not that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but it’s your best friends who are your diamonds.” — Gina Barreca
- “A true best friend may get you into trouble, but they will always be there to pull you out of it too.” ― Kaylee Stepkoski
- “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.” — Bernard Meltzer
- “Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.” — Sicilian Proverb
- “You know what sucks about getting older? Your friends have known you for way too long. They’ve got too much on you. I want friends who still lie to me because they don’t want to hurt my feelings. I sadly kind of mean that.” — Nick Miller, “New Girl”
Meaningful friendship quotes
- “I don’t have friends, I have family.” — Dominic Toretto, “Fast and the Furious 7”
- “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” —Elbert Hubbard
- “When the world is so complicated, the simple gift of friendship is within all of our hands.” — Maria Shriver
- “Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses ... swapped back and forth and over again.” — Michelle Obama, “Becoming”
- “Friends…they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.” — Mindy Kaling, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?”
- “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
- “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” — Jane Austen
- “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” — Walter Winchell
- “No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” — Alice Walker
- “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.” — Anaïs Nin
- “I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.” — Katherine Mansfield
- “There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.” — Charlotte Brontë, "Jane Eyre"
- “Friends are those rare people who ask how we are, and then wait to hear the answer.” — Ed Cunningham
- “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” — Orson Welles
- “Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.” — Kahlil Gibran
- “Friendship without self-interest is one of the rare and beautiful things of life.” — James F. Byrnes
- “Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.” ― Woodrow Wilson
- “We went through it together. We raised each other” — Blair Waldorf, “Gossip Girl”
- “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” ― Bob Marley
- “I don’t know what I would have done so many times in my life if I hadn’t had my girlfriends.” — Reese Witherspoon
- “Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.” — Samuel Johnson
Friendship quotes for long-distance pals
- “True friendship resists time, distance and silence.” — Isabel Allende
- “If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart. I’ll stay there forever.” — A.A. Milne
- “Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
- “True friends are always together in spirit.” — L.M. Montgomery
- “It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.” — Marlene Dietrich
- “I’m never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a welcome can be found.” — Helen Oyeyemi, “Mr. Fox”
- “No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.” — Robert Southey
- “Can miles truly separate you from friend? If you want to be with someone you love, aren’t you already there?” — Richard Bach
- “Distance sometimes lets you know who is worth keeping, and who is worth letting go.” — Lana Del Rey
- “Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave and impossible to forget.” — G. Randolf
- “Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard.” ― Walter Dean Myers, “Slam!”
- “Distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it.” — Aristotle
- “A good friend is a connection to life — a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.” ― Lois Wyse, "Women Make the Best Friends: A Celebration"
- “True friends stay with you no matter the distance or time that separates you from them.” — Lance Reynald
- “Love is missing someone whenever you’re apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you’re close in heart.” — Kay Knudsen
