Quotes by American Authors - Page 168

Instead of loving your enemies treat your friends a little better.
Edgar Watson Howe
Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.
Ogden Nash
Women rely on friends. ... That's where we draw sustenance and find safety. We can count on our women friends when we need a good laugh or a good cry.
Cokie Roberts
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's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.
Anne Stevenson
We have no more right to put our discordant states of mind into the lives of those around us and rob them of their sunshine and brightness than we have to enter their houses and steal their silverware.
Julia Seton
Laugh and the world laughs with you weep and you weep alone.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
George Santayana
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends-you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it that's the time to hold your tongue.
Alice Duer Miller
Keep the other person's well-being in mind when you feel an attack of soul-purging truth coming on.
Betty White
Only friends will tell you the truths you need to hear to make ... your life bearable.
Francine du Plessix Gray
There is not so good an understanding between any two but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.
Henry David Thoreau
A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling.
Arthur Brisbane
So often the truth is told with hate and lies are told with love.
Rita Mae Brown
Before a secret is told one can often feel the weight of it in the atmosphere.
Susan Griffin
There are worse words than cuss words there are words that hurt.
Tillie Olsen
It's important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them and important to our friendship that we are not.
Mignon McLaughlin
Except in cases of necessity which are rare leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies they are ready enough to tell him.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Friends are like a pleasant park where you wish to go while you may enjoy the flowers you may not eat them.
Edgar Watson Howe
Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures costs nothing and conveys much. It pleases him who gives and receives and thus like mercy is twice blessed.
Erastus Wiman
Being considerate of others will take you and your children further in life than any college or professional degree.
Marian Wright Edelman
Friendships aren't perfect and yet they are very precious. For me not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Treat your fiends as you do your picture and place them in their best light.
Jennie Jerome Churchill
Don't tell your friends their social faults they will cure the fault and never forgive you.
Logan Pearsall Smith
To be social is to be forgiving.
Robert Frost
Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.
Ned Rorem
Probably no man ever had a friend he did not dislike a little we are all so constituted by nature that no one can possibly entirely approve of us.
Edgar Watson Howe
A friend is one who withholds judgment no matter how long you have his unanswered letter.
Sophie Irene Loeb
You can always tell a real friend when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.
Laurence J. Peter
My friend and I have built a wall Between us thick and wide: The stones of it are laid in scorn And plastered high with pride.
Elizabeth Cutter Morrow
Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another.
May Sarton
I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.
John Muir
I am quite sure that no friendship yields its true pleasure and nobility of nature without frequent communication sympathy and service.
George E. Woodberry
Go oft to the house of thy friend for weeds choke the unused path.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Politeness is an inexpensive way of making friends.
William Feather
A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they're not so good and sympathizes with your problems when they're not so bad.
Arnold Glasow
The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.
Maya Angelou
Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.
Louisa May Alcott
If you want to be listened to you should put in time listening.
Marge Piercy
Friendship is the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The condition which high friendship demands is the ability to do without it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it he must serve it too.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy provided those ways do not assume to interfere with ours.
William James
Those who cannot give friendship will rarely receive it and never hold it.
Dagobert D. Runes
Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to everyone about you and you will be surprised what a happy life you will live.
Charles M. Schwab
You will find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others?...Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.
Lydia M. Child
When a friend is in trouble don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
Edgar Watson Howe
There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of pleasure in a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him understood him interested ourself in his welfare. At these moments something fine and spiritual passes between two friends. These moments are the moments worth living.
Don Marquis
Actions not words are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.
George Washington
Half the secret of getting along with people is consideration of their values the other half is tolerance in one's own views.
Daniel Frohman
Beware of the danger signals that flag problems: silence secretiveness or sudden outburst.
Eleanor H. Porter
Friendships like marriages are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.
John D. MacDonald
Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies ... and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation to grow as they will by the roadside expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia.
William James
Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
Joy Harjo
Good friendships are fragile things and require as much care as any other fragile and precious thing.
Randolph Bourne