“You may think you see plenty of stars, friend reader, but you are wrong. Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels at Renwick’s.”
— Marie Brennan
“With my naked eye, on nights the moon climbs slowly, sometimes so dusted with rust and rose, brown, and gold tones that it nearly drips earth colors and seems intimately braided with Earth, it feels close, part of this world, a friend. But through the telescope, the moon seems- ironically- farther away…the gray-white moon in a sea of black, its surface in crisp relief, brighter than ever before. I am struck too, by the scene’s absolute silence.”
— Paul Bogard
“, And you, ye stars,Who slowly begin to marshal,As of old, the fields of heaven,Your distant, melancholy lines!Have you, too, survived yourselves?Are you, too, what I fear to become?You, too, once lived;You, too, moved joyfullyAmong august companions,In an older world, peopled by Gods,In a mightier order,The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.But now, ye kindleYour lonely, cold-shining lights,Unwilling lingerersIn the heavenly wilderness,For a younger, ignoble world;And renew, by necessity,Night after night your courses,In echoing, unneared silence,Above a race you know not—Uncaring and undelighted,Without friend and without home;Weary like us, though notWeary with our weariness.”
— Matthew Arnold
“Every time you look up at the stars, it’s like opening a door. You could be anyone, anywhere. You could be yourself at any moment in your life. You open that door and you realize you’re the same person under the same stars. Camping out in the backyard with your best friend, eleven years old. Sixteen, driving alone, stopping at the edge of the city, looking up at the same stars. Walking a wooded path, kissing in the moonlight, look up and you’re eleven again. Chasing cats in a tiny town, you’re eleven again, you’re sixteen again. You’re in a rowboat. You’re staring out the back of a car. Out here where the world begins and ends, it’s like nothing ever stops happening.”
— Bryan Lee O’Malley
“There are stars in the night sky that look brighter than the others, and when you look at them through a telescope you realize you are looking at twins. The two stars rotate around each other, sometimes taking nearly a hundred years to do it. They create so much gravitational pull there’s no room around for anything else. You might see a blue star, for example, and realize only later that it has a white dwarf as a companion – that first one shines so bright, by the time you notice the second one, it’s too late.”
— Jodi Picoult
“Dream: I look for Lama Lodrö Kagyu teacher friend hearing he’s ill & I’m ill, too – I enter his room and he says “I’ve been trying to find you – I wanted you to know illness is just phenomena”
— Marc Olmsted
“What a nuisance is the friend who must have this and that, whose likes and hates are infinite, with bitter and loud voiced complaint about the whole of circumstance? How pleasant are the truly great who, wanting nothing, are content with anything. Accepting all things in a world of illusion as born of cause-effect they live in a mind above the opposites, and we call them great because they do so.”
— Christmas Humphreys
“The one who praises you is a thief. The one who criticizes you is your true friend.”
— Robert Aitken
“As a friend of mine told me about Real Happiness: you wrote this one in American.”
— Sharon Salzberg
“It felt real, seeing his friend like that. It was like a gift. He wasn’t into spiritual bullshit, but damn. “Damn. That Mouse had become his friend was a gift, but a curse as well. If he’d left that whole situation alone, would Mouse — would James — have had a better life? A different outcome?”
— Debra Anastasia
“Smile at a friend, at a stranger, at an enemy, at life’s absurdities and the universe will smile back at you.”
— Carol Vorvain
“Sertorius rose up and spoke to his army, “You see, fellow soldiers, that perseverance is more prevailing than violence, and that many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little. Assiduity and persistence are irresistible, and in time overthrow and destroy the greatest powers whatever. Time being the favorable friend and assistant of those who use their judgment to await his occasions, and the destructive enemy of those who are unseasonably urging and pressing forward.”
— Plutarch
“How do you know whether you’re serious about your values? You fight for them when they’re violated even if it costs you title, favor, friendship, and profit.”
— Assegid Habtewold
“How different would your world be if you looked in the mirror and saw your best friend looking back at you?”
— Janet Dunnagan
“You have only one true friend: that’s YOU!”
— Vinita Kinra
“A true friend is someone who knows what you want before you ask for it.”
— Vinita Kinra
“The fox is answering the Little Prince’s question. What does that mean . . . tame? asks the Little Prince. Itmeans to establish ties. One only understands the things that one tames. Men have no more time to understand anything, they buy things all ready made at the shops, but there is no shop anywhere one can buy friendship.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“The ministry of the church is a genuine concern for others. We need to stop talking about it and start doing it. Rise.Rise and shine, friend. Everyone you meet today is on heaven’s Most Wanted list.”
— Charles R. Swindoll
“Clary felt suddenly annoyed. “When the self-congratulatory part of the evening is over, maybe we could get back to saving my best friend from being exsanguinated to death?””Exsanguinated,” said Jace, impressed. “That’s a big word.””And you’re a big-“”Tsk tsk,” he interupted. “No swearing in church.”
— Cassandra Clare
“The other Dons in the room applauded and rose to shake hands with everybody in sight and to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia on their new friendship. It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other. That was friendship enough in this world, all that was needed.”
— Mario Puzo
“Fatigue could be the dealmaker’s friend.”
— H.W. Brands
“We cannot learn real patience and tolerance from a guru or a friend. They can be practiced only when we come in contact with someone who creates unpleasant experiences.”
— Dalai Lama XIV
“Relationship Time to Aloneness.” Having a companion fixes you in time and that of the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present and future all flow together. A memory, a present event, and a forecast all equally present.”
— John Steinbeck
“I had a cup of tea, thought about my day and mostly about the horse whom, though I’d only known him a short time, I called my friend. I have few friends and am glad to have a horse for a friend. After the meal I smoked a cigarette and mused on the luxury it would be to go out, instead of talking to myself and boring myself to death with the same endless stories I’m forever telling myself. I am a very boring person, despite my enormous intelligence and distinguished appearance, and nobody knows this better than I. I’ve often told myself that if only I were given the opportunity, I’d perhaps become the centre of intellectual society. But by dint of talking to myself so much, I tend to repeat the same things all the time. But what can you expect? I’m a recluse.”
— Leonora Carrington
“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.”
— Daniel Quinn
“Tried a lot,but can’t find a companion like you my dear solitude. Let us shake our hands again.”
— sandeep bhat
“These words filled me with a sort of melancholy and I was at a loss for an answer, for I felt when I was with him, when I was talking to him – and no doubt it would have been the same with anyone else – none of that happiness which it was possible for me to experience when I was by myself. Alone, at times, I felt surging from the depths of my being one or other ot those impressions which gave me a delicious sense of well-being. But as soon as I was with someone else, as soon as I was talking to a friend, my mind as it were faced about, it was towards this interlocutor and not towards myself that it directed its thoughts, and when they followed this outward course they brought me no pleasure.”
— Marcel Proust
“A million years is a short time – the shortest worth messing with for most problems. You begin tuning your mind to a time scale that is the planet’s time scale. For me, it is almost unconscious now and is a kind of companionship with the earth.”
— John McPhee
“Thank you Earth for I’ve never known a better friend”
— Kehinde Sonola
“America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.”
— Bernard Lewis