Friendship Quotes for the Friends Who Feel Like Family

Inside: 120 friendship quotes for the friends who make us laugh, know us best, stick with us through life, and sometimes become family.

These ladies are some of the most important people in my life.

We fatefully met 26 years ago when our babies were randomly put in the same Gymboree class. A big playgroup formed, but somehow the seven of us really hit it off. Somewhere in those years, these women stopped being the moms I met at Gymboree and became family.

It started with moms’ night out dinners, then trips and sleepovers. Somewhere along the way, we stopped talking only about “mommy” stuff and started telling each other the real stuff.

I’m still not entirely sure why we clicked all those years ago. We’re different in plenty of ways. We just genuinely like each other.

I remember the exact trip when I realized there probably wasn’t anything one of us could go through that would get her kicked out of this girl gang. (And we’ll never tell if we’ve ever tested that theory.)

We’ve been through divorces, losing parents, family problems, and plenty of other hard things together. During my own divorce, one of these friends let me move in with her until I could get back into my house. She basically lived one of the hardest times of my life right along with me every day for months, giving me more of her time, wisdom, and hand-holding than I could ever repay.

Thankfully, in 26 years there’s been way more laughing than crying. We’ve accumulated enough stories that every one of us probably has at least one she’d pay good money for the others to stop telling. We have a designated cruise director, because apparently seven grown women still need someone to tell us where we’re going and what time to be there.

And these seven are only part of the reason friendship means so much to me. I’m lucky to have other wonderful friends from different parts of my life too. So as I pulled together these friendship quotes, I kept thinking about all of them—the ones I laugh with, the ones who have known me forever, and especially the ones who know the real stuff and love me anyway.

Friendship Quotes for the Friends Who Feel Like Family.

Some friends cross that invisible line somewhere along the way and become much more than friends. They know the family stories, have a standing invitation to just about everything, and probably know a few things you’d prefer they take to the grave.

• “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” —Elbert Hubbard
• “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” —C. S. Lewis

“Friends are the siblings God never gave us.” —Mencius

• “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” —Tennessee Williams
• “Here’s to the nights that turned into mornings with the friends that turned into family.” —Unknown

• “Friends are the family you choose.” —Jess C. Scott
• “It’s not what we have in life, but who we have in our life that matters.” —Margaret Laurence
• “Family isn’t defined only by last names or by blood; it’s defined by commitment and by love.” —Dave Willis

“Family isn’t always blood. It’s the people in your life who want you in theirs.” —Unknown

• “Sometimes families are the ones we make for ourselves.” —Kiera Cass
• “There are friends, there is family, and then there are friends that become family.” —Unknown
• “The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it.” —Hubert H. Humphrey

Quotes About Girlfriends and Female Friendship.

I may be a little biased, but there’s something extra special about girlfriends. They can talk you through a crisis, tell you when you really shouldn’t wear that dress, and remember something embarrassing you did 20 years ago and find it hilarious every single time.

• “There’s nothing like a conversation with a woman that understands you.” —Beyoncé
• “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

“The older we get, the more we understand that the women who know and love us—and love us despite what they know about us—are the joists that hold up the house of our existence.” —Anna Quindlen

• “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
• “It’s my women friends that keep starch in my spine and without them, I don’t know where I would be.” —Jane Fonda

• “Maybe our girlfriends are our soulmates and guys are just people to have fun with.” —Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City
• “Female friendship has been the bedrock of women’s lives for as long as there have been women.” —Rebecca Traister

“Even if you and he are together for 50 years, you still need your sisters.” —Maya Angelou

• “I think a trusted friend listens, remembers, cares, and most important laughs with you.” —Suzanne Braun Levine
• “The only people you can really share certain things with in secret are your girlfriends.” —Shirley Knight

Short Friendship Quotes.

Sometimes a few words say it best. These short friendship quotes are easy to jot down in a card or text to a friend, use as a photo caption, or send just because you were thinking about someone.

• “True friends are always together in spirit.” —L. M. Montgomery
• “Friendship is a sheltering tree.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• “Friends are the sunshine of life.” —John Hay

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

• “Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.” —Khalil Gibran
• “Friendship is the wine of life.” —Edward Young
• “Friendship is another word for love.” —Unknown

• “A true friend is the greatest of all blessings.” —François de La Rochefoucauld
• “A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.” —Leo Buscaglia
• “Friends make the world beautiful.” —Unknown

“The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense.” —Proverbs 27:9 NLT

• “Friendship is one mind in two bodies.” —Mencius
• “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” —Mark Twain
• “No friendship is an accident.” —O. Henry

Meaningful Quotes About True Friendship.

The best friendships are easy in a way that’s hard to explain. You don’t have to impress each other, fill every silence, or pretend everything is fine when it isn’t.

• “A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.” —Jim Morrison
• “Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love.” —Elie Wiesel
• “True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.” —David Tyson Gentry

“One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.” —Seneca

• “A true friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be anywhere else.” —Len Wein
• “Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.” —Henry David Thoreau
• “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” —C. S. Lewis

• “A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.” —Donna Roberts
• “A friend is a gift you give yourself.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
• “There is no possession more valuable than a good and faithful friend.” —Socrates

“Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.” —George Eliot

• “Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.” —Jean de La Fontaine
• “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” —Marcel Proust
• “It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.” —Marlene Dietrich

Funny Friendship Quotes.

Some of the best friendships are built on equal parts love, loyalty, and laughing at things no one else would find nearly as funny. And after enough years together, a good friend also knows way too much. Which is probably a very good reason to keep them close.

• “Friends are people who know you really well and like you anyway.” —Greg Tamblyn
• “I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell—you see, I have friends in both places.” —Mark Twain
• “There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.” —Linda Grayson

“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.” —Sylvia Plath

• “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.” —Bernard Meltzer
• “Friends come and go like waves of the ocean, but the true ones stick like an octopus on your face.” —Unknown

• “A good friend will help you move. But a best friend will help you move a body.” —Jim Hayes
• “We’ll be friends until we’re old and senile. Then we’ll be new friends.” —Unknown
• “Friends: people who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them.” —Edwin Arlington Robinson

“Friendship is so weird… you just pick a human you’ve met and you’re like, ‘Yep, I like this one,’ and you just do stuff with them.” —Bill Murray

• “Never let your best friends get lonely. Keep disturbing them.” —Unknown
• “A good friend knows all your stories. A best friend helped you write them.” —Unknown
• “Only a true friend would be that truly honest.” —Donkey, Shrek

Friendship Quotes From Movies, TV Shows, and Books.

Some of the best lines about friendship come from characters we feel like we know. Every once in a while, a book, movie, or TV show manages to nail something about friendship that sticks with us.

• “Family isn’t always the people you’re born to. Sometimes it’s the people you find along the way who love you enough to stick by you.” —Dorothy Zbornak, The Golden Girls
• “Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend.” —Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
• “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.” —Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.” —Stand by Me

“She’s my friend because we both know what it’s like to have people be jealous of us.” —Cher, Clueless

• “You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing.” —E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web
• “You’ve got a friend in me.” —Toy Story
• “A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside.” —Winnie the Pooh
• “Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.” —The Godfather

• “I found out what the secret to life is: friends. Best friends.” —Fried Green Tomatoes
• “A bosom friend—an intimate friend, you know—a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul.” —Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables
• “I have a strict policy that nobody cries alone in my presence.” —Truvy Jones, Steel Magnolias

“Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.” —Clarence, It’s a Wonderful Life

• “When are you going to get it into your head? We’re in this together!” —Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• “We’re more than friends. We’re sisters.” —Sex and the City
• “Friends don’t lie.” —Eleven, Stranger Things

Old Friends and Lifelong Friendship Quotes.

There’s something wonderful about a friend who has known you through several versions of yourself and is still around for the current one.

• “Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled.” —Ally Condie
• “Old friends are the great blessing of one’s later years.” —Horace Walpole
• “There is nothing like really comfortable old friends.” —Jim Henson

“Remember that the most valuable antiques are dear old friends.” —H. Jackson Brown Jr.

• “Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• “Make new friends, but keep the old; those are silver, these are gold.” —Joseph Parry
• “Old stories are like old friends. You have to visit them from time to time.” —George R. R. Martin

• “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” —Elisabeth Foley
• “You don’t have to have anything in common with people you’ve known since you were five. With old friends, you’ve got your whole life in common.” —Lyle Lovett
• “The best mirror is an old friend.” —George Herbert

“True friendship is a plant of slow growth.” —George Washington

• “Say what you want about aging, it’s still the only way to have old friends.” —Robert Brault
• “Old friends are memories personified.” —Richard Paul Evans

Friendship Quotes for Getting Through Hard Times.

It’s easy to be a friend when life is going well. The priceless friends are the ones who stay close when it isn’t. Sometimes they know exactly what to say. Sometimes they sit with you when there really isn’t anything to say. And they stick around until you’re more yourself again.

• “Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.” —Euripides
• “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” —Helen Keller
• “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” —Proverbs 17:17 NIV

“Two are better than one… If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.” —Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 NIV

• “Anything is possible when you have the right people there to support you.” —Misty Copeland
• “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.” —Cicero
• “Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.” —Publilius Syrus

• “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” —Walter Winchell
• “The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion… that is a friend who cares.” —Henri Nouwen
• “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” —Charles Dickens

“The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.” —Barbara Kingsolver

• “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” —Proverb
• “Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny.” —Octavia Butler
• “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.” —Maya Angelou

Long-Distance Friendship Quotes.

Some friendships survive on regular dinners and seeing each other all the time. Others have to make do with phone calls, group texts, and trying to find one weekend when everybody’s calendar cooperates. But a good friendship seems to pick right back up, even when there are a lot of miles and time between visits.

• “Distance means so little when someone means so much.” —Tom McNeal
• “Can miles truly separate you from friends? If you want to be with someone you love, aren’t you already there?” —Richard Bach
• “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

“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.” —Henry David Thoreau

• “Though miles may lie between us, we’re never far apart, for friendship doesn’t count the miles, it’s measured by the heart.” —Unknown
• “Sweet is the memory of distant friends! Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart.” —Washington Irving
• “Real friends were the kind where you pick up where you’d left off, whether it be a week since you’d seen each other or two years.” —Jojo Moyes, One Plus One

• “There are friendships imprinted in our hearts that will never be diminished by time and distance.” —Dodinsky
• “Good friends are like stars. You don’t always see them, but you know they’re always there.” —Christy Evans
• “True friendship resists time, distance, and silence.” —Isabel Allende

“There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together.” —Diana Cortes

• “We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere.” —Tim McGraw
• “Yes, the meeting of dear friends atones for the regret of separation.” —Marguerite Gardiner
• “The arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other.” —Michel de Montaigne

When I look at these friends I met at Gymboree so long ago now, one of the things that makes me smile is how little we truly knew each other when we first met. How superficial the conversations were. We certainly didn’t know we were choosing friends for life. We had no idea where any of this was going.

But here we are.

I’ve been so lucky to not only have these ladies, but to have made other really good friends along the way too. I’m pretty picky about the people I keep close, and somehow I’ve ended up with some truly fabulous, fun, generous, loving human beings that I am blessed to call good friends.

You never know at the beginning which friendships are going to last through all the different stages of life. There’s no grand plan. And then someday you look up and realize you’ve built a whole history together.

Maybe that’s why I love so many of these quotes. Someone else managed to put into words something I didn’t really understand when I was younger: a good friend makes life a whole lot better.

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