A Quote by Henry Clay Trumbull

In all holiest and most unselfish love, friendship is the purest element of the affection. No love in any relation of life can be at its best if the element of friendship be lacking. And no love can transcend, in its possibilities of noble and ennobling exaltation, a love that is pure friendship.

Henry Clay Trumbull

Quote Topics

Affection Any Best Element Exaltation Friendship Lacking Life Love Most No Love Noble Possibilities Pure Purest Relation Selfish Love Transcend Unselfish Unselfish Love

Quote Author

Henry Clay Trumbull
American - Author
June 8, 1830 - 1903

Love is a blazing, crackling, green-wood flame, as much smoke as flame; friendship, married friendship particularly, is a steady,intense, comfortable fire. Love, in courtship, is friendship in hope; in matrimony, friendship upon proof.

Samuel Richardson

Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.

Peter Ustinov

Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love; it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.

Samuel Richardson

Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time. The very reverse may be said of love. In a great degree, love and friendship cannot subsist in the same bosom; even when inspired by different objects they weaken or destroy each other, and for the same object can only be felt in succession. The vain fears and fond jealousies, the winds which fan the flame of love, when judiciously or artfully tempered, are both incompatible with the tender confidence and sincere respect of friendship.

Mary Wollstonecraft

I think friendship is more important than love, but that love that grows out of friendship is the very best of all.

Jane Green

Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wish it were possible.

Milan Kundera

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.

Elie Wiesel

Friendship has splendors that love knows not. It grows stronger when crossed, whereas obstacles kill love. Friendship resists time, which wearies and severs couples. It has heights unknown to love.

Mariama Bâ

Next to God, love is the word most mangled in every language. The highest form of regard between two people is friendship, and when love enters, friendship dies.

Richard Bach

The difference between romantic love and friendship love is that romantic love involves a lot of compromise. It is a very giving type of love. With friendship, you can be a little bit more autonomous. You are not expected to compromise, in the same way. Maybe that's why friendships tend to last longer.

Olivia Wilde

Love without friendship is like a kite, aloft only when the winds are favorable. Friendship is what gives love its wings.

Sherry Thomas

Love and friendship, two of life's abiding rewards, are endangered species in Hollywood. People crave both, mistaking alliance for friendship, lust for love, and ambition for both.