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.
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.
Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
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.
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.
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.
Yet friendship, I believe, is essential to intellectuals. It is probably the growth hormone the mind requires as it begins its activity of producing and exchanging ideas. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not love or marriage so much as friendship has promoted growth.
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.
My friends have stood by me marvelously in the ups and downs of my career. I don't believe there is anything more worthwhile in life than friendship. Friendship is a far better thing than love, as it is commonly accepted.
Love without friendship is like a kite, aloft only when the winds are favorable. Friendship is what gives love its wings.
I think friendship is more important than love, but that love that grows out of friendship is the very best of all.
Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.
Do you know what the difference is between Friendship and Love? Friendship is the photograph, Love is the oil painting.
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.
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.
Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
Of friendship, love, and liberty,
Ere I was old!