Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with.

Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.

Thomas J. Watson (1874 1956)

Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Ali ibn-Abi-Talib (602 AD - 661 AD)

When someone allows you to bear his burdens, you have found deep friendship.
Real Live Preacher January 4, 2003

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

A good friend of my son's is a son to me.

Lois McMaster Bujold Ethan of Athos, 1986

Adversity does teach who your real friends are.

Lois McMaster Bujold A Civil Campaign, 1999

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Eudemian Ethics

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
Plutarch Biographer, essayist, priest, ambassador, magistrate

"What is a friend? I will tell you...it is someone with whom you dare to be yourself."
Frank Hall Crane (1873 1948), an American stage and film actor and director

 Friendship: a building contract you sign with laughter and break with tears.
Marlene Dietrick (1901 1992) American actress and singer

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
George Washington (1732 - 1799)

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Dale Carnegie

Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.

Czech Proverb