48 Unexpected Friendship Quotes For Bonds You Never Saw Coming

Nobody writes “meet my best friend” on their to-do list. It just happens.

Maybe it started with small talk in a waiting room. Or a group project you didn’t want to be part of. Then one day you realize this person knows you better than most.

If you have a friend like that, you will relate to these unexpected friendship quotes. Send one to them today.

Unexpected Friendship Quotes

“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

“A friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face.” — Maya Angelou

“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.” — Aristotle

“Frankly, there isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love once you’ve heard their story.” — Fred Rogers

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” — Anaïs Nin

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

“Friends are born, not made.” — Henry Adams

“The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” — Elisabeth Foley

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust

“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.” — E.B. White

“Of all the things which wisdom provides to make life entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.” — Epicurus

“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” — Desmond Tutu

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.” — Albert Schweitzer

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.” — Jane Austen

“A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.” — Dalai Lama

“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” — Elbert Hubbard

“Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued.” — Brené Brown

“If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.” — Samuel Johnson

“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

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” — George Eliot

“Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.” — Cicero

“The language of friendship is not words but meanings.” — Henry David Thoreau

“A true friend is someone who is there for you when they’d rather be anywhere else.” — Len Wein

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” — Walter Winchell

“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.” — William Shakespeare

“Nothing, however, delights the mind so much as fond and loyal friendship.” — Seneca

“Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” — Aristotle

“One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.” — Euripides

“A friend is a gift you give yourself.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

“Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.” — Oscar Wilde

“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

“Friends have all things in common.” — Plato

“Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.” — Kahlil Gibran

“My friends are my estate.” — Emily Dickinson

“Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” — Aristotle

“A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.” — William Penn

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” — Ernest Hemingway

“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.” — Seneca

“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” — Mark Twain

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.” — Maya Angelou

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” — Henry Ford

“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Friendship isn’t about whom you have known the longest, it’s about who came and never left your side.” — Unknown

“The most beautiful discoveries are often unexpected.” — Unknown

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” — Helen Keller