You might remember this classic rhyme from your childhood: “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.”
Having a best friend is a rare and precious gift. Whether you were childhood playmates or connected later in life, it's likely that your best friend has been by your side since the day you met.
They've been there to support you through life's biggest moments, from breakups to new jobs, and they're always ready to cheer you up with some words of wisdom or a well-timed quip.
Your best friend knows you inside and out — flaws and all — and still loves you for exactly who you are. Whether you grew up with someone by your side and plan to be best friends forever, or you just met and feel like you have already known them for a lifetime, spending time with friends can bring out our inner children and refresh the soul. These bonds should be cherished and nurtured consistently.
Despite that unbreakable bond, it can be difficult to carve out time to see even our closest pals. If you and your bestie live in different places, there are so many ways to show your BFF how much you cherish them.
One of the best ways to connect with your friends? Simply talk to them. The words that you say to your besties (especially the long-distance ones) carry weight and meaning. Whether you like to send them best friend songs with meaningful lyrics or you text your bestie daily to remind them how much they mean to you, what you say can make a difference.
Even though there is so much that we want to tell our friends, it can often be difficult to put our feelings into words. So we’ve rounded up some best friend quotes to make the process a little bit easier!
Funny best friend quotes
- “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” — Walter Winchell
- “To like and dislike the same things, that is what makes a solid friendship.” — Sallust
- “My friends and I are crazy. That’s the only thing that keeps us sane.” — Matt Schucker
- “I’ll stick to finding the funny in the ordinary because my life is pretty ordinary and so are the lives of my friends — and my friends are hilarious.” — Issa Rae
- “As much as a BFF can make you go WTF, there’s no denying we’d be a little less rich without them.” — Gossip Girl, “Gossip Girl”
- “A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they’re not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they’re not so bad.” — Arnold H. Glasgow
- “An old friend will help you move. A good friend will help you move a dead body.” — Jim Hayes
- “Whoever says friendship is easy has obviously never had a true friend!” — Bronwyn Polson
- “A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside.” — Winnie the Pooh
- “How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live ‘em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give ‘em.” — Shel Silverstein
- “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.” — Bernard Meltzer
- “There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.” — Linda Grayson
- “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” — Arnold H. Glasgow
- “Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.” — Anna Deavere Smith
- “Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can’t have too many friends because then you’re just not really friends.” — Truman Capote
- “Friendship’s the wine of life.” — Edward Young
- “True friends are like diamonds — bright, beautiful, valuable, and always in style.” — Nicole Richie
- “Women’s friendships are like a renewable source of power.” — Jane Fonda
- “Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.” — Ed Cunningham
Short and sweet best friend quotes
- “Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.” — Richard Bach
- “When the world is so complicated, the simple gift of friendship is within all of our hands.” — Maria Shriver
- “What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.” — C.S. Lewis
- “Friendship isn’t a big thing — it’s a million little things.” — Paulo Coelho
- “A good friend is like a four-leaf clover; hard to find and lucky to have.” — Irish Proverb
- “Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.” ― Sarah Dessen, “Someone Like You”
- “If you have one true friend you have more than your share.” ― Thomas Fuller
- “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” — Muhammad Ali
- “A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.” — Elbert Hubbard
- “A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.” — Donna Roberts
- “A friend is someone who makes it easy to believe in yourself.” — Heidi Wills
- “Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.” — Khalil Gibson
- “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, “Becoming”
- “Some people arrive and make such a beautiful impact on your life, you can barely remember what life was like without them.” —Anna Taylor
- “No friendship is an accident.” — O. Henry
- “A single rose can be my garden; a single friend, my world.” — Leo Buscaglia
- “A friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face.” — Maya Angelou, “Letter to My Daughter”
- “Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.” — Francesco Guicciardini
- “There’s nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing.” — Jennifer Aniston
Meaningful best friend quotes
- “Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.” — Woodrow Wilson
- “Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learnt from my long-term friendships with women.” — Dolly Alderton, “Everything I Know About Love”
- “I don’t know what I would have done so many times in my life if I hadn’t had my girlfriends. They have literally gotten me up out of bed, taken my clothes off, put me in the shower, dressed me, said, ‘Hey, you can do this,’ put my high heels on and pushed me out the door!” — Reese Witherspoon
- “That was what a best friend did: hold up a mirror and show you your heart.” — Kristin Hannah
- “I still have friends from primary school. And my two best girlfriends are from secondary school. I don’t have to explain anything to them. I don’t have to apologize for anything. They know. There’s no judgment in any way.” — Emma Watson
- “Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave and impossible to forget.” — G. Randolf
- “I hadn’t ever thought that a man could love me in the same way that my friends love me; that I could love a man with the same commitment and care with which I love them. Maybe all this time I had been in a great marriage without even realising.”— Dolly Alderton, “Everything I Know About Love”
- “Because you are my oldest friend. Because, once, when I was at my lowest, you saved me.” — Gabrielle Zevin, “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”
- “One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about. We never needed best friend gear because I guess with real friends you don’t have to make it official. It just is.” — Mindy Kaling
- “Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.” — Virginia Woolf
- “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
- “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature.” — Jane Austen
- “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust
- “I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.” — Robert Brault
- “The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?” — Eugene Kennedy
- “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” — Tennessee Williams
- “Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend.” — Bill Watterson, “Calvin and Hobbes”
- “It’s not that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but it’s your best friends who are your diamonds.” — Gina Barreca
Quotes for when you're missing your best friend
- “Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.” ― Elie Wiesel
- “One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.” — George Santayana
- “There are three things that grow more precious with age: old wood to burn, old books to read and old friends to enjoy.” — Henry Ford
- “Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.” — Ally Condie
- “Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life—and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.” — Dean Koontz
- “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” — Albert Schweitzer
- “True friendship is when two friends can walk in opposite directions, yet remain side by side.” — Josh Grayson
- “Close friends are truly life’s treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.” — Vincent Van Gogh
- “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. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.” — Octavia Butler
- “Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world.” — John Evelyn
- “Friendship takes work. Finding friends, nurturing friendships, scheduling face time, it all takes a tremendous amount of work. But it’s worth it. If you put in the effort, you’ll see the rewards of positive friends who will make your life extraordinary.” — Maya Angelou
- “True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.” — David Tyson
- “True friends are always together in spirit.” — L.M. Montgomery
- “True friendship resists time, distance and silence.” — Isabel Allende
- “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” — Helen Keller
- “What I realize now in hindsight is that there is a natural ebb and flow to friendships. There are times you think there’s nothing left between you, that you’ve hit the bottom, but the special ones survive, find ways of restoring themselves.” — Colette McBeth
- “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” — Elisabeth Foley
- “Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends leave footprints in your heart.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
- “It seems they had always been, and always would be, friends. Time could change, but not that.” — Winnie the Pooh
