Acquaintances are a sometimes thing, but friendships last forever.

A life truly blessed is one encircled by true friends.

Best friends are like diamonds, precious and rare. False friends are like leaves found everywhere. (from a greeting card)

Even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.

Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don't say.

It isn’t wise to count your friends on a sunny day, when the sky is blue and smiles come by the bushel. Instead wait for a storm, when the clouds roll in, and the day grows dark and laughter’s scarce. Whoever stands by you then deserves the name friend.

It’s really amazing when two strangers become the best of friends, but it is really sad when the best of friends become two strangers.

Let the seasons change as they may, but hold fast to true friends. (Also from a greeting card)

We don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.

Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
~ Richard Bach, Illusions ~ (My favorite quote ever)

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
~ Richard Bach ~

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
~ James Boswell ~

I can trust my friends. These people force me to examine myself, encourage me to grow.
~ Cher ~ (Amen)

It's the friends you can call up at 4 A.M. that matter.
~ Marlene Dietrich ~

A friend is someone you don’t have to prove things to, and with whom you can be yourself, whatever that is. A friend is also someone who should be able to tell you you are being silly or brain-damaged or making poor decisions about something without you being upset and offended, like when the love of your life is taking you to the cleaners, and you are completely blind to it.
~ Joseph Franci ~

The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for your family.
~ Jay McInerney ~

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.
~ Anais Nin ~

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
~ Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude ~