33 BFF Quotes That Perfectly Capture How We Get By With a Little Help From Our Friends

As you work towards a successful career you’ll probably focus on your professional goals and relationships with your colleagues. As you strive to maintain a healthy work-life balance, you’ll most likely focus on taking care of your health by sleeping enough, eating well, and exercising regularly. While all of these are important, it’s easy to forget about fostering our friendships. Maybe you've made a real friend at work, but you also need at lease one true friendship outside of work, too, so you can take work off your mind.

Why are friendships important?

Best friends will be there for you when you’ve had the worst day of your career and you need someone to talk to. It’s important to have a best friend outside of work, and not just to dish about your coworkers. The Huffington Post reported on a LinkedIn study citing that 68% of people born after 1980 would sacrifice a friendship for a promotion. While workplace friends can make the day go by faster, they often don’t last when you move onto new roles and have the added complication of workplace politics. These quotes will remind you why it’s worth taking the time to invest in true friends. For every friendship quote, try to think of someone in your life it reminds you of.

33 BFF Quotes

1. "Things are never quite as scary when you have a best friend." — Bill Watterson
2. "Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."— Helen Keller  
3. "The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away." — Barbara Kingsolver   
4. "Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." — Anais Nin
5. 
6. "Women understand. We may share experiences, make jokes, paint pictures, and describe humiliations that mean nothing to men, but women understand. The odd thing about these deep and personal connections of women is that they often ignore barriers of age, economics, worldly experience, race, culture — all the barriers that, in male or mixed society, had seemed so difficult to cross." — Gloria Steinem
7. "No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow." — Alice Walker
8. "Where would you be without friends? The people to pick you up when you need lifting? We come from homes far from perfect, so you end up almost parent and sibling to your friends - your own chosen family. There's nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing."— Jennifer Aniston
9. "Value your friendship. Value your relationships." — Barbara Bush
10. "There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met." — William Butler Yeats
11. 
12. "Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" — Abraham Lincoln
13. "Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship." — Marilyn Monroe
14. "Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything." — Muhammad Ali
15. "Nobody sees a flower ― really ― it is so small it takes time ― we haven’t time ― and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time." ― Georgia O’Keeffe
16. "My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me." — Henry Ford
17. "We are friends for life. When we’re together the years fall away. Isn’t that what matters? To have someone who can remember with you? To have someone who remembers how far you’ve come?" ― Judy Blume
18. 
19. "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
20. "And like a favorite old movie, sometimes the sameness in a friend is what you like the most about her." ― Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed
21. "Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success." — Oscar Wilde
22. "Friends and good manners will carry you where money won't go." — Margaret Walker
23. "Some people go to priests, others to poetry, I to my friends." — Virginia Woolf
24. "One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about." — Mindy Kaling
25. 
26. "Everybody understands friendship, and friendship is different than love - it's a different kind of love. Friendship has more freedom, more latitude. You don't expect your friend to be as you think your friend should be; you expect your friend just to love you as a friend." — Carole King
27. "Acting is about communicating, reacting, and sharing - and friendship is about all of those things, too." — Diego Luna
28. "Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life." — Amy Poehler
29. "The most important thing in life is your family. There are days you love them, and others you don’t. But, in the end, they’re the people you always come home to. Sometimes it’s the family you’re born into and sometimes it’s the one you make for yourself." ― Carrie Bradshaw
30. "I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles." — Nelson Mandela
31. 
32. “For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.” — Audrey Hepburn
33. “A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.” — William Shakespeare

Most of us could write an essay about our best friends. But a quote and saying will suffice this time. What friendship quote reminds you of a true friend or a good friend? What's your favorite friendship quote or do you have another inspirational quote loosely tied to true friendship? Share your bff quotes or write down whatever inspirational quote you have in mind on paper so you're constantly reminded!

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Ana Cottle studied Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. She has lived and worked in Uruguay and Argentina and speaks both Spanish and Yiddish. She is passionate about issues facing women and has worked for several nonprofits along with writing for books, newspapers, and online journals. Currently, she serves as an Editor for Policy Shift. Read more from Ana at medium.com/@AnaCottle/.

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