57 Friendship Quotes to Build Classroom Community

How do you build classroom community to create a warm and friendly climate?  Do students bring drama into the classroom?  These amazing quotes about friendship can be used to help guide students along their path to forming healthy relationships.  Classroom teachers can pick a “quote of the week” to spark conversation and set the tone each week.  If you are a school counselor, use these in your friendship lessons.  I have printed these out and have them hanging in my office.  You can download a printable copy here.

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead.
“Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” ― Albert Camus

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” Abraham Lincoln

“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.” Henry David Thoreau

“Loyalty and friendship, which is to me the same, created all the wealth that I’ve ever thought I’d have.” Ernie Banks

“A friend is someone who helps you up when you’re down, and if they can’t, they lay down beside you and listen.”Winnie The Pooh

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

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” Alice Walker

Click for the free printable version.

“A real friend is one
who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”  Walter Winchell“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” ― Elbert Hubbard

“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

“You can always tell a real friend: when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.”  Laurence J. Peter

“It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief: enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best.” Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“If you have one true friend you have more than your share.” Thomas Fuller

“Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to
weigh thoughts nor measure words.” George Eliot

“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” ―A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“Be slow to fall into friendship, but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”
Socrates

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

“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

“Friends are medicine for a wounded heart and vitamins for a hopeful soul.”  Steve Maraboli

“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” ― Helen Keller

“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine
in this?” Henry David Thoreau

“My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” Henry Ford

“Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.” Booker T. Washington

“True friendship is like sound health. The value of it is seldom known until it be lost.” Charles Caleb Colton

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

“True enemies are better than false friends.” Matshona Dhliwayo

“Sitting silently beside a friend who is hurting may be the best gift we can give.”

“There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first; when you learn to live for others, they will live for you.” Paramahansa Yogananda

“To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.” Theodore H. White

“The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.” ~Cicero

“In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.” John Churton Collins

“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

“Silence make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts.” ―Margaret Lee Runbeck

“Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving.” Osho

“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

“If it’s very painful for you to criticize your friends – you’re safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that’s the time to hold your tongue.” ~Alice Miller

“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

“Keep the ones that heard you when you never said a word.”

“The most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people.” ~Nicholas Sparks

“One friend in a storm is worth more than a thousand friends in sunshine.” Matshona Dhliwayo

“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.”  Plutarch

“A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success.” Doug Larson

“Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.” ~Samuel Butler

“Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.” ― Charles Lamb, The Life, Letters and Writings of Charles Lamb

“I like to hang out with people who make me forget to look at my phone.”

“My definition of a friend is somebody who adores you even though they know the things you’re most ashamed of.”  Jodie Foster

“In friendship we find nothing false or insincere; everything is straight forward, and springs from the heart.” ~Cicero

“Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives and remembering what one receives.”  Alexander Dumas

“The older I get the more selective I am of who is in my tribe. I would rather have four quarters than a hundred pennies.”

“Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.”  ~Rabindranath Tagore

“The secret to friendship is being a good listener.”

“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

“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

“A good friend is like a four-leaf clover; hard to find and lucky to have.” ~Irish Proverb

”Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.” Anna Deavere Smith

“A friend is what the heart needs all the time.”Henry Van Dyke

“Friends are the family you choose.” Unknown

I hope you found these quotes helpful and start to build classroom community in your classroom and school.  If you liked using these quotes, check out this post with growth mindset quotes.