Best Friends Strangers Quotes & Sayings

There are no strangers, only friends you have not met yet. — W.B.Yeats

For me, there are distinct levels of friendship:
BEST FRIEND: An extremely close individual you can do anything with, talk about everything with, confide in, and be comfortable with sitting in silence on car journeys; those people you consider to be part of your family
GOOD FRIEND: A person you are comfortable hanging out with one-on-one for an extended period of time and see semiregularly; someone who shares experiences with you but not your deepest troubles and secrets
FRIEND: Someone you hang out with in a group setting occasionally
Acquaintance: Someone you know on a first-name basis and say "hi" to but that's pretty much the extent of it
STRANGERS: The rest of the world (and all your potential best friends in the future) — Connor Franta

But uhh, a thug changes, and love changes
and best friends become strangers, word up — Nas

Harriet, to hide her excitement, had turned to the bookshelves in the corner between the windows and the fireplace. The books, untidily arranged, some standing, some piled on their sides, with newspapers and magazines wedged among them, confused her. There were no sets and a great many were paper-backed. She saw friends - Mr. Dickens was present - and nodding acquaintances - Laurence Sterne, for instance, and Theodore Dreiser - but they were among strangers: Henry Miller, Norman Douglas, Saki, Ronald Firbank, strangers all. — Jack Iams

I am yet to find one reliable friend in this crowd of shifting strangers. I have no true friends only mimicries, users and loopers. People popping in and out, keeping tabs on my life, not adding much credence to my existence yet not abandoning my life entirely because they know that greatness lies beyond the layers of this muck. It is up to me to discover those who are worth taking on this journey towards my destiny and the ones who will only get in my way. — Crystal Evans

I can only point out a curious fact. Year after year the Nobel Awards bring a moment of happiness not only to the recipients, not only to colleagues and friends of the recipients, but even to strangers. — Alfred Day Hershey

The automatic use of Du, even to strangers if they were friends of friends, was very surprising. Sie, it seemed, meant relegation to the outer darkness and people had been known to fight with swords about the matter. — Patrick Leigh Fermor

It's great when two strangers become best friends but not when best friends become two strangers. — Drake

You're letting such a fragile side of yourself out when you're creating or writing music. To do that with people who are almost strangers would seem very strange to me. I think that we're very lucky that we're quite close. To us, it's almost like the band is the grandest possible adventure you can go on with your friends. It's really really exciting. — Alex Kapranos

This inability to just do nothing is a direct result of our habit of externalisation. As children we are never taught in schools, or in social settings, to look within ourselves for answers. Whether it is that our answers are found in some sort of religion, or another person, or in something else, we start to make this common practice. We are indecisive in life looking to friends, family, counsellors, teachers, and even strangers for advice. We are never taught or, better yet, shown how to look after our number one relationship in life, which is the relationship with one's self. — Evan Sutter

Its funny how we can go from good friends for months to strangers for years and best friends for hours. Plastic world, realistic people. — Lik Hock Yap

Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends. — Nancy Gibbs

For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men - friends, coworkers, strangers - giddy over these awful pretender women, and I'd want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who'd like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I'd want to grab the poor guy by the lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn't really love chili dogs that much - no one loves chili dogs that much! — Gillian Flynn

Strangers had small interest in hurting you. That was always done best by your own family and friends. — Robin Hobb

Maybe, if you can't get someone out of your head they were never meant to leave. Perhaps, they were meant to help change you into the person you have been waiting to become. — Shannon L. Alder

If we'd been on speaking terms, I might've told her that I'd come to think of sex as this long dark tunnel that turns friends into strangers, strangers into friends. — Tom Perrotta

That girl had a great way of making friends, and strangers, and anyone else who was around. — Joan Rivers

Suffering took hold of me like a magic spell abolishing all differences between friends and strangers. — Diane Ackerman

So by keeping her word, Frieda B. made amends. And the two who'd been strangers became best of friends. — Renata Bowers

IT SEEMS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE, but there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am. — Daniel Silva

We are all so broken. Pick up a person, shake them around and you'll hear the rattling of their broken pieces. Pieces our fathers broke, or our mothers, or our friends, strangers, or our loves. — Tarryn Fisher

One of the best things about life is friends. We all agree on that. And yet our shyness with strangers often prevents friendship from ever gaining a foothold. If only we would realize that the other person is probably just as shy as we are and is simply waiting - and hoping - for us to make the first move. — Jerry Spinelli

Every single day, no matter who you meet in the day - friends, family, work colleagues, strangers - give joy to them. Give a smile or a compliment or kind words or kind actions, but give joy! Do your best to make sure that every single person you meet has a better day because they saw you. — Rhonda Byrne

To die is not to play a part in society; it is the act of a single person. Let us live and laugh among our friends; let us die and sulk among strangers. — Michel De Montaigne

A man friends are more capable of working him harm than strangers; and his greatest
danger lies in his own habits. — Aleister Crowley

What is it about friendship that makes being among friends so much richer than being among the most accomplished and interesting strangers?"---Connecting — Sandy Sheehy

The Old Language really was beautiful, Blay thought. Staring at the symbols, for one brief, ridiculous moment he imagined his own name across Qhuinn's shoulders, carved into that smooth skin in the manner of the mating ritual.
Never going to happen. They were destined to be best friends ... which, compared to strangers, was something huge. Compared to lovers? It was the cold side of a locked door. — J.R. Ward

Strangers are just friends waiting to happen — Rod McKuen

Anoshe was a word for strangers in the street, and lovers between meetings, for parents and children, friends and family. It softened the blow of leaving. Eased the strain of parting. A careful nod to the certainty of today, the mystery of tomorrow. When a friend left, with little chance of seeing home, they said anoshe. When a loved one was dying, they said anoshe. When corpses were burned, bodies given back to the earth and souls to the stream, those left grieving said anoshe.

Anoshe brought solace. And hope. And the strength to let go. — V.E Schwab

Anger is something you should only vent in front of intimates, and friends and relations. Never be angry in front of strangers because you lose face. — James Clavell

Cultivate your forgiveness with your friends, with your family, with strangers, and with yourself. Remind yourself that every person you encounter carries a sorrow and a struggle. Recognize that we all share a fundamental humanity. Model the — Desmond Tutu

Truth provides the most diplomatic answer): I don't believe I've ever attended one since I was your age where I didn't feel, beforehand, an oppressive dread at the isolation that can reign in a large enough group of even the most intimate friends, much less an admixture of intimates, acquaintances, and strangers. Still, so much of my social education has been effected in such gatherings, so many true friendships have had their beginnings in meetings much like yours and mine, that I feel these affairs must not only be endured, but negotiated with a certain energy, if not commitment. — Samuel R. Delany

The best fights don't occur between strangers. They occur between friends who trust each other. — Chuck Palahniuk

Falling in love can happen to complete strangers. Staying in love requires being best friends and that means accepting the person beneath the veneer. — Ellen Hopkins

'Humans of New York' is basically somebody walking up to absolute strangers on the street every day and, within minutes, talking with them about very personal things. Some things they haven't even told their best friends or family members. — Brandon Stanton

You're everything I wanted, all of them, rolled into one. We were lovers and enemies and the best of friends. At times, it was one more than the other. At times, we were all of them all at once. But there have been times, I admit, when we were two complete strangers struggling to live with each other. At times, we felt like We were just each other's habit. — Nessie Q.

It's disappointing enough to know that the people we love will sometimes lie, but it is almost worse when we remember that strangers do this too, and this is why it is best not to admit our lies to strangers because it is not pleasant to learn that someone will lie even when there is little to nothing at stake. — Catherine Lacey

Whether you feel your absolute best or your absolute worst today, you still deserve comfort, care, and love. You still deserve the kindness of strangers and the compassion of good friends. You still deserve hearty belly laughs and a good night's sleep. You still deserve warm baths and a night out to your favorite restaurant. You still deserve those little moments that make you feel glad you were there to witness them. Regardless of how you feel, you will always remain a deserving being worthy of the best moment that is possible for you right here and right now. — Emily Maroutian

The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends. — Mary McCarthy

Plasma on the wall/Write my name on your heart like I'm Lucille Ball/But love changes, a thug changes/And best friends become strangers — Ras Kass

Two quilters who have just met will be strangers only until their mutual passion for quilting is revealed. Then they can talk for hours like the best of friends. — Jennifer Chiaverini

Audiences are not strangers to me. They're the best friends I've got in my life. — Elaine Stritch

Remember the hours after September 11th when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran upstairs and risked their lives so that others might live; when rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon; when the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation's Capitol; when flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us. — John F. Kerry

This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O'Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks. It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sita and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name) and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best - less trouble). — Zadie Smith

My true inspirations are my kids and my husband. I'm also inspired by stories of my extended family, friends, and even strangers who cause me to look at my life and behavior and encourage me to be the best person, mother, daughter, and friend that I can be. — Trista Sutter

you are
as fleetingly beautiful

as a mother's tears
and a father's pranks

a brother's bachelorhood
and a best friend's bad mood

a bride's glittering jitters
and a handsome stranger's smile. — Sanober Khan

Complete strangers can stand silent next to each other in an elevator and not even look each other in the eye. But at a concert, those same strangers could find themselves dancing and singing together like best friends. That's the power of music. — LZ Granderson

It seems the older we get, the tighter our inner circle becomes. When life has you down, some of those you thought had your back run, others ... sometimes strangers surprise you and fill that empty space up. Oh, but life has a great balancing act and when that axle turns and you are right side up again ... you will definitely not be looking for any long, lost "friends" because your inner circle is battle-tested to win! — Sanjo Jendayi

There are no strangers in here, just friends you haven't met ... — Roald Dahl

I understand it, but I don't like it. I wish we could all be together like before: best friends, not heartbroken strangers. — Amy Plum

Make life about more than just you. Take the world around you and transform it for the sake of others. Do a good deed for your neighbor; smile at strangers; volunteer for a bigger purpose and don't except anything in return. The first step of redemption is digging yourself out of the hole you dug around yourself and dedicating your time to others. When the world stops revolving around your comfort zone and draws in the needs of others, you may quickly break the chains that hold you down from reaching your ultimate goal. — Leigh Hershkovich

Mr. Baggins saw then how clever Gandalf had been. The interruptions had really made Beorn more interested in the story, and the story had kept him from sending the dwarves off at once like suspicious beggars. He never invited people into his house, if he could help it. He had very few friends and they lived a good way away; and he never invited more than a couple of these to his house at a time. Now he had got fifteen strangers sitting in his porch! — Anonymous

If hard things ultimately have a purpose, then they aren't so hard anymore. Therefore, I listed what I had learned: 1. It's easy to forget that people can think you think what you don't think. 2. Don't write when you're angry and under deadline, with time to test it only on friends who know what you mean, not on strangers who don't. 3. A writer's greatest reward is naming something unnamed that many people are feeling. A writer's greatest punishment is being misunderstood. The same words can do both. — Gloria Steinem

Talk to strangers politely. You don't how many of them will become your close companions. — Israelmore Ayivor

McGahern still lives on and works a farm in Leitrim, and friends say that even though he has held high profile academic posts round the world as a visiting professor he remains essentially a countryman.

Last term he taught in an upstate New York college, but seeing him in the soulless urban grid of downtown Syracuse wearing an old tweed flat cap and long black overcoat, he could have been in an Irish agricultural town on market day as he casually engaged strangers on the street to ask for advice on finding a decent restaurant. Friends say he has extraordinary confidence in who he is and where he's from - he behaves pretty much the same way wherever is and whoever he is with. — John McGahern

I learned that love can end in one night, that great friends can become great strangers, that strangers can become best friends, that we never finish to know and understand someone completely, that the "never ever again" will happen again and that "forever" always ends, that the one that wants it can, will achieve it and get it, that the one that risks it never looses anything, that physique, figure and beauty attracts but personality makes one fall in love. — Tommy Tran

strangers were just people he hadn't become friends with yet. — Eric Walters

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.
I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place,
while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.
Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about. — John Henry Newman

It is unpredictable for you to know which of the strangers you are about to meet that becomes your friend. Be polite to every stranger! — Israelmore Ayivor

Has anyone ever told you that you have That?" I must look thoroughly confused. "You've never heard of That?" he asks, surprised. I shake my head no. "It's a priceless quality that's impossible to define, really," he explains, "but you recognize it in the actions of great people." Showering friends and strangers with inflated but disingenuous compliments is a customary tradition in Iran called taarof, but looking into Doctor's eyes, I don't think he's taarof-ing. Some — Mahbod Seraji

I was surrounded by friends, my work was immense, and pleasures were abundant. Life, now, was unfolding before me, constantly and visibly, like the flowers of summer that drop fanlike petals on eternal soil. Overall, I was happiest to be alone; for it was then I was most aware of what I possessed. Free to look out over the rooftops of the city. Happy to be alone in the company of friends, the company of lovers and strangers. Everything, I decided, in this life, was pure pleasure. — Roman Payne

My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. She's now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia. — Dame Edna Everage

if a man wants friends be must go among strangers. It's — Arthur Conan Doyle

Think of strangers as friends you not met yet. — Abraham Lincoln

I really love to be with people. It's nice, that. To have achieved sudden intimacy with strangers is perhaps the most human thing you can do. We all love our friends and families, as much as we hate them. When you can achieve intimacy with strangers, it's very exciting and heartening. — Russell Brand

You will find glimpses of my friends, my family, and strangers off the street in everything I write, because I steal from life and then put it in a blender. — Catherine Cruzan

... food is capable of feeding far more than a rumbling stomach. Food is life; our well-being demands it. Food is art and magic; it evokes emotion and colors memory, and in skilled hands, meals become greater than the sum of their ingredients. Food is self-evident; plucked right from the ground or vine or sea, its power to delight is immediate. Food is discovery; finding an untried spice or cuisine is for me like uncovering a new element. Food is evolution; how we interpret it remains ever fluid. Food is humanitarian: sharing it bridges cultures, making friends of strangers pleasantly surprised to learn how much common ground they ultimately share. — Anthony Beal

Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives. — Marilyn Ferguson

He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and it was not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed them. There were the faces of friends, and foes, and of many that had been almost strangers peering intrusively from the crowd; there were the faces of young and blooming girls that were now old women; there were faces that the grave had changed and closed upon, but which the mind, superior to its power, still dressed in their old freshness and beauty, calling back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile, the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of beauty beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from earth only to be set up as a light, to shed a soft and gentle glow upon the path to Heaven... — Charles Dickens

Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.
You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. — Cesare Pavese

The years rolled slowly past and I found myself alone. Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends, I found myself further and further from my home. — Bob Seger

We can bring positive energy into our daily lives by smiling more, talking to strangers in line, replacing handshakes with hugs, and calling our friends just to tell them we love them. — Brandon Jenner

Independent travel does that, bringing temporarily together these wandering ships that would otherwise pass in the night. Relationships were mostly brief and sometimes downright fleeting. The barriers and masks of settled existence melted away, allowing strangers to become fast friends, if only for a day. We travellers needed that, having deliberately stepped away from the social safety net of family, school, work and community. — John Haines

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met. — William Butler Yeats

When you invite people to share in your miracle, you create future allies during rough weather. — Shannon L. Alder

A couple you do not recognize - visitors, strangers - come to the door. How are you to view these people and what is your responsibility towards them? ... To assume that these visitors are really like you, that there are no real difference between you and them, and that the highest goal possible is that you and the other members of your congregation will become intimate friends with them and invite them into the private spaces of your life. — Thomas G. Long

English, although the official language of Nigeria, was a formal language with which strangers and non-relatives addressed you. It had the potency of digging craters between you and your friends or relatives if one of you switched to using it. So, our parents hardly spoke English, except in moments like this, when the words were intended to pull the ground from beneath our feet. — Chigozie Obioma

Father God, fill my heart with Your love so that I may pass it on to friends and strangers. Amen. - MARION BOND WEST — Various

Once there was you and me
We were lovers
We were friends
Before life changed
Before we were strangers
Do you still think of me? — Renee Carlino

Talk to strangers
when the family fails and friends lead you astray
when Buddha laughs and Jesus weeps and it turns out God is gay.
'Cause angels and messiahs love can come in many forms:
in the hallways of your projects, or the fat girl in your dorm,
and when you finally take the time to see what they're about
perhaps you find them lonely or their wisdom trips you out. — Saul Williams

And what do you do in the face of this powerlessness? As a parent?"

"You get to be obsessed and angry," Tom said. "And they get to be the age they are, and act like teenagers if they want to. There is a zero-percent chance you will change them. So we breathe in, and out, talk to friends, as needed. We show up, wear clean underwear, say hello to strangers. We plant bulbs, and pick up litter, knowing there will be more in twenty minutes. We pray that we might cooperate with any flicker of light we can find in the world. — Anne Lamott

There are stories within stories, whispered in the quiet of the night, shouted above the roar of the day, and played out between lovers and enemies, strangers and friends. But all are fragile things made of just twenty-six letters arranged and re-arranged to form tales and imaginings which will dazzle your senses, haunt your imagination and move you to the very depths of your soul. — Neil Gaiman