Quotes & Sayings About Enemies And Friends

Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ... are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends. — Walter Lippmann

I mean that reading forms your opinions, your worldview, especially childhood reading, and anything that does that has an impact. So call them friends, call some stories enemies if you want, but don't deny their influence. — Katherine Reay

Commerce makes friends, religion makes enemies; the one enriches, and the other impoverishes; the one thrives best where the truth is told, the other where falsehoods are believed. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Enemies are, to me, as important as friends in my life, and when they die I mourn their passing. — Jessica Mitford

Bruno: We're not supposed to be friends, you and me. We're meant to be enemies. Did you know that? — John Boyne

I'm going to say my name is Dorothy Sherman and I'm telling it like it is. I'm going to say my friends call me Dot, and I prefer my enemies not to call me at all. — Joe R. Lansdale

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task. — Diogenes

Enemies who vow not to see you achieve it and friends who say you can't do it ... ARE THE SAME ... !!! They just don't want you to make it happen! Stay away! — Israelmore Ayivor

Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means "soldier," but don't let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live. — Lois McMaster Bujold

In Jesus and for Him, enemies and friends alike are to be loved. — Thomas A Kempis

Don't forgive and never forget; Do unto others before they do unto you; and third and most importantly, keep your eye on your friends, because your enemies will take care of themselves! — JR

I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude, or they would not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as they would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not, like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them. — Benjamin Franklin

My father said to remember your enemies as well as your friends, and don't trust either of them. — Steven Herrick

1. Write like you'll live forever - fear is a bad editor.
2. Write like you'll croak today - death is the best editor.
3. Fooling others is fun. Fooling yourself is a lethal mistake.
4. Pick one - fame or delight.
5. The archer knows the target. The poet knows the wastebasket.
6. Cunning and excess are your friends.
7. TV and liquor are your enemies.
8. Everything eternal happens in a spare room at 3 a.m.
9. You're done when the crows sing. — Ron Dakron

Though it is a great mistake to make friends of the wicked and foolish, it is unwise to make enemies of them, for they are very numerous. — John Lubbock

In what, then, can those engaged in this kind of warfare place their hope? The Nakano Military School answered this question with a simple sentence: "In secret warfare, there is integrity." And this is right, for integrity is the greatest necessity when a man must deceive not only his enemies but his friends. With integrity - and I include in this sincerity, loyalty, devotion to duty and a sense of morality - one can withstand all hardships and ultimately turn hardship itself into victory. This was the lesson that the instructors at Futamata were constantly trying to instill in us. One of them put it this way: "If you are genuinely pure in spirit, people will respond to you and cooperate with you." This meant to me that so long as I remained pure inside, whatever measures I saw fit to take would eventually redound to the good of my country and my countrymen. — Hiroo Onoda

May peace rule the universe; may peace rule in kingdoms and empires; may peace rule in states and in the lands of the potentates; may peace rule in the house of friends and may peace also rule in the house of enemies. — Virchand Gandhi

Love has to be more than something we feel. It has to be something we do. We have to demonstrate it concretely in our marriage, our family, among our friends and acquaintances, and, yes, even among our enemies. — Gary Chapman

I greatly fear some of America's greatest and most dangerous enemies are such as think themselves her best friends. — Nathan Hale

My Friends I Will Always Remember, And My Enemies I Will Never Forget! — Latif Mercado

Reading was a way to make friends or enemies, a way to discover how all these different people exist in the world and to rub shoulders with them. The ability to feel as if you have met someone, as if that person exists in flesh and blood and that you relate to them somehow, makes you feel a lot less lonely. And it also makes you feel very brave. — Amy Poehler

Only people who're positive enough to have friends have enemies. When you're as glum and morose as he was, people just give up and go away. — Ellis Peters

Our enemies leave our bodies for the crows and the wolves. Our friends bury us in secret graves. — George R R Martin

Our policy is simple: We are not going to betray our friends, reward the enemies of freedom, or permit fear and retreat to become American policies ... None of the four wars in my lifetime came about because we were too strong. It is weakness ... that invites adventurous adversaries to make mistaken judgments. — Ronald Reagan

In my stubborn youth, I believed that I could stand alone, that I was strong enough to conquer my enemies with sword and with principles. Arrogance convinced me that by sheer determination, I could conquer helplessness itself. Stubborn and foolish youth, I
must admit, for when I look back on those years now, I see quite clearly that rarely did I stand alone and rarely did I have to stand alone. Always there were friends, true and dear, lending me support even when I believed I did not want it, and even when I did
not realize they were doing it. — R.A. Salvatore

People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching. — David Mitchell

And if the criticized person takes it quietly without rancor, not striking back but constantly loving, he will gather in friends faster than his critics can manufacture enemies. — Norman Vincent Peale

The evil, Sir, is enormous; the inevitable suffering incalculable. Do not stain the fair fame of the country ... Nations of dependent Indians, against their will, under color of law, are driven from their homes into the wilderness. You cannot explain it; you cannot reason it away ... Our friends will view this measure with sorrow, and our enemies alone with joy. And we ourselves, Sir, when the interests and passions of the day are past, shall look back upon it, I fear, with self-reproach, and a regret as bitter as unavailing. — Edward Everett

It's an old axiom of mine: marry your enemies and behead your friends. — Robert N. Lee

We are a band of brothers. United in love for our common Savior, joined in his common cause of prayer for both friends and enemies, we find our affections kindled and our hearts warmed toward one another. — Megan Hill

Both men felt uncomfortable. Each knew the other understood him. That kind of knowledge is agreeable for friends, and for enemies very disagreeable, especially when they can't either have it out or separate. — Ivan Turgenev

Don't make the mistake of underestimating your enemies. — Bohdi Sanders

Secrecy of design, when combined with rapidity of execution, like me column that guided Israel in the deserts, becomes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends, a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies. — Charles Caleb Colton

No books is more fascinating than the Bible. And no books are less fascinating than most of our commentaries on the Bible. Nothing is more formidable and unconquerable than the Church Militant. But nothing is more sleepy and sheepish than the Church Mumbling. Christ's words roused His enemies to murder and His friends to martyrdom. Our words reassure both sides and send them to sleep. He put the world in a daze. We put it in a doze. — Peter Kreeft

Old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small offenses. — Robert Burton

You will not grow through guilt, but only shrivel and die. Awareness is what you seek. But awareness is not guilt, and love is not fear. Fear and guilt, I say again, are your only enemies. Love and awareness are your true friends. Yet do not confuse the one with the other, for one will kill you, while the other gives you life. — Neale Donald Walsch

I howl for my wife, for my father. For Ragnar and Quinn and Pax and Narol. For all the people I've lost. For all they would take. I howl because I am a Helldiver of Lykos. I am the Reaper of Mars. And I have paid for access to this bunker with my flesh, all so that I might either die with my friends or see our enemies brought to justice. — Pierce Brown

I inherited half my father's friends and all his enemies — George W. Bush

If a man has a very decided character, has a strongly accentuated career, it is normally the case of course that he makes ardent friends and bitter enemies. — Theodore Roosevelt

The Socialist aims to escape from this dissatisfaction and suffering by making a change in his circumstances - such a change, for instance, as would make a king a servant, or make all men kings or servants. But history and experience show that kings, whose friends die, courtiers flatter, and enemies trick, are no more free from the sufferings attendant upon discipline than are servants. — Various

I don't want enemies. I want friends, and I want them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and loving whoever they want to. — Kevin Hart

Curses and Counter-curses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying and Much, Much More) by Professor Vindictus Viridian. — J.K. Rowling

Always more enemies, and fewer friends. Blood gets you nothing but more blood. — Joe Abercrombie

That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them. — William Hazlitt

The police state We now have well over 100,000 domestic federal law enforcement agents armed and ready to enforce the laws to "make everyone safe and secure." We also have our TSA "friends" at the airports protecting us with an army of over 50,000 bureaucrats. The Department of Homeland Security has more than 240,000 employees. The FBI has about 35,000 employees. Around 90,000 IRS employees enforce draconian tax laws that limit self-sufficiency, put people in fear, and are used as a political tool to help suppress dissenters to the empire. There are many thousands of others "making sure we're safe and secure from our foreign enemies" while our domestic enemies, including politicians, bureaucrats, and government profiteers, are ignored. — Ron Paul

That man is rich indeed who has more friends than enemies, fears no one, and is so busy building that he has no time to devote to tearing down another's hopes and plans. — Napoleon Hill

It was about such people that he complained to Atticus: I will only say this, and I believe you know I am right: it was not enemies but jealous friends who ruined me. — Anthony Everitt

Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies; and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

If any of us had heard the word "feminist" we would have thought it meant a girl who wore too much makeup, but we were, without knowing it, feminists ourselves, bound together by the freemasonry that exists among intelligent women who know they are intelligent. It is the only kind of female bonding that works, which is why most men do not like intelligent women. They don't mind one female brain if they can enjoy it privately; it's the idea of two or more on the loose that upsets them. The girls in the college-bound group might not have been friends in every case
Sharon Cohen and I gave each other willies
but our instincts told us that we had the same enemies. — Florence King

Best friends make the worst enemies, they know all your secrets and how to hurt you the most. — Alyson Noel

Be wary of friends - they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them. — Robert Greene

Friends should be very delicate and careful in administering pity as medicine, when enemies use the same article as poison. — John Frederick Boyes

Acquire knowledge, it enables its professor to distinguish right from wrong; it lights the way to heaven. It is our friend in the desert, our company in solitude and companion when friendless. It guides us to happiness, it sustains us in misery, it is an ornament amongst friends and an armour against enemies. — Anonymous

It was not Monsieur Arouet, but a colleague of his - a lady novelist - who remarked to me once that writing novels was a cannibal's art, in which one often mixed small portions of one's friends and one's enemies together, seasoned them with imagination, and allowed the whole to stew together into a savory concoction. — Diana Gabaldon

There's no point in bragging in the good times. Your friends don't need to hear it and your enemies won't believe it anyway. — Paul Orfalea

Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being "drawn toward." Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one's friends and enemies. — Carter Heyward

Your parents, your friends, your enemies politicians and teachers - all these voices will try to speak for you. Sometimes, it seems easier to let them. But then, you've lost more than your voice. You've lost yourself. — Amy Fellner Dominy

It's all a matter of perception.
What one person deems to be important may be just as equally unimportant to another.
What one deems to be right may seem very wrong to someone else.
Your moral compass and values may not always be totally in sync with others you meet.
In the end it's all just your perception of how you choose to live your life and this may not always win you friends. In fact it may gain you some enemies.
Live your life how you choose to and if people don't like the way you do things then disagree if you must, but be nice & be respectful and then if you must, move on and leave it all behind you.
It's your life after all and only you can live it. Choose your path and set your compass then start walking. — Michael Tianias

Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy. — Fredrik Backman

My ambitions for you are slowly being realised, and, even though you are unhappy, console yourself with the thought that it was part of my plan for you to be unhappy for a while. The fact that you associate intimately with girls who do not care for the things you do should strengthen your own artistic integrity and fortify you against the world; remember, Natalie, your enemies will always come from the same place your friends do. — Shirley Jackson

Shalom is the Hebrew word for "peace." For rhythm. For everything lining up exactly how it was meant to line up. Shalom is happening in those moments when you are at the dinner table for hours with good friends, good food, and good wine. Shalom is when you hear or see something and can't quite explain it, but you know it's calling and stirring something deep inside of you. Shalom is a sunset, that sense of exhaustion yet satisfaction from a hard day's work, creating art that is bigger than itself. Shalom is enemies being reconciled by love. Shalom is when you are dancing to the rhythm of God's voice. — Jefferson Bethke

O my Lord, whatever share of this world You have bestowed on me, bestow it to my enemies, and whatever share of the next world You have for me, give it to my friends. You are enough for me. — Rabia Basri

You know the old saying," said Nick. "Keep your friends close and your enemies dead and buried in the basement. — Mark Frost

First, we must see that our negative actions arise due to prejudice and erroneous judgments. The discrimination that labels some as 'friends' and others as 'enemies' must be perceived as the root of our problems. We need to see that we label people and things in terms of our own desires, our own wishes. These wishes are transitory. The labeled objects are, themselves, impermanent. Such labeling is therefore very confused and false, yet it persists, and we continue to create suffering for ourselves. To avoid this, we need to develop equanimity for all beings suffering in samsara, tossed to and fro by their fleeting delusions, just like ourselves. — Zongtrul Losang Tsondru

They ought to be gentle to their friends and dangerous to their enemies. — Plato

If you are going to set out to develop mystical powers to impress your friends and do other things to your enemies, the difficulty with it is that you will not be moving towards enlightenment. — Frederick Lenz

Charles Schwab: Be friends with everybody. When you have friends you will know there is somebody who will stand by you. You know the old saying, that if you have a single enemy you will find him everywhere. It doesn't pay to make enemies. Lead the life that will make you kind and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will live. — John C. Maxwell

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were political enemies, but they became fast friends. And when they passed away on the same day, the last words of one of them was, The country is safe. Jefferson still lives. And the last words of the other was, John Adams will see that things go forward. — Harry S. Truman

We should all know this: that listening is not talking; [it] is the gifted and great role and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective, and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one. — Brenda Ueland

It is my greatest wish to be thought of as a godfather, a man whose duty it is to do my friends any service, to help my friends out of any trouble- with advice, with money, with my own strength in men and influence- To everyone at this table, I say your enemies are my enemies, and your friends are my friends. — Ed Falco

The sea is a lonely and hostile place, Captain,' Jansen said coldly. 'It is always best not to make enemies of those who might be your friends. You never know when your ships may cross — Jocelyn Murray

To fight my enemies I need friends behind me, and I'm clean out of friends. You have to be realistic. It's been a while since my ambitions went beyond getting through each day alive. — Joe Abercrombie

C. H. Spurgeon was once asked if he could reconcile these two truths to each other. "I wouldn't try," he replied; "I never reconcile friends." Friends? - yes, friends. This is the point that we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors; they are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together. — J.I. Packer

Children of the Enlightenment do not, of course, dwell overly on the dreadful acts undertaken in its name when the Enlightenment first became a living historical force in France: all perished, all - /Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks, /Head after head, and never heads enough /For those that bade them fall. — David Berlinski

Acquire knowledge. It enables its possessor to distinguish right from wrong; it lights the way to Heaven; it is our friend in the desert, our society in solitude, our companion when friendless; it guides us to happiness; it sustains us in misery; it is an ornament among our friends and an armor against enemies. — Elijah Muhammad

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war; and this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties. — Aristophanes

Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves. — Joseph Warren

It is easy to love friends and sweethearts. This is selfish love. Higher love embraces enemies and all ugly, bad people. The highest love doesn't see goodness or badness at all. One should even love warmongers, bad food producers and priests. — Michio Kushi

I heard my mother talking badly of me to people who were talking badly of me in her salon. That's probably the thing that I'm most sensitive of in all my friendships and my relationships. I just ... I just can't take that. I'm comfortable with enemies, but I can't take it from friends. — Vincent Gallo

Another way to put an end to self-rejection is ask yourself whether what you're telling yourself is what a friend would say, or what an enemy would. Friends are supportive. Enemies put us down and undermine our confidence. So if you say something that an enemy would say, stop. Answer back, 'I'm going to be supportive of myself. As a friend, what I have to say to myself is ... ' Then say something supportive. — Mira Kirshenbaum

Indeed, valour and honour alike required that we should own as enemies in war only such as prove worthy of being friends in peace. — Inazo Nitobe

Do you ever feel like you're not even friends with sme of your friends? — Karen Salmansohn

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

One grim Weltanschauung for this new era was well expressed by the Venetian nationalist demagogue in Michael Dibdin's novel, Dead Lagoon: There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their heritage, their culture, their birthright, their very selves! They will not lightly be forgiven. — Samuel P. Huntington

A woman isn't just one thing. The past is in us, constantly changing us. Heartache and failure shift our perspectives as do joy and triumphs. At any moment, on any given day, we can be friends, competitors, or enemies. We can be generous or stingy, loving or petty, helpful or untrustworthy. — Lisa See

To be rich or well-born was a crime: men were prosecuted for holding or for refusing office: merit of any kind meant certain ruin. Nor were the Informers more hated for their crimes than for their prizes: some carried off a priesthood or the consulship as their spoil, others won offices and influence in the imperial household: the hatred and fear they inspired worked universal havoc. Slaves were bribed against their masters, freedmen against their patrons, and, if a man had no enemies, he was ruined by his friends. — Tacitus

A man with a career can have no time to waste upon his wife and friends; he has to devote it wholly to his enemies. — Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie

I sit down and say, and I run all my friends and relatives and enemies one by one in this, without entertaining any angers or gratitudes or anything, and I say, like 'Japhy Ryder, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha,' then I run on, say to 'David O. Selznick, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha' though I don't use names like David O. Selznick, just people I know because when I say the words 'equally a coming Buddha' I want to be thinking of their eyes, like you take Morley, his blue eyes behind those glasses, when you think 'equally a coming Buddha' you think of those eyes and you really do suddenly see the true secret serenity and the truth of his coming Buddhahood. Then you think of your enemy's eyes. — Jack Kerouac

When I was between 2 and 3 years old, I got to know my first non-human being. The non-human was a cocker spaniel named Baba. We weren't friends, Baba and I, nor enemies. He wasn't my dog. He belonged to the people my mother worked for, and he lived in the house with them and us. — Octavia E. Butler

It is normal to have enemies,
common to have acquaintances,
and unusual to have friends. — Matshona Dhliwayo

You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other; our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That is to help each other and not hurt each other. — Stevie Ray Vaughan

Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate. — Sigmund Freud

When people are dying, they call their old enemies and try to forgive them and try to be forgiven by them. They call their old friends and affirm their love for them, as well as detach themselves from them, and they try to get into as free a space as they can so they're really ready to go. They give away all their possessions and are as generous as possible. They give up old hatreds and grudges, and that's a wise intuitive thing, because it's much freer to live like that. — Robert Thurman

I sometimes think that it's not our enemies that we resent in life, but rather friends we have who stood quietly by and did nothing. — Craig Johnson

To the followers of the murdered Caesar:
Do you march against Decimus Brutus Albinus in Gaul, or against the son of Caesar in Rome? Ask Marcus Antonius.
Are you mobilized to destroy the enemies of your dead leader, or to protect his assassins? Ask Marcus Antonius.
Where is the will of the dead Caesar which bequeathed to every citizen of Rome three hundred pieces of silver coin? Ask Marcus Antonius.
The murderers and conspirators against Caesar are free by an act of the Senate sanctioned by Marcus Antonius.
The murderer Gaius Cassius Longinus has been given the governorship of Syria by Marcus Antonius.
The murderer Marcus Junius Brutus has been given the governorship of Crete by Marcus Antonius.
Where are the friends of the murdered Caesar among his enemies?
The son of Caesar calls to you. — John Edward Williams

The outsiders have become kings and queens of the castle. It is a whole lot easier to sit outside the tent and throw firecrackers inside; it is much, much harder to sit inside the tent and govern not only your enemies, but your close friends as well. — Hal Rothman

That was the way the world was; it was composed of a few almost perfect people (ourselves); then there were a good many people who generally did their best but were not all that perfect (our friends and colleagues); and finally, there were a few rather nasty ones (our enemies and opponents). — Alexander McCall Smith

Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss. — Edward Abbey

The ancients, by their system of colonization, made themselves friends all over the known world; the moderns have sought to make subjects, and therefore have made enemies. — Jean-Baptiste Say

Enemies and friends act like spiritual coaches. They round out the rough spots on Soul's unfoldment. The Mahanta (inner spiritual guide) teaches through others. So pay careful attention when sparks fly, because some important things in you - perhaps courage or forgiveness - needs some polish. — Harold Klemp