Quotes & Sayings About Friends That Are Family

When you get home after being gone for a month or two, time moves on without you. You're scrambling to catch up with the people. Some friends and family understand, but then there are others who just think that you can't find enough time in your life for them. — Sharon Van Etten

We welcome you to this moment in your lives and to the place you have come to in each other's hearts. We join with you on this day, as you commit before God and humanity that from this point forward you shall live as one. I remind all of our guests that you have been invited here for a holy purpose, not just to witness, but to participate fully with your thoughts and prayers, asking God to bless this couple and their married life. You are here because this couple feels close to you and asks that you join with them in this dedication of sacred purpose. You represent symbolically all the people in the world who will be touched in any way by the life of this couple. You represent their friends and family, now and forever. They have chosen this act of marriage and this public, holy ceremony in which to proclaim it. Together we all thank God who brought them together and ask Him always to guide their way. — Marianne Williamson

When you focus on lack and scarcity and what you don't have, you fuss about it with your family, you discuss it with your friends, you tell your children that you don't have enough - "We don't have enough for that, we can't afford that" - then you'll never be able to afford it, because you begin to attract more of what you don't have. If you want abundance, if you want prosperity, then focus on abundance. Focus on prosperity. (Lisa Nichols)
Many people in Western culture are striving for success. They want the great home, they want their business to work, they want all these outer things. But what we found in our research is that having these outer things does not necessarily guarantee what we really want, which is happiness. So we go for these outer things thinking they're going to bring us happiness , but it's backward. You need to go for the inner joy, the inner peace, the inner vision first, and then all of the outer things appear. (Marci Shimoff)
— Rhonda Byrne

Refuse to let your love grow cold. Stir up love in your life - towards your spouse and towards your family, friends, neighbours, co-workers. Reach out to others who are hurting and in need. Pray for people and bless them. Grow to the point that one of your first thoughts each morning in your heart is about how you can bless someone else that day. — Joyce Meyer

And I will love words for their own sake, like 'hyacinth' and 'Piccadilly' and 'onyx.' And I'll have a good old dog, and think what I like, and be part of a different sort of family, with friends, you know? - who understand that things are only worth what you're willing to give up for them. — Rick Elice

Greed is a strange, strange sin.
All you want to do is acquire. Acquire money, acquire material, acquire time, acquire energy, acquire attention. The running mantra is "I want, I want, I want" but that quickly turns to "I need, I need, I need."
Suddenly there just isn't enough time for friends, for family, for anyone. Your goal is to acquire and to make sure what you acquire stays acquired. Your life depends on it. You don't see truth because the truth is shadowed by enormous homes, incredibly fast cars, in lavish spending. Your life no longer belongs to you, but you are blind to it all because those around you are seeking the same.
So you shuffle along at an impossible rate, and you pass the real world around you.
But what you'll come to realize, altogether too late, is that it's never enough.
It's simply never enough — Amelie Fisher

Understand, respect, and embrace other people's uniqueness. That is the foundation of any relationship - spouses, significant others, family, friends, etc. We are not the same and those differences are why relationships work. Spicing up a relationship with compromise! — David Mezzapelle

Every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world - that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimatesecrets of your marriage. — Elizabeth Gilbert

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

I always wanted to go into the military or something like that - my whole family, all my friends are either Air Force, Navy, or Marines. — RJ Mitte

I think the people in your life are the people that - when you can make other people happy and you can give things to your family and your friends, you know, that's really obviously what life is all about. But it doesn't have to be children. It doesn't have to be a husband. It can be whatever you make it. — Chelsea Handler

I've said about a million times that the best thing a young photographer can do is to stay close to home. Start with your friends and family, the people who will put up with you. Discover what it means to be close to your work, to be intimate with a subject. Measure the difference between that and working with someone you don't know as much about. Of course there are many good photographs that have nothing to do with staying close to home, and I guess what I'm really saying is that you should take pictures of something that has meaning for you — Annie Leibovitz

This is how it needs to be in life. Solomon also wrote these words in Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (NIV) "Two are better than one, because if either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls down and has no one to help them up." God didn't intend for us to do life alone. So let me ask you, who do you turn to when life hits you hard in the mouth? Your family? Some trusted friends? A teacher or coach? Are you building relationships today that will be there for you tomorrow when adversity comes your way? Do you have humility to look to others for strength and encouragement, or are you holding to the foolish pride that says, "I need to make it alone"? — Kirk Cousins

Things that we desire and don't have, whether tangible or intangible, are also potential threats, as we associate them with our self-worth. We wonder what our family, friends, and society will think of us if we don't have these things. As long as we allow our self-worth to be determined by others and continue to wish for these things, we may feel threatened and remain chronically stressed. — Robert G. Santee

Family is not just about who you appear to belong to, or what it says on your birth certificate, or who you look like, or even what they'd find if they studied your DNA. Family is found anywhere you are loved and cared for. That might mean friends or foster parents, a group or even a charity. What matters far more - so much more than chemistry or ancestry - is that precious bond, that reassurance that they won't let you down. — Marina Chapman

We actually have some gay people that work with us, and we have a lot of friends that are gay, too, and I know that this song has inspired them ... I know that coming out was tough on their parents and on them and the whole entire family. For a long time, some of them didn't get to hear 'I love you' from their dads or be accepted in that way ... It's helped a lot of our friends ... We don't judge anybody's lives. — Martha Stewart

There's an old saying: that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I don't believe that. I think the things that try to kill you make you angry and sad. Strength comes from the good things - your family, your friends, the satisfaction of hard work. Those are the things that keep you whole. Those are the things to hold on to when you're broken. — J-Ax

Friends are "annuals" that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a "perennial" that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There's a place in the garden for both of them. — Erma Bombeck

Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do. The reasons are pretty obvious: If it's someone else's map, it's not your fault if it doesn't work out. If you've memorized the sales script I gave you and you don't make the sale, who's in trouble now? Not only does the map insulate us from responsibility, but it's also a social talisman. We can tell our friends and family that we've found a good map, a safe map, a map worthy of respect. — Seth Godin

We wait too long to tell the people we love that they are the very reason that we exist. We assume that our wife, child, other family members, and friends understand our love and affection. We assume that people we care about understand our enigmatic idiosyncrasies and willingly accept the shrouded reasons behind our demonstrable oddities. We assume that other people sense that we struggle valiantly in our blackened landscape. We presume that other people comprehend our struggle to glean meaning amongst the ashes spewed from the absurd circumstances that we operate. Sometimes we need to stop and tell the tenderhearted persons whom we care about that we love them and explain that our awkward strangeness is not a rejection of them. — Kilroy J. Oldster

It is to this dimension of God, a God who cannot tolerate the reduction of a human being, fashioned in His image, to less than human status, that Job may be appealing. Job, in his extremity, is calling on God, saying, "I have no one left. I am without family. My friends have deserted me. You who are the Father of all humanity, is it not Your obligation to atone for my children's deaths as their go'el and to extract me from my current situation as my go'el?" Zophar — Harold S. Kushner

You can always tell who a true trailblazer is by the friends and family that surround them. True trailblazers are motivated not by glory, but for love. — Angela Cervantes

Each of us is a product of our family, environment, friends, education, culture, and society. These conditions lead to a certain way of seeing things and a certain way of responding to things. When we see this, we have compassion for everyone, including ourselves. We see that if we want something to change, we also have to help change his or her family, environment, friends, education, culture, and society. We are responsible, directly or indirectly, for each person's consciousness attitudes. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Life goes by really fast, and it seems that there are times when you're burying a lot of friends and family. And then there are times that feel really precious and everybody is doing okay. This is one of those times. — Amy Grant

An American Badass doesn't start fights, but knows if he must fight, he can with courage and conviction. An American Badass doesn't steal, lie, or subvert the society that he lives in. He lives by a code of unwavering morality, and ethics that are tempered with honor, honesty, integrity, leadership, and loyalty to family, friends, and America. — Dale Comstock

The problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They are invested in maintaining us as we are. — Steven Pressfield

People think they have a perfect idea of who you are from a four-second Snapchat video ... and fake blogs, stories, magazine covers. In reality, that's not the case. Nobody knows who I am except family and my close friends. — Kylie Jenner

By viewing our relationships with friends, family, and co-workers as mirrors, as teachers - we see that they are reflecting back to us exactly what we most need to learn. — Shakti Gawain

It's like they say about soldiers coming back from war. People all around you are dying. Really dying, Eric. You go in for a week's chemotherapy and you're in a ward with people who are really, actually dying, there and then and doing their best to come to terms with it. When the week's up, you go home and you see your family and your friends and everything's normal and familiar. It's too much. You think - one world can't possibly hold both these lives and you feel like you're going to go crazy when you realise the world is that big and it can fill with the most terrible things whenever it wants to. — Steven Hall

Soon the phone began to ring, a rarity, one call after another. First came the tidings of one of my mother's old friends. Her daughter has had a baby. She feared it has an oddly shaped head. Next, someone from the bridge club: She has a bladder infection. So prevalent are references to bladders in my mother's circle that I have come to think of them fondly, like a quirky, hard-to-control family who might soon be arriving for dinner. Next — George Hodgman

I absolutely did consider Ben a friend, and still do. But beyond that I'm not particularly close - I'm close to my family, in general, and I have friends, and I'm close to them, but probably not in the traditional way that people assume friendships are like. I'm not a big hangout guy. When I say we're friends, we're friends, but it's not like we summer together, or we went out to dinner every week. I don't really do that with anybody. STEPHEN — Chris Smith

Your friends and your family, if you're close to them, they won't let you get too far from who you were or from who you are. And so I love staying close to people who've always known me. That's probably the best leavening that you could possibly have. — Condoleezza Rice

Tow best friends meeting on the street to say so many things at once: I betrayed you, I love you, I want to save you, I'm sorry. All around Europe, people are dying by the hundreds of thousands. And here, in my city, the Nazis slaughtered a family because of events that started with love and jealousy and a slip of the tongue. — Monica Hesse

The best transactions in families or between friends occur on the fly. They come as stochastic shocks, or serendipities.

People often step out onto our path as we are hurrying to a meeting or intent on finishing a project, and it usually turns out that the meeting or the project was inconsequential compared to the chance to get closer to someone we cared for. — Alan Loy McGinnis

I always write things that entertain me, and one of the things that I find really enjoyable to explore is the idea of love. I like looking at my own life and my friends and family and how love changes who you are. It fascinates me. — Stephenie Meyer

Let the jerks of the world serve as the perfect example of what you don't want to be. You'll be a heck of a lot happier, and in the long run, there's a chance that other person at work will end up asking what your secret is. Why are you the happy one? In other words, don't let your thoughts think you. Besides, if you're really gonna get pissed, don't waste it on your family, friends, or coworkers, save it for something that really matters. — Willie Nelson

When it's all said and done, the only thing that matter in life are so damn simple. Family, friends. being safe and well. I think before the war a lot of people got sucked in by the crap on TV. They thought having the right shoes or the right jeans or the right car really mattered. Boy were we ever dumb. — John Marsden

I've worked with farmers in Zimbabwe who've lost their lands. I've worked with people in Venezuela, under threat of kidnappings, whose external world is unstable. But they have very strong social connections with their family and friends. And as a result, they're able to maintain a greater level of happiness and optimism than I've seen from bankers, consultants, or salespeople who are on the road all the time, who follow jobs separated from their families, and, as a result, find themselves missing out on the happiness that comes from those very connections that they severed. — Shawn Achor

I feel like so much has been left undone. There are friends I won't see before I leave, there are bills I still need to pay. I haven't written as much as I've wanted, and there are countless things I've said that I wish I could correct, but this is a process that will never end. When my grandmother died she left a library full of books she never finished reading. This is how I feel now. — Jason Christopher Hartley

Ask anyone and they'll most likely say their family is crazy, and if they don't say their family is crazy, their friends are crazy. That's because everyone is crazy after taking the mask off. People are most themselves when not really trying to fit in, when either alone or around those already closest to them, and that is crazy. — Criss Jami

My friends never seem to yell at their kids. Even when their kids are behaving hideously, they pull them aside and say, now sweetie, you know you shouldn't, blah, blah, blah. Please don't yadda, yadda, okay sweetie? Maybe it's some bullshit show they put on for non-family members, but I'd have to be on happy pills to act like that — Brenda Wilhelmson

Janey was planning a short engagement, she'd simpered, and so, of course, the inevitable collection for the wedding present would soon follow. Of all the compulsory financial contributions, that is the one that irks me most. Two people wander around John Lewis picking out lovely items for themselves, and then they make other people pay for them. It's bare-faced effrontery. They choose things like plates, bowls and cutlery-I mean, what are they doing at the moment: shoveling food from packets into their mouths with their bare hands? I simply fail to see how the act of legally formalizing a human relationship necessitates friends, family and coworkers upgrading the contents of their kitchen for them. — Gail Honeyman

You're going to come across some truly gifted people in your lifetime that seem to know all the answers. However, they lost their personal relationship with God, along the way. Love them anyways, and do everything you can to help them restore that relationship. They are fighting a war that you don't know anything about. — Shannon L. Alder

Epilepsy is a disease in the shadows. Patients are often reluctant to admit their condition - even to close family, friends or co-workers - because there's still a great deal of stigma and mystery surrounding the disease that plagued such historical figures as Julius Caesar, Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll. — Lynda Resnick

The worst part about the job is the travel, which takes you away from family and friends and important dates and hockey games and tournaments that your kids are in and things like that. — Joe Bowen

Most people never feel secure because they are always worried that they will lose their job, lose the money they already have, lose their spouse, lose their health, and so on. The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family. — Tony Robbins

The important things to me are your faith, your family and your friends. If you have that, you have everything. — John Wooden

But the more we learn about happiness and fulfillment, the more apparent it becomes that family, community, meaningful work and networks of trustworthy collaborators and friends are the sources of happiness and fulfillment, not the accumulation of institutional promises and more stuff, which turns out to have little impact on happiness or fulfillment. — Anonymous

The things we share with each other are deeply felt from within our hearts that neither of us will ever forget. For the gifts that are priceless are the ones that are heartfelt; their roots are within our soul. They are the greatest gifts, of all. — Ellen J. Barrier

I have come to understand that the Lord's richest blessings are spiritual, and they often have to do with family, friends, and the gospel. He often seems to give the blessing of a special sensitivity to the influence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, especially in marriage and family matters like raising children. Such spiritual sensitivity can help us enjoy the blessings of harmony and peace in the home. — Carl B. Pratt

The essence of motherhood is not restricted to women who have given birth; it is a principle inherent in both women and men. It is an attitude of the mind. It is love - and that love is the very breath of life. No one would say, 'I will breathe only when I am with my family and friends; I won't breathe in front of my enemies.' Similarly, for those in whom motherhood has awakened, love and compassion for everyone are as much part of their being as breathing. — Mata Amritanandamayi

I am in love with life. I think it's pretty awesome when you are engaged in it. I love my family and my friends, and that to me is the biggest ... that's the love of my life are my friends and family and the experience that I get to share with them. It puts a smile on my face and in my heart. — Cameron Diaz

Funny how things work themselves out. Things happen that split up family and friends, then things happen that bring them back together. Everyone is in your life for a reason. My hope is for all the reasons to be good. Those who love you never lose touch, are always consistent, and unquestionable. — April Mae Monterrosa

Family and friends aren't always ready to make the journey when you are, and you just have to keep plowing along whether they have confidence in you or not. That can be very lonely. — Anne Bancroft

Hatred the only moving force, a petulant unhappy striving - childhood the only happiness, and that unknowing; then the continual battle that cannot ever possibly be won; a losing fight against ill-health - poverty for nearly all. Life is a long disease with only one termination and its last years are appalling: weak, racked by the stone, rheumatismal pains, senses going, friends, family, occupation gone, a man must pray for imbecility or a heart of stone. All under sentence of death, often ignominious,frequently agonizing: and then the unspeakable levity with which the faint chance of happiness is thrown away for some jealousy, tiff, sullenness, private vanity, mistaken sense of honour, that deadly, weak and silly notion. — Patrick O'Brian

I am so grateful that I have my family and friends on this journey. They are my blessings! I need them; and just the same, I know they need me too. That is why I have never thought of giving up. — Kcat Yarza

A building get torched. All that is left is ashes. I used to think that it is true about everything - family, friends, feelings - but now I know that sometimes if love proves real, and two people are meant to be together, nothing can keep them apart. — Sarah

I spend a lot of time in L.A., and I think it would probably be easier if I lived there work wise, but there's no city like London, there is so much going on. I can jump on the Tube and be anywhere in 20 minutes, and all my friends and family are here and I'm not prepared to give that up. — Jeremy Irvine

Pride is not your friend.
He would have you think he is, that he affords you strength and courage, but in truth he robs you of your health and by slow, diluted degrees steals your might. He is a crafty and cunning liar who would have you think that stubborn, unapologetic, superior, boastful, and popular are admirable traits. Pride would convince you that being right is more crucial than being kind. He would have you sever relationships, even turn your back on family and friends rather than utter a humble apology. To do so is beneath you, pride would say. He would have you fight like a raptor and gnash your teeth while jutting out an inflexible jaw to defend and protect him, regardless of who is hurt in the process. He would use and demean you in order to puff up and fortify himself. He would destroy your life and every meaningful association before casting you aside without a hint of remorse.
Again, Pride is not your friend. — Richelle E. Goodrich

We need to bear in mind that our opinion of other people, our ties with friends or family, have only the semblance of fixity and are, in fact, as eternally fluid as the sea. — Marcel Proust

If you've already worked in some capacity or done any internships, your contacts are everybody you've met in your work plus all your personal contacts. If you haven't been employed yet, you still have plenty of contacts. "Take out your college yearbook," says Wein. "Who sat next to you in class? Who do you know that's gone into the field you're interested in? You don't have to know them well to put them on the list." You'd also include any contacts your parents have, friends of your parents, people you met on family vacations, even kids you knew in summer camp. — Kate White

Everything with me is normal except when I pitch (in Fenway Park). When I pitch here it's a little different. There is a little more anxiety to go along with the nostalgia because this is the park I grew up with as a kid. This is the park I dreamed of playing Major League Baseball in and no other ballpark has that feeling for me. There are a lot more family and friends here than in my normal starts and I want to pitch well here. — Tom Glavine

Somehow, I cannot see anyone describing me as gracious, loving, and happy." He frowned at his sandwich as if in puzzlement. "You are loving," Anna replied staunchly, though she hadn't exactly planned for those words to leave her mouth. "Now that is beyond surprising." The earl eyed her in the deepening shadows. "How do you conclude such a thing, Mrs. Seaton?" "You have endless patience with your family, my lord," she began. "You escort your sisters everywhere; you dance attendance on them and their hordes of friends at every proper function; you harry and hound the duke so his wild starts are not the ruination of his duchy. You force yourself to tend to mountains of business which you do not enjoy, so your family may be safe and secure all their days." "That is business," the earl said, looking nonplussed that his first sandwich had disappeared, until Anna handed him a second. — Grace Burrowes

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is Isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others. — Chetan Bhagat

I take 10 minutes. I focus on what I'm most grateful for. Then I do a little prayer for three minutes, a blessing within myself through God, and then out to my family and friends and all those I serve. Then my last three minutes are the three things I want to achieve most. At the end of 10 minutes, you are wired. Everything in your life gets filtered through that. — Tony Robbins

Work is so much fun that it doesn't really seem like downtime when I'm not. But cooking, spending time with my family, friends and dog are what I'm usually doing when I'm not working on something. — Bailee Madison

The institution of the family has very few friends in Washington. There are lobbyists in Washington for every possible entity, from the possum-growers of America to every kind of crazy thing. There's somebody in Washington paid to advance the cause of that particular business, but there's not a lot of support for the family. — James Dobson

Life in New Orleans is all about making the present--this moment, right now--as pleasant as possible. So New Orleanians, by and large, aren't tortured by the frenzy to achieve, acquire, and manage the unmanageable future. Their days are built around the things that other Americans have pushed out of their lives by incessant work: art, music, elaborate cooking, and--most of all--plenty of relaxed time with family and friends. Their jobs are really just the things they do to earn a little money; they're not the organiing principle of life. While this isn't a worldview particularly conducive to getting things done, getting things done isn't the most important thing in New Orleans. Living life is. Once you've tasted that, and especially if it's how you grew up, life everywhere else feels thin indeed. — Dan Baum

I am 54 years old and happily single. In addition to my nuclear family, I have a close circle of friends. Most of my friends are men. But my reputation is such that their female partners would never consider me a threat. — Geraldine Lee Wei Ling

All my favorite stars, my family and my friends are here. I'm having the happiest birthday that an 18-year-old girl could ever have. — Brandy Norwood

Every gay reader understands the secret self that is full and wonderful and has longing and tenderness and a desire for connection to other people. I think that arguments against gay marriage are just ridiculous! Who cares? People want to get married for the same reason I wanted to get married. They want to do it in front of their friends and family — Lynda Carter

Country music is different because we [musicians] are all actually happy for each other. We're all friends. It's a little family. So if you don't win [an award], usually one of your friends does. So it's kind of a cool thing. I think it's the only genre of music to have that camaraderie. — Miranda Lambert

In life we have our trophy people. These are the ones we work hard for, we are proud of. We want to show them off to our family, our friends, we want them on our arm at company functions. We take pictures with them to let everyone know we feel like a winner and we are happy.

Then you have your participation ribbons, the ribbons you get just for simply showing up. You didn't have to earn it, it was just given to you. These things usually end up in a drawer somewhere, maybe you pick them up again when you are bored and say "that was a fun night, I wonder if they are still handing out these things?" but you don't tell people about it, nothing to be proud of. — Brittany Williams

I learned a long time ago that most of my family and friends had plastic hearts. Plastic hearts are made so they cannot be broken. Cracked maybe, but never broken. — Lisa De Jong

The friends we have, these are choices that - unlike family, which we have no choice in, and I love my family, thank God - we've given ourselves, to some degree. — Dan Gilroy

Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude. — Eric Weiner

There is a part of me that no one ever sees.
I hide behind a mask of heavy make-up and ever-changing hair and clothing. I try to reinvent myself. It doesn't work. There are times when I am bone-crushingly sad. I just want to curl into a ball and hide from the rest of the world. But, I plaster on a smile and play the game for my family and friends. They call me a free spirit.
I wish I were free. I feel like I am imprisoned by my own mind. — Julia Crane

they feel ignored, unappreciated, and unloved. That's because their context-blind Aspie family members are so poor at empathic reciprocity. As we have learned, we come to know ourselves in relation to others. This doesn't just apply when children are developing self-esteem. Throughout our lifespan, we continue to weave and re-weave the context of our lives, based on the interactions we have with our friends, coworkers, neighbors and loved ones. This is why it is so important for an NT parent/partner to get feedback from their spouse. A smile, a hug, a kind word, a note of encouragement: These are messages that reinforce the NT's self-esteem and contribute to a healthy reciprocity in the relationship. Without these daily reminders from their loved ones, NTs can develop some odd defense mechanisms. One is to become psychologically invisible to others and even to themselves. — Kathy J. Marshack

My private history in terms of people in my life who are dead is very easy to discuss. I don't feel those people can be threatened or intruded upon now. But I am enormously protective of the people who are currently in my life, my existing friends and family. That is where the curtain is drawn. — Chuck Palahniuk

Unless you are rich, and can con vales center in a sanatorium estate (where visitors came down a tiered, oceanside lawn to found you ato your easel) you have to keep going when you're depressed. That means phone calls, appointments errands, holidays, family, friends, and colleagues. — Virginia Heffernan

I like a girl that takes pride in her appearance - looks are important to me, but it's also important she gets on with my friends and family. If my parents don't like a girl, then she's instantly a no-go. — Luke Pasqualino

My encounters with racism are sort of second-hand situations where I might be standing around with a group of white friends and someone makes a comment that they wouldn't make at my family reunion. — Wentworth Miller

It seems all humans ever do is muddle through and hope to have a rest period before the next obstacle comes along. It's the love that keeps us going, whether it's a partner, or your family, or your friends who are also your family. If we didn't have that love, anything else keeping you running will eventually burn out. — Sean Kennedy

As I come to understand the many talents and characteristics of women, I realize how needed their strengths are in this dispensation. We must remember that we are daughters of God here to provide nurturing care for one another, family and friends--loving care to soften the changes of life felt by all.

What a great opportunity we have to fill our God-given role. He has given us the privilege to shape the lives of those entrusted to our care. Even those of us who have not been blessed to have children of our own can still be influential as trainers and nurturers. It does not matter where we live, whether we are rich or poor, whether our family is large or small. Each of us can share that Christ-like love in our "motherly ministry. — Barbara W. Winder

There's the unusual stuff that psychopaths do - impulsive antisocial behavior, beginning in childhood - and there are the moral emotions that psychopaths lack. They feel no compassion, guilt, shame, or even embarrassment, which makes it easy for them to lie, and to hurt family, friends, and animals. — Jonathan Haidt

People will say we're being a little bit anthropomorphic?' I remembered Brendan's use of the word - 'human-like'.

'Anyone who doesn't believe that animals are aware that they have family and friends, and care about them, must also be a paid-up member of the Flat Earth Society, or still think the sun revolves around the earth,' replied Dylan disdainfully. 'I mean, how switched off can you be? How can anyone still believe animals don't have emotions? They're alive and emotions are a response to life. I've seen warthogs that are more intelligent and more responsible than some people I know. Not to say better parents. — Lawrence Anthony

I live life and try and smile as much as possible. Family and friends are everything." - "That was my first real lesson. At the end of the day, you could be a hell of a marketer, but you're only as good as what you're marketing. — Scooter Braun

What the world needs now is liberated men who have the qualities Silverstein cites, men who are 'empathetic and strong, autonomous and connected, responsible to self, to family and friends, to society, and capable of understanding how those responsibilities are, ultimately, inseparable.' Men need feminist thinking. It it the theory that supports their spiritual evolution and their shift away from the patriarchal model. Patriarchy is destroying the well-being of men, taking their lives daily. — Bell Hooks

You can open to God through sex. By learning to open your heart and body while embracing and trusting all energies from rough ravishment to sublime gentleness, you can open to be lived by the mystery that lives the entire universe. You can open to be lived by love with no limits, so you are alive as love, offering the deepest gifts of your heart spontaneously and without hesitation, in every moment, at work, with your family and friends, as well as in bed with your lover. — David Deida

We all love stories, even if they're not true. As we grow up, one of the ways we learn about the world is through the stories we hear. Some are about particular events and personalities within our personal circles of family and friends. Some are part of the larger cultures we belong to - the myths, fables, and fairy tales about our own ways of life that have captivated people for generations. In stories that are told often, the line between fact and myth can become so blurred that we easily mistake one for the other. This is true of a story that many people believe about education, even though it's not real and never really was. It goes like this: Young children go to elementary school mainly to learn the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics. These skills are essential so they can do well academically in high school. If they go on to higher education and graduate with a good degree, they'll find a well-paid job and the country will prosper too. — Ken Robinson

If you are not bored by life, and your primary motto is enthusiasm and if you like your friends, family around you, it all translates into your designs. That's what keeps the creativity alive. — Christian Louboutin

[on her Amish friends]I do know this family has borne losses and grief, just like the rest of us. But if they are generally content, must such a life inevitably be dismissed as mythical, or else merely quaint? ... It sounds like a community type that went extinct a generation ago. But it didn't, not completely. If a self-sufficient farming community has survived here, it remains a possibility elsewhere. — Barbara Kingsolver

We talk about social service, service to the people, service to humanity, service to others who are far away, helping to bring peace to the world - but often we forget that it is the very people around us that we must live for first of all. If you cannot serve your wife or husband or child or parent - how are you going to serve society? If you cannot make your own child happy, how do you expect to be able to make anyone else happy? If all our friends in the peace movement or of service communities of any kind do not love and help each other, whom can we love and help? — Thich Nhat Hanh

I listened so hard because it felt like, while she was telling me stories, she was massaging my soul, letting me know that I was not alone, that I will never have to be alone, that there are friends and family and churches and coffee shops. I was not going to be cast into space. — Donald Miller

My wish and hope, every year, is that people's life chances - their chances of having a happy, prosperous, healthy life for themselves and their family and friends - should not depend on accident of birth. It shouldn't depend on where you're born. It should depend on who you are and what you do. But it shouldn't depend on the chance and the luck of being born in the U.S. or in a poor village in Sub-Saharan Africa or India or wherever it may be. — Michael Elliott

Of course my family and friends are incredibly valuable to me. They keep me sane, they teach me things and I love spending time with them. I think that ranking what you value is a sort of western and linear way of looking at things. — Julia Stiles

My family is probably too involved in my life because they are my best friends, but I love that. — Blake Lively

My family and friends were definitely the key to my recovery. One thing that I do suggest is that anyone dealing with a life-threatening illness like cancer choose a point person for people to call to find out how you are doing - a sister, brother, mother, father, daughter, son, or close friend. — Olivia Newton-John

Although my road to writing seems like it may have come easily, there were a few bumps in that road. I didn't get a lot of encouragement from friends, although my family were great supporters. I also had many ... what you would call "mind-boggling" moments, when I would doubt myself and what I was writing. It has been said that we, ourselves, are our own worst critics.
All the hard work had payed off though, and I created a children's book that I am proud of, and an unforgettable little girl that will touch the hearts of many."-Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack

As we weep for what we have lost, and as we grieve for family and friends and we confront the challenge that is before us, I want us to remember who we are. We are Queenslanders. We're the people that they breed tough, north of the border. We're the ones that they knock down, and we get up again. — Anna Bligh