Friendship Caution Quotes & Sayings

Therefore, he who considers it necessary to secure himself in his new principality, to win friends, to overcome either by force or fraud, to make himself beloved and feared by the people, to be followed and revered by the soldiers, to exterminate those who have power or reason to hurt him, to change the old order of things for new, to be severe and gracious, magnanimous and liberal, to destroy a disloyal soldiery and to create new, to maintain friendship with kings and princes in such a way that they must help him with zeal and offend with caution, cannot find a more lively example than the actions of this man. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Shifts within friendships happen in imperceptible increments. There is distance, then assurance. Misconjecture, caution, gradual convergence. So much depends on the respect accorded to vulnerability. — Gail Jones

I haven't been a good guest in Hugo's life. I access his memories and discover that he and Austin first became boyfriends at this very celebration, a year ago this weekend. They'd been friends for a little while, but they'd never talked about how they felt. They were each afraid of ruining the friendship, and instead of making it better, their caution made everything awkward. So finally, as a pair of twentysomething men passed by holding hands, Austin said, "Hey, that could be us in ten years."
And Hugo said, "Or ten months."
And Austin said, "Or ten days."
And Hugo said, "Or ten minutes."
And Austin said, "Or ten seconds."
Then they each counted to ten, and held hands for the rest of the day.
The start of it.
Hugo would have remembered this.
But I didn't. — David Levithan

Though such authority and respect shouldn't be handed to all and sundry, have in caution's innermost room a confidant, a faithful mirror, whose correction you value when disillusionment is necessary. — Baltasar Gracian