Kindness Of Friends Quotes & Sayings

One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don't seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser's friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone's image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser. — Lundy Bancroft

I found, increasingly, that I did not particularly care and I tried to fake a little kindness, a little sweetness, tried to mirror Luna back at herself, but that exhausted me after a week and I concluded that I was not meant for this sort of thing, friends, friendliness, no, I wasn't meant for it. — Catherine Lacey

When I became a bandit, I spent a lot of time being close to the lowliest of the low: criminals, the enslaved, deserters, men who had nothing to lose. Contrary to what I had expected, I found that they had a hardscrabble beauty and grace. They were not mean in their nature, but made mean by the meanness of their rulers. The poor were willing to endure much, but the emperor had taken everything from them.

These men have simple dreams: a plot of land, a few possessions, a warm house, conversations with friends, and a happy wife and healthy children. They remember the smallest acts of kindness and think me a good man because of a few exaggerated stories. They've raised me on their shoulders and called me duke, and I have a duty to help them get a little closer to their dreams. — Ken Liu

Song of praise: Be joyful and count your blessings.There are so many things to be thankful for; the gift of being alive, blessings of a new day to hope and dream, the gift of families, the gift of children, the gift of friends, gift of people who make you laugh and smiles, the gift of strangers who show you kindness,the gift of nature, gift of educators, gift of preachers and many more. — Lailah Gifty Akita

People have little importance to me because they are unconscious to their real self. And that self that I see in them, they can't see in themselves. They're only manifesting a very small portion of what they could be. Honesty and kindness could unlock many things in their spirit but most people are too afraid and trapped within themselves, their mind, their fake beliefs. And so, I observe everything in them that they may spend an entire lifetime never seeing. I know their wants, their qualities, their dreams, their needs, their spiritual lessons, their karma, their past lives. They only know what their friends, trapped by the same ignorance, believe that they are. — Robin Sacredfire

Kindness can turn the bad man's heart, and fools convert to wise, Make poison into nectar-juice, and friends of enemies. — Bhartrhari

A best friend is the one person that doesn't leave you worse off by their actions or yours. — Shannon L. Alder

When I pontificate, it sounds so, you know, Oh, well, she's preaching. I'm not preaching, but I think maybe I learned it from my animal friends. Kindness and consideration of somebody besides yourself. I think that keeps you feeling young. I really do. — Betty White

This LIFE is NOT about a BIG house, VALUABLE things, a FULL bank account or a POWERFUL status.
It's about having a BIG open mind and heart that respects and accepts differences.
It's about VALUING your family, friends & being grateful for the little things.
It's about FILLING your heart and soul full of love and laughter, making the best of each day while you can.
It's about having the POWER to have a positive attitude and show kindness even when you're dealing with your own adversity.
THAT'S what this LIFE is all about! — Tanya Masse

Inside the narrow skull of the miner pinned beneath the fallen timber, there lives a world. Parents, friends, a home, the hot soup of evening, songs sung on feast days, loving kindness and anger, perhaps even a social consciousness and a great universal love, inhabit that skull. By what are we to measure the value of a man? His ancestor once drew a reindeer on the wall of a cave; and two hundred thousand years later that gesture still radiates. It stirs us, prolongs itself in us. Man's gestures are an eternal spring. Though we [may] die for it, we shall bring up that miner from his shaft. Solitary he may be, universal he surely is. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

TIMON
Commend me to them,
And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs,
Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses,
Their pangs of love, with other incident throes
That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain
In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them:
I'll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades' wrath.
First Senator
I like this well; he will return again.
TIMON
I have a tree, which grows here in my close,
That mine own use invites me to cut down,
And shortly must I fell it: tell my friends,
Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree
From high to low throughout, that whoso please
To stop affliction, let him take his haste,
Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe,
And hang himself. I pray you, do my greeting. — William Shakespeare

I was really young when I started on 'One Tree Hill,' and the encouragement from my friends and family has been crucial in my development as an actress. I'm also continuously surprised and humbled by the kindness and generosity of the fans. — Kelsey Chow

Their eyes are full of kindness as each feels the full effect of novelty after a short separation. They are drawing a relaxation from each other's presence, a new serenity. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I cannot hate gay men, I cannot hate homosexuality. At the lowest points in my life, when all else abandoned me, my gay men friends were my sisters, aunts, mothers who lifted me up on their shoulders and reminded me that there is light at the end of the tunnel. If I were to hate gay men, or to condemn them just because they're gay, I would be a hypocrite. I simply cannot turn my back on arms that held me in my darkest hours. — C. JoyBell C.

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

In the running of cities, virtually nothing is done by anyone that is conducive to political health, nor is there a single ally with whom one might go to the aid of justice and still remain alive; it would be a case of a solitary human among wild animals, neither wanting to join in their depredations nor able to stand alone against their collective savagery, dead before he'd done any good to his city or friends and useless both to himself and everybody else. Once a person has made all these calculations, he keeps his peace and minds his own business, like someone withdrawing from the prevailing wind into the shelter of a wall in a storm of dust or rain, and as he sees everyone else filling themselves full of lawlessness he is content if he himself can somehow live out life here untainted by injustice and impious actions, and leave it with fine hopes and in a spirit of kindness and good will. — Plato

When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Our acts of kindness we reserve for our friends, our bounties for our dependants, our riches for our children and relations, our praises for those who appear worthy of them, our time we give all to the world; we expose it, I may say, a prey to all mankind. — Jean Baptiste Massillon

I spoke a word in anger
To one who was my friend,
Like a knife it cut him deeply,
A wound that was hard to mend.
That word, so thoughtlessly uttered,
I would we could both forget,
But its echo lives and memory gives
The recollection yet.
How many hearts are broken,
How many friends are lost
By some unkind word spoken
Before we count the cost!
But a word or deed of kindness
Will repay a hundredfold.
For it echoes again in the hearts of men
And carries a joy untold. — C.A. Lufburrow

Trustan's eldest son, Crispin, had been the one who'd chased him across the schoolyard that fateful day. While Maris hadn't really understood the insults they'd yelled, he knew the misery of being punched and slapped while being unable to strike back. Tired of it all, he'd been praying for death when out of nowhere a boy half his size had slammed into Crispin and knocked him away from Maris. Like some mythical hero, Darling had beat the bastard down and told him that he better never touch Maris again. Then he'd turned around, bleeding and bruised, and extended his hand to Maris. "Hi, I'm Darling Cruel. We should be friends." In that heartbeat, Maris had fallen head over heels in love with him. And he'd been that way ever since. He'd never met anyone who came close to Darling's loyalty, kindness, or generous spirit. Until Ture. For — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Some would never think of talking to friends the way they do to their own children. We should speak with the same words of kindness to our children, as we would when speaking to our best friends. — Randall Wright

Dear Charles, she wrote.
After writing to express my appreciation for all the generosity of our friends, I would be remiss indeed if I did not include a missive to you. Out of all the new blessings in my new life, the one I thank God for the most is you. I thank you for writing to me through Genteel Correspondence, and for choosing me out of all the other women eager for adventure in the wild west.
I thank you for your kindness, and your gentleness toward me. Only very strong men can be gentle. I thank you for sharing your home and your life with me. I thank you for inventing delicious breakfasts. And chicory flavored coffee. And prayers that ease my mind and inspire my spirit and lift my heart. For your smile and the way you hold your hat in your hands. For the things you say and how you say them.
Did you know that I pray for you each day? I do. I pray for your safety and happiness.
Yours in Christ,
Rose — Jan Holly

Just as compassion is the wish that all sentient beings be free of suffering, loving-kindness is the wish that all may enjoy happiness. As with compassion, when cultivating loving-kindness it is important to start by taking a specific individual as a focus of our meditation, and we then extend the scope of our concern further and further, to eventually encompass and embrace all sentient beings. Again, we begin by taking a neutral person, a person who inspires no strong feelings in us, as our object of meditation. We then extend this meditation to individual friends and family members and, ultimately, our particular enemies.
We must use a real individual as the focus of our meditation, and then enhance our compassion and loving-kindness toward that person so that we can really experience compassion and loving-kindness toward others. We work on one person at a time. — Dalai Lama XIV

Stories don't teach us to be good; it isn't as simple as that. They show us what it feels like to be good, or to be bad. They show us people like ourselves doing right things and wrong things, acting bravely or acting meanly, being cruel or being kind, and they leave it up to our own powers of empathy and imagination to make the connection with our own lives. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. It isn't like putting a coin in a machine and getting a chocolate bar; we're not mechanical, we don't respond every time in the same way ...
The moral teaching comes gently, and quietly, and little by little, and weighs nothing at all. We hardly know it's happening. But in this silent and discreet way, with every book we read and love, with every story that makes its way into our heart, we gradually acquire models of behaviour and friends we admire and patterns of decency and kindness to follow.
Philip Pullman from his Award Lecture, Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Recipient 2005 — Philip Pullman

There is a difference between saying goodbye and letting go. Goodbye is not permanent. You can meet years later as old friends and share what happened in your life. You can smile and laugh about all the nonsense that you both went through. However, letting go is being okay with never seeing this person ever again ... being okay with never knowing how their life turned out ... being okay with fifty or more years of silence ... being okay with running into that person at a grocery store and having them not acknowledge your presence. This is the part of life that doesn't sit well with me and never will. It tears my heart in pieces, robs me of gratitude, drains me of anything positive and eats at the faith that holds on. It goes against kindness. — Shannon L. Alder

If we take care of our neighbors,
our neighbors will take care of us.
If we take care of our friends,
our friends will take care of us.
If we take care of our family,
our family will take care of us.
If we take care of others,
our God will take care of us. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Know that the same spark of life that is within you, is within all of our animal friends, the desire to live is the same within all of us ... — Rai Aren

Life can take us on many journeys. But when life turns dark, hope begins to fade away. You feel lost. Abandoned. Alone. Then when you least expect it, a door opens and light streams through. Friends show you a different path with words and acts of kindness. You no longer feel forgotten. You begin to see the light and feel hopeful again. — C.F. Corbett

Love is sometimes shown in the things you don't say, don't keep track of and don't notice. The greatest kindness is often shown in letting things go. None of us is perfect, but we can all be perfect friends and perfect partners by allowing those that we love to be imperfect. Give those around you the 'break' that you hope the world will give you on your own 'bad day' and you'll never, ever regret it. — Neale Donald Walsch

Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making poster boards filled with photos of the dear departed. But now I know why we do those things. It's busywork, all of it. I had so much to take care of, so many arrangements to make, so many people to inform, I didn't have a moment to be engulfed by the ocean of grief that was lapping at my heels. Instead, I waded through the shallows, performing task after task, grateful to have duties to propel me forward. — Wendy Webb

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

On a grim and dismal day that shattered my last ounce of confidence, I broke down and whimpered, "I'm awful and hideous and incompetent and boring and utterly useless." And then you grinned at me and said, "That's okay. — Richelle E. Goodrich

It is for people we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children we are exacting and would rather see. them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records that though He has often rebuded us, condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexcusable sense. — C.S. Lewis

After my father died when I was seven and my mother entered into an abusive relationship, I shuffled between houses - staying with friends, families from church, and relying on the kindness of teachers and people throughout my community to help me grow up essentially without parents. — Ronnie Musgrove

Real friends require honesty, openness, and even vulnerability. They also require attention and simple acts of kindness. — Mary Pipher

A man should take to himself no discomfort from an opinion expressed or implied by his adversary, but it is difficult, and oftentimes humiliating to attempt to justify the kindness of one's friends. — Eugene V. Debs

So it ever must be in the conflicting scenes of life, in the long, weary march, each one walks alone. We may have many friends, love, kindness, sympathy and charity, to smooth our pathway in everyday life, but in the tragedies and triumphs of human experience, each mortal stands alone. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Kindness is the essence of greatness and the fundamental characteristic of the noblest men and women I have known. Kindness is a passport that opens doors and fashions friends. It softens hearts and molds relationships that can last lifetimes. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

Not everyone will support every mission or work, you can still enjoy their friendship. No one likes to feel that the only reason you are friends is what you can get out of them. — John Patrick Hickey

Don't act so callous to blank out good friends who failed on their way to success, just because something unusual hindered them, but you meandered out by a stroke of luck. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Perhaps there really is a good that exists; for a century of darkness to be eschewed by a single flame; for a decade of evil done to the heart to be undone by simple and unplanned acts of kindness! There must be a goodness, after all! But we don't find it when we're looking for it; not in church, not in a cathedral, not even in our own homes! We find it when we've fallen down so hard, are downtrodden so low; and there is one true friend who picks us up; or one random person who takes us in! And we realize goodness was never in the places we thought it was! It was all along in the most humble of places: bound up in the heart of a true friend. — C. JoyBell C.

Its funny when I'm cyber bullied(anonymously) because when people do it to me,I don't think of how much I want to hurt them or punch them in the face like my friends do ... but I go on this site and write a quote to them back, hoping to kill them with kindness. — Ashley Jackson

New Evangelization is the work of the whole Church - lay, ordained, and consecrated. It's about friends, family, and co-workers reaching out to one another and proclaiming the truth of Christ using all available means - conversation, personal witness, media, and the vast array of intellectual and spiritual riches the Church has built up in her two-thousand-year history. It's about simple acts of kindness, simple challenges issued in love, and simple questions asked with sincerity. More fundamentally, the New Evangelization is more for the baptized than the unbaptized. It's for those who've been inadequately catechized but all too adequately secularized, and it's for those who've been de-Christianized in the very process of being sacramentalized. — Scott Hahn

While it's possible I just got sick and she arranged for me to be cleaned up and cared for - much as I do, or did, for my undergraduate friends - I have no idea why she might benefact me thus. I don't have a lot of faith in the milk of human kindness; it's generally been left out too long. Then again, I also didn't see why she might spend a night in drunken revels with me, either. I'm no prize, unless you count door prizes. Well, — Garon Whited

As children in a small village in Sierra Leone, my friends and I dreamed of travelling the world like the missionaries who opened our village school. As a British subject, I dreamed of walking the streets of London. I imagined my self in the United States of America visiting the places where the cowboy movies were made. — Francis Mandewah

Here's one way that we try to actively and immediately bring in kindness in our meetings and camps: we ask our girls to stop before they speak and reevaluate what they're going to say based on this acronym:


True
Honest
Important
Necessary
Kind


Is what they're out to say True? Is it Honest? Is it Important? Necessary Kind?
We ask the to T.H.I.N.K. before they speak text, or type, and try to incorporate it into their daily lives -- especially within their interactions with their friends and classmates -- as much as possible. It's a choice girls can make: Do they want to encourage others with their words, or bring others down?

You might think this won't resonate with your middle school girl, but I promise that it works. It's not about self-editing or asking her not to speak her truth, of course; it's about thinking of others too. — Haley Kilpatrick

The formal practice of loving-kindness or maitri has seven stages. We begin by engendering loving-kindness for ourselves and then expand it at out own pace to include loved ones, friends, "neutral" persons, those who irritate us, all of the above as a group, and finally, all beings throughout time and space. We gradually widen the circle of loving-kindness. — Pema Chodron

He began it, Cecily said, jerking her chin at Will, though she knew it was pointless. Jem, Will's parabatai, treated her with the distant sweet kindness reserved for the little sisters of one's friends, but he would always side with Will. Kindly, but firmly, he put Will above everything else in the world.
Well, nearly everything. — Cassandra Clare

In memory of Emily we would like everyone to go out and do random acts of kindness, random acts of love to your friends or your neighbors or your fellow students because there is no way to make sense of this. It's what Emily would have wanted. — Luis Gonzalez

It's easy to be kind to friends who return your smiles and happily lend a helping hand. But the true test of good character is finding the will and desire to be kind and charitable to those who give us absolutely no motivation to do so. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I discover that my friends think only of my apparel, and those upon whom I have conferred acts of kindness prefer to remind me of my errors. — John James Audubon

You always fed strays and bent down to talk to the dogs you met on the street, looking straight into their eyes as if they were old friends. (Maybe they are, you said. From another life.) You liked to go to the pound and look at them. You tried to send them messages of comfort. I couldn't go because I started crying the one time I tried. All those eyes and the barks like sobs. — Francesca Lia Block

Don't we get it? To put our arm around someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they should be ... doing that has nothing to do with enabling them or accepting what they do as okay by us. It has nothing to do with encouraging them in their practice of what you or I might feel or believe is wrong vs right.
It has everything to do with being a good human being. A good person. A good friend. — Dan Pearce

Depression seems to be related to fear, anger and frustration. When you're in a bad mood, even if you meet with your friends, you don't take pleasure in their company. But when you're in a good mood, even if things go wrong, you can cope with them without difficulty. This is why putting yourself in a good mood, making a point of developing a sense of loving kindness gives you greater inner strength. — Dalai Lama

Life works on the same principle as a boomerang. It's simple, really - what you send out you get back. A smiling face receives many smiles. Friendliness finds itself surrounded by friends. Giving hugs creates hugs. Offered help is reciprocated. In contrast, if you hurt people you will find much hurt in your life. Unkindness begets unkindness. Misery begets misery. A dour face will receive many sour looks in response. That said, it is easy to understand that if you want a happy life you must contribute to the happiness of those around you. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I know you're just trying to be kind. But the world isn't always kind. So sometimes you have to know what you're up against, and match it.' He held up a hand to stop the words about to be spoken; I could see the vague shape of it hovering in the blackness. 'I know it's not right to fight fire with fire. But sometimes, it's all we've got." His voice grew soft, and, in the darkness, his hand found mine, squeezed. 'Don't put your fire out, Kaitlyn. Use it, or pass the torch. — Mackenzie Herbert

It is not the job for those who are angry about the events of the day to strike out and post things that they hope will incite anger in others as well. Do not sell your social media friends short as far as their ability to find the news for themselves. — John Patrick Hickey

We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be. — Henry David Thoreau

We never think lightly of those who walk with us on our uphill days. — Richelle E. Goodrich

And yet we are often tempted to encourage others with insincere praise. In this we treat them like children - while failing to help them prepare for encounters with those who will judge them like adults. I'm not saying that we need to go out of our way to criticize others. But when asked for an honest opinion, we do our friends no favors by pretending not to notice flaws in their work, especially when those who are not their friends are bound to notice the same flaws. Sparing others disappointment and embarrassment is a great kindness. And if we have a history of being honest, our praise and encouragement will actually mean something. I — Sam Harris

Cultivating loving kindness for ourselves is the foundation of real love for our friends and family, for new people we encounter in our daily lives, for all beings and for life itself. — Sharon Salzberg

Neither the army nor the treasury, but friends, are the true supports of the throne; for friends cannot be collected by force of arms, nor purchased with money; they are the offspring of kindness and sincerity. — Sallust

It's very important when making a friend to check and see if they have a private plane. People think a good personality trait in a friend is kindness or a sense of humor. No, in a friend a good personality trait is a Gulfstream. — Fran Lebowitz

I believe in that goodly mansion, his heart, he kept one little place under the skylights where Lucy might have entertainment, if she chose to call. It was not so handsome as the chambers where he lodged his male friends; it was not like the hall where he accommodated his philanthropy, or the library where he treasured his science, still less did it resemble the pavilion where his marriage feast was splendidly spread; yet, gradually, by long and equal kindness, he proved to me that he kept one little closet, over the door of which was written " Lucy's Room." I kept a place for him, too - a place of which I never took the measure, either by rule or compass: I think it was like the tent of Peri-Banou. All my life long I carried it folded in the hollow of my hand - yet, released from that hold and constriction, I know not but its innate capacity for expanse might have magnified it into a tabernacle for a host. — Charlotte Bronte

echo James's exhortation to those of us in the church today: My brothers and sisters who have received the Holy Spirit, we often lack love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc., even while many of our unbelieving friends exhibit these traits - brothers and sisters, these things ought not to be so! — Francis Chan

To be honest, to be kind - to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation - above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself - here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I have learned to be kinder to myself, to imagine that I am my own best friend, whispering comforting words in my ear and drowning out the voices of Self-Doubt and Self-Criticism. I have learned to acknowledge and appreciate the 98% that I have achieved instead of the 2% that I didn't. — Roz Savage