Quotes & Sayings About Leaving A Friend

Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies ... the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.
Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

On a day of burial there is no perspective
for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was
to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I think I'd rather ask how a man who ditched his friend at a club in favor of leaving with a heavily stacked redhead with a mouth that could raise the dead could possibly sound so cranky on the morning after. What happened? Did she
turn out to be a lesbian?" Dmitri sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"What is your news, Graham?"
"I asked first."
"And I ignored you," Dmitri growled, "which a man who did not lick his own testicles for recreation would have taken as a hint."
"You're just jealous. — Christine Warren

She was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back.
She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. — Khaled Hosseini

Penelope? Thank you. For not leaving me alone to deal with this . . . when things got hard. other people would have. You're a true friend. — Svetlana Chmakova

Oh my friend from future centuries, I am leaving my love and endless good wishes for you. I have no possessions to leave for you. I have a broken pen and a few pages of paper with thoughts that I am leaving for you. Believe in the power of your thoughts, truths of your perceptions, magic of joy in your dreams, and the attraction of your love and purity. — Debasish Mridha

He had had a beautiful and eager young wife and another man had taken her away from him and had fathered his child, and all he had done was to walk away, leaving her in possession of everything he owned, and crawl into a hole in the slums and lie there like a wounded animal and let his intellect bleed away into pious drivel and his strength bleed away into weakness. And he had been good. But his goodness had told me nothing except that I could not live by it. My new father, however, had not been good. He had cuckolded a friend, betrayed a wife, taken a bride, driven a man, though unwittingly, to death. But he had done good. — Robert Penn Warren

It's really hard to find things that are worth leaving them for. [Balancing work and motherhood is] really hard. One night in Nashville, my son was screaming with a terrible stomachache. I was like, 'I have to get out of here!' but we had to finish. My friend Jenno, a mother of three who was producing, was great, reminding me that nine times out of 10, they just have gas. — Gwyneth Paltrow

Grown-ups aren't supposed to talk about "best friends," but he was among my closest and certainly my most constant friend from then until we were well into our thirties, when he inexplicably disappeared on me. I don't mean he fled the country or changed his identity or got abducted; the last I heard he was still living in Baltimore. He just stopped returning my calls. It took me almost a year of leaving messages on his answering machine to get the hint. It took me much longer to understand that I was never going to know what had happened. — Tim Kreider

I realized about a month ago that there's a last time everyone skips across a street. And that most people I know have already skipped for the last time and don't know it.

From here on out it will always be walking or running, growing older and buying things at the store or seeing friends or going to work, but never again will life impel them to skip. When I thought of this, the tragedy of it overwhelmed me so that I skipped all the way home from my friend's house.

Skipping is a strange thing. Because it means something. Like trains make the sound of leaving. Skipping is the motion of being totally free, childlike, abandoned of self and to self.

But I learned something else about skipping. You can't fake it. Or make it happen. It must be something that happens to you. (pp. 152-153) — Heather Harpham Kopp

Her husband's suffering and dangers, and the danger of her child, all blended in her mind, with a confused and stunning sense of the risk she was running, in leaving the only home she had ever known, and cutting loose from the protection of a friend whom she loved and revered. Then there was the parting from every familiar object, - the place where she had grown up, the trees under which she had played, the groves where she had walked many an evening in happier days, by the side of her young husband, - everything, as it lay in the clear, frosty starlight, seemed to speak reproachfully to her, and ask her whither could she go from a home like that? — Harriet Beecher Stowe

And so, though Smith was not at all the man Knight would have deliberately chosen as a friend - or even for one of a group of a dozen friends - he somehow was his friend. Circumstance, as usual, did it all. How many of us can say of our most intimate alter ego, leaving alone friends of the outer circle, that he is the man we should have chosen, as embodying the net result after adding up all the points in human nature that we love, and principles we hold, and subtracting all that we hate? The man is really somebody we got to know by mere physical juxtaposition long maintained, and was taken into our confidence, and even heart, as a makeshift. — Thomas Hardy

Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Miriam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings. — Khaled Hosseini

A Christian who has a hard time living by his or her faith while driving, for instance, could hang a symbol - a cross or a fish - on their rearview mirror to challenge them when their temper begins to flare. (That's certainly preferable to putting a Christian bumper sticker on the back of the car for all to see, and then driving like a son of perdition!) A pastor friend of mine uses a pond near his home as a symbol. As soon as he drives by that pond, he is reminded that he is going home and needs to prepare himself to focus on his wife and children, leaving the cares, worries, and concerns of the church on the north side of the pond. He can pick them back up the next morning when he passes the pond on his way to work. A symbol can be found to meet virtually every need in every situation. Men — Gary L. Thomas

To make a friend, forgiveness is required which burns up all things, leaving only beauty; but to destroy friendship is easy. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Finishing a good book is like leaving a good friend. — William Feather

There is a truth that everyone knows but you. Each of us has it; no one is immune. Not a secret, not a scandal, but something simple and obvious to everyone else. It can be as simple as losing weight, or as difficult as leaving a husband. How awful, to sense that everybody knows the thing that would change your life, and yet no one is friend enough to tell you! You are left to guess, all by yourself. Until that moment comes when it reveals itself to you, and of course this revelation always comes a moment too late. — Andrew Sean Greer

And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had love and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequence at last. — Khaled Hosseini

Rosie: I don't know what you're talking about! I am not waiting for Alex!
Ruby: Yes you are, my dear friend. He must be some man because nobody can ever measure up to him. And I know that's what you do every time you meet someone: compare. I'm sure he's a fabulous friend and I'm sure he always says sweet and wonderful thing to you. But he's not here. He's thousands of miles away, working as a doctor in a great big hospital and he lives in a fancy apartment with his fancy doctor fiancee. I don't think he's thinking of leaving that life anytime soon to come back to a single mother who's living in a tiny flat working in a crappy part-time job in a paperclip factory with a crazy friend who emails her every second. So stop waiting and move on. Live your life. — Cecelia Ahern

Come to earth to taste our sadness, He whose glories knew no end. By His life He brings us gladness, our Redeemer, Shepherd, Friend. Leaving riches without number, born within a cattle stall. This, the everlasting wonder, Christ was born the Lord of all. — Charles Wesley

I was leaving. Just when this place had become more than a sanctuary, when the command of the Suriel had become a blessing and Tamlin far, far more than a savior or friend, I was leaving. It could be years until I saw this house again, years until I smelled his rose garden, until I saw those gold-flecked eyes. Home - this was home. As consciousness left me at last, I thought I heard him speak, his mouth close to my ear. "I love you," he whispered, and kissed my brow. "Thorns and all." He was gone when I awoke, and I was certain I had dreamed — Sarah J. Maas

Hey, Chess, I know I've never dated a woman, but the thought of you leaving fills me with fucking dread. Because I don't want to be your friend anymore. I just want to be yours. — Kristen Callihan

Since leaving office in 1977, Dr. Kissinger has continued to play a highly influential role in U.S. politics, in the U.S. media, and in the Rockefeller world empire. It was Kissinger, along with David Rockefeller, who was decisive in the disastrous decision of President Carter to admit the recently toppled Shah of Iran, old friend and ally of the Rockefellers into the United States, a decision that led directly to the Iranian hostage crisis and to Carter's downfall. — Murray Rothbard

As I walked in the woods I felt what I often feel that nothing can befall me in life, no calamity, no disgrace (leaving me my eyes) to which Nature will not offer a sweet consolation. Standing on the bare ground with my head bathed by the blithe air, & uplifted into the infinite space, I become happy in my universal relations. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign & accidental. I am the heir of uncontained beauty and power. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We can ask for forgiveness, from a god, from a friend, a lover, even ourselves. We can ask for forgiveness from all of the people we've wronged, but we can never get back the one thing we're truly hoping to find when we asked: our innocence - the person we were before that piece of us was taken, ripped away and shattered at our feet, leaving us to learn how to pick ourselves back up and move past it. — Kristen Kehoe

Hands full of sand,
I say: take this,
this is what I have saved;
I earned this with my genius,
and because I love you...

Take this, hurry.
I am dropping everything
and then I listened:
I was not saying anything;
out of all that had gone into
the composition of the language
and what I knew of it
I had chiselled these words
- take this, hurry-
and you could not hear me.
I had said nothing.
And then I am leaving,

making ready to go to another street,
when you, mingled between sleep
and delirium, turned

and handed me an empty sack:
Take this, my friend;
I am not coming back.
The ghost of a flower poised on your lip — James Tate

Moving on was going to require leaving the woods and getting a friend set that didn't have gray hairs, hip replacements and a few false teeth. — Rebecca Brooks

Addie Moore had a grandson named Jamie who was just turning six. In the early summer the trouble between his parents got worse. There were bad arguments in the kitchen and bedroom, accusations and recriminations, her tears and his shouts. They finally separated on a trial basis and she went off to California to stay with a friend, leaving Jamie with his father. He called Addie and told her what happened, that his wife had quit her job as a hairdresser and had gone out to the West Coast. — Kent Haruf

At midnight, Cinderella ran away from the ball, leaving behind glass slipper. The doors swing slowly close behind, shutting out the sound of the party, and I realize I've lost something far more important than a shoe. I've lost my best friend. — Donna Cooner

Along with being forever on the move, one is forever in a hurry, leaving things inadvertently behind-friend or fishing tackle, old raincoat or old allegiance. — Louis Kronenberger

And that, my friend, is how the world ends. On the edge of a precipice, with one foot over the edge, it stops, turns and goes back, leaving an empty earth of birds and insects, wind, rain and rusting weapons. — Jack Finney

Our language has yet to develop a proper send-off for leaving a close friend's deathbed. — Daniel Polansky

He knows I have a soft spot for RLS and not just because he was sick or because we have the same initials but because there's something impossibly romantic about him and because before he started writing Treasure Island he first drew a map of an unknown island and because he believed in invisible places and was one of the last writers to know what the word adventure means. I could give you a hundred reasons why RLS is The Man. Look in his The Art of Writing (Book 683, Chatto & Windus, London) where he says that no living people have had the influence on him as strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. Or when he says his greatest friend is D'Artagnan from The Three Musketeers (Book 5, Regent Classics, London). RLS said: 'When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge, I take them like opium.' And when you read Treasure Island you feel you are casting off. That's the thing. You are casting off and leaving behind the ordinary dullness of the world. — Niall Williams

That's exactly why I never liked King Arthur's Guinevere. She screws up (pardon the pun), sleeps with her husband's best friend, causes the fall of a kingdom, then she doesn't have the guts to make at least one man happy, so she joins a friggin nunnery and esacpes from all of her problems, leaving everyone around her in a slavering mess. How incredibly spineless. — P.C. Cast

Believe that when I am at once a man's friend I am always so-nor is it so very hard to bring me to it. And though a man may enjoy himself in being my enemy, he cannot make me HIS for longer than I wish. Good afternoon." Lowell had a way of leaving a conversation with the other person needing more from him. — Matthew Pearl

Maybe I really can see
The face of God.
Maybe it's there
When I sit with my
Patched-together family
For pancake breakfast.
Maybe it's in the power
Of the sea,
Or in the driftwood
That gets hurled about
By storms.
Maybe it's in the words
Of an ice-cream man
Or the joyful leaps
Of a dolphin.
It might even be in the pain
Of leaving my new best friend,
Or maybe
It's especially in that.
Maybe all these things
Show me the face of God,
Or maybe they just show me
A bit of light
Or love
Or happiness.
And maybe that's exactly
The same thing. — Shari Green

This is the opposite of love, I realize, when I look over and see my empty couch, see right through my imaginary companions. The opposite of love isn't hate; it isn't even indifference. It's fucking disembowelment. Hara-kiri. Taking a huge shovel and digging out your own heart, and your intestines, and leaving behind nothing. Nothing of yourself to give, nothing, even, to take away. Nothing but a quiet pulse and some mildly entertaining soap operas.

If to love is to hand over self and heart, then this, my friend, this - to self-disembowel - is its opposite.

I wish I knew how to needlepoint so I could stitch it onto a fucking pillow. — Julie Buxbaum

The bullet smashed through the right lens of Winston's glasses and slammed him back against the lounge wall. Ozzy was expressionless as his old friend slid down the wall leaving a smear of red behind him. Above his creased body, a gob of pale tissue clung onto the light switch. "Aw, Winston," he said, "you did have a brain after all! — Andrew Barrett

So I said, "I'll miss you. You are the truest friend I've ever had."
I could see that my words were a knife in his gut. Yet, it seemed kinder than the alternative, for him to know I love him, but that I'm leaving anyway. — Alex Flinn

While the poets were above all interested in the fluid and fugitive aspects of Nature, others desired, by slogging away with a hatchet and pickax, to discover the interior structure of Nature and the relationship between the separate morsels. The spirit of our friend Nature dissolved in their hands, leaving nothing but throbbing or dead parts. — Novalis

I would describe that [friendship with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras] as a utilitarian friendship. At the time, his country was facing the prospect of leaving the euro zone and many Greeks felt abandoned by Europe. In such a situation, it seemed appropriate to me to present myself as a friend to Greece. It had to do with the country's dignity. — Jean-Claude Juncker

He nearly always put his hand on his friend's arm and looked for a second into his face before leaving him. — Carson McCullers

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

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

He also tried to block the doorway when she left him. My mother ducked under his arm, ran to her car, and drove away. I remember thinking that this was somehow romantic, as it pinpointed the actual memory of my mother's departure, something you don't see a lot of in television. Real people don't slam doors without opening them five minutes later because it's raining and they forgot their umbrella. They don't stop dead in their tracks because they realize they're in love with their best friend.They don't say, "I'm leaving you, Jack," and fade to a paper towel commercial. — Sloane Crosley

Oh, trust me Sydney Tar Ponds, you aren't the first Personification to be forgotten by somebody ordinary," Mearth sighed with a falsely-reassuring smile. Alecto stepped back from her, glaring hatefully. "Sydney Tar Ponds," Mearth added, "I've had so many ordinary people as friends in my life that by now I've forgotten all their names. At first it was difficult ... very sad ... to see them always leaving, dying, disappearing, ignoring, but after a while I realized that they weren't worth the trouble. I'd rather be in the company of other Personifications. At least they aren't always dropping dead like houseflies or sailing away to parts unknown. Nil sa saol seo ach ceo, i ni bheimid beo, ach seal beag gearr. Wouldn't you agree?"
"No," Alecto told her. "I think you're insane. — Rebecca McNutt

Cicero gave an account of a party attended by a certain Quintus Gallius, a friend of Catilina, which evokes the raffish atmosphere of his circle. There are shouts and screams, screeching females, there is deafening music. I thought I could make out some people entering and others leaving, some of them staggering from the effects of the wine, some of them still yawning from yesterday's boozing. Among them was Gallius, perfumed and wreathed with flowers; the floor was filthy, soiled with wine and covered with withered garlands and fish bones. — Anthony Everitt

Many of them [people who escaped religion] recounted both the terror and the relief they felt after leaving religion behind. Terror at realizing there was no longer an imaginary friend; relief that no one was looking over their shoulder any more. Several described the experience as similar to that of a child learning to go to sleep without a favorite teddy bear. Others described it as simply growing up or outgrowing the need for the imaginary friends of childhood. — Darrel Ray

Write about "leaving." Approach it any way you want. Write about your divorce, leaving the house this morning, or a friend dying. — Natalie Goldberg

The worst period I ever went through at work," a friend confides, "was when the company was restructuring and people were being 'disappeared' daily, followed by lying memos that they were leaving 'for personal reasons.' No one could focus while that fear was in the air. No real work got done." Small wonder. The greater the anxiety we feel, the more impaired is the brain's cognitive efficiency. In this zone of mental misery, distracting thoughts hijack our attention and squeeze our cognitive resources. Because high anxiety shrinks the space available to our attention, it undermines our very capacity to take in new information, let alone generate fresh ideas. Near-panic is the enemy of learning and creativity. — Daniel Goleman

Obviously, the choice between human selfishness and divine Selfishness is not about leaving or not leaving a relationship. More important are the day-to-day opportunities in the course of relationship. It is really the choice of living from the heart or living from fear. And how do you live from fear? Saying "yes" when your heart wants to say "no." Saying "no" when your heart wants to say "yes." By not listening to your heart (i.e., what is best for your soul), you compromise your truth, and cause suffering in the relationship. You may be afraid of hurting your friend. You may be afraid of losing their love and friendship. Whatever it is you are afraid of, it is still fear that is ruling you, rather than love. — Joyce Vissell

When my son Lowell was eight years old, one day he and I had just finished playing. Tired and exhausted, we were lying on the bed talking. He sat up in the bed and started to trace his finger over the scar behind my neck. He asked me with concern in his voice,
'Daddy, how you got this cut behind your neck?'

I hesitated for a while, wondering how much I should tell him, or if I should even tell him at all. I decided to tell him some of it, leaving out the part about the shooting. So I told him,
'I got that from fighting with one of my friends.'

Lowell didn't respond right away. After a moment of silence and tracing his finger over the scar, my son said something to me that I had never even considered up to that point. He said,
'Daddy, your friend tried to kill you! — Drexel Deal

Mariam kept her eyes to the ground, on her shadow, on her executioner's shadow trailing her.
Though there had been moments of beauty in it, Mariam knew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it. She wished she could she Leila again, wished to hear the clangour of her laugh, ...

Mariam wished for so much in those final moments.
Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who has loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last.
This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings."
--A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khaled Hosseini

With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving an ugly wound. — Buffalo Bill

He was talking animatedly to two senior ladies, dressed in enough finery to buy the average home, no doubt. He brought one of their hands to his mouth, and then her friend's. He was such a charmer. I was charmed from here.
"He gets that from me," Feragal growled into my ear, leaving me to Ciaran, now making his way towards me.
I watched him stride certainly all the way to where I waited for him.
"Wow," he said, placing his hand at my waist, grazing his thumb over the detailing of the sash there. I was going to kiss Martha again when I got home.
"I like your sporran." I grinned.
"I like your everything," he countered, leaning in to kiss my cheek. "You look beautiful, Holly."
And I was done for the night. I could spill food down myself, trip over, whatever. The look in Ciaran's eyes was what I'd most wanted from the evening, and I already had it. To tuck away and keep forever. — Anouska Knight

A friend of mine said something powerful at his grandfather's funeral. He said that the greatest lesson from his grandfather's life was that he died empty, because he accomplished everything he wanted, with no regrets. I think that, along with leaving a legacy, would be the greatest sign of success. — Marvin Sapp

One reason for this polarisation is that, as a group, people can come up with a bigger set of persuasive arguments in support of the biased options: because everyone favours leaving the job, everyone suggests reasons to do so. But they come up with slightly different reasons. One person may point out that your friend is unlikely to get promoted any more at the bank, another that a new job would mean he'd meet new people, another that he never has the chance to travel in his current job and so on. So by the end of the discussion, all the group's talked about is a lot of good reasons in favour of one option. As a result, the group agrees on a more extreme conclusion based on this surfeit of good reasons. — Daniel Richardson

After travelling a few miles, he fell asleep; and Emily, who had put two or three books into the carriage, on leaving La Vallee, had now the leisure for looking into them. She sought for one, in which Valancourt had been reading the day before, and hoped for the pleasure of re-tracing a page, over which the eyes of a beloved friend had lately passed, of dwelling on the passages, which he had admired, and of permitting them to speak to her in the language of his own mind, and to bring himself to her presence. — Eliza Parsons