Lord Byron - Gilbert Harding - William Shakespeare & Henry V 1989 - Laurence Sterne - David Mallet - John Donne - Jimi Hendrix - Martin Luther King - Friedrich Nietzsche - J D Salinger - Paul Sweeney - Martin Tupper - Mark Twain - Abraham Lincoln - Frank Lloyd Wright - J K Rowling - A A Milne - Jasper Johns - Boardwalk Empire TV - The Godfather 1972 - The Godfather II 1974 - The Godfather III 1990 - Rebel Without a Cause 1955 - The Public Enemy 1931 - Married to the Mob 1988 - Hell is a City 1960 - The American 2010 - Quantum of Solace 2008 - The Sting 1973 - Star Trek: The Next Generation TV - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - Star Trek: Voyager TV - Blackadder Goes Forth TV - Aces High 1977 - The King’s Speech 2011 - Muhammad Ali - George Foreman - Casablanca 1942 - Spike Milligan - Al Murray TV - George Eliot - Proverbs - William Wycherley - Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1994 - John Churton Collins - Abraham Lincoln - Arthur Miller TV - Jim Morrison - Aristotle - Gore Vidal - Percy Bysshe Shelley - Samuel Johnson - Duc de la Rochefoucauld - John Dryden - Alfred Lord Tennyson - John Lennon & Paul McCartney - Alexander Pope - Cornelia Otis Skinner - Francis Bacon - Mikhail Lermontov - Eleanor Roosevelt - John Gay - Hugh Kingsmill - George Santayana - Oscar Wilde - Dale Carnegie - Rab C Nesbitt TV - Jean Renoir - Peter Ustinov - Blaise Pascal - W B Yeats - Peter Sellers & Terry-Thomas - I Samuel 18:1 - Proverbs 17:9 - Proverbs 17:17 - Proverbs 18:24 - Proverbs 27:10&14&17 - Ecclesiasticus 6:16 - Ecclesiasticus 8:9 - Matthew 26:50 - John 15:13 - Koran 5:51 - Jim Morrison - J K Rowling - Thomas Aquinas - By the Gun 2014 - Rumpole of the Bailey TV - The Soloist 2009 - Boris Karloff - Saint Francis de Sales - Henry David Thoreau - Petrarch - Jane Austen - Thomas Hardy - John Steinbeck - Panic in Needle Park 1971 - Cambridge Spies 2003 - T2: Trainspotting 2017 - The Visitor 2007 - The 15:17 to Paris 2018 - Trailer Park Boys 2001-2018 - Thief TV - Blunt: The Fourth Man 1986 - E A Bucchianeri - House of Cards TV - Chasing Ghislaine TV - Saint Augustine - Ghislaine Maxwell: The Making of a Monster TV -
I have had, and may have still, a thousand friends, as they are called, in life, who are like one’s partners in the waltz of this world – not much remembered when the ball is over. Lord Byron
Life is only worth living if one has friends. Gilbert Harding, interview BBC
The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet V ii 72, Romeo to Apothecary
Call you that backing of your friends? A plague upon such backing! Give me them that will face me. William Shakespeare, I Henry IV II iv 168
No, my good lord; banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins; but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy Harry’s company: banish plump Jack and banish all the world. ibid. II iv 528
Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me. ibid. III iii 10
Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing II i 184
Banish not him from thy Harry’s company. Henry V 1989 starring Kenneth Branagh & Brian Blessed & Charles Kay & Paul Scofield & Derek Jacobi & Christian Bale & Simon Shepherd & Alex McCowen & Judi Dench & John Sessions & Michael Maloney & Tom Whitehouse et al, director Kenneth Branagh, Falstaff
A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,
But Brutus makes mine greater than they are. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar IV iii 85
Hereafter, in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you. William Shakespeare, As You Like It I ii 301
I shall do my friends no wrong for I have none to lament with. As You Like It, Globe Theatre, Orlando, Sky Arts 2012
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I iii 62
Happier is he that has no friend to feed. William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens I ii 203, Flavius
Friendship’s full of dregs. ibid. II ii 236, Apemantus
What viler thing upon the earth than friends. ibid. IV iii 465, Flavius
This world to me is but a ceaseless storm
Whirring me from my friends. William Shakespeare, Pericles XV l71-72, Marina
... for those you make friends
And give your hearts to, when they once perceive
The least rub in your fortunes, fall away
Like water from ye, never found again
But where they mean to sink ye. William Shakespeare & John Fletcher, All Is True/Henry VIII II i @128, Buckingham
I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen
O grant me, Heaven, a middle state,
Neither too humble nor too great;
More than enough, for nature’s ends,
With something left to treat my friends. David Mallet c.1705-65
No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of they friends of thine own were; an man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. John Donne, 1572-1631, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions: Meditation XVII, 1624
Girls were my best friends. Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child
In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies ... but the silence of our friends. Martin Luther King
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. Friedrich Nietzsche
It is not a lack of love but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. Friedrich Nietzsche
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything. Friedrich Nietzsche
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though. J D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend. Paul Sweeney
A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever. Martin Tupper
Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. Mark Twain
The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. Mark Twain
My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read. Abraham Lincoln
Death is a great friend ... When they put you into the box, that is your immortality. Frank Lloyd Wright, televised interview
It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. J K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. ‘Pooh!’ he whispered. ‘Yes, Piglet?’ ‘Nothing,’ said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. ‘I just wanted to be sure of you.’ A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Every artist feels alone and isolated. Friends are very important in terms of all sorts of definitions of oneself. They tell you what you are and what they are aside from the intellectual aspects. Jasper Johns
Dean Martin: King of Cool, Sky Arts 2022
He had all of it. ibid.
I don’t think he wanted us to know him. ibid.
My early days were kinda idyllic … We had everything we needed. I had a bicycle. We had a car and good food. ibid.
If he’s not gonna be a singer, no-one’s gonna be a singer. ibid. Dean
My mom’s drinking was something that would catch up with her. ibid.
They called themselves the rat pack. The apex of club life in America. ibid.
The Dean Martin Show ran for 9 years and was one of the most successful shows in television history. ibid. caption