Friendliness Quotes

“The most valuable gift you can receive is an honest friend.”
― Stephen Richards

“Each time a person passes by you and you say 'hello', imagine that person turning into a candle. The more positivity, love and light you reflect, the more light is mirrored your way. Sharing beautiful hellos is the quickest way to earn spiritual brownie points. You should start seeing hellos as small declarations of faith. Every time you say hello to a stranger, your heart acknowledges over and over again that we are all family.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“When you're alone is when you can count your friends.”
― Stephen Richards

“True friendship never questions what it costs you.”
― Stephen Richards

“Service is a smile.  It is an acknowledging wave, a reaching handshake, a friendly wink, and a warm hug.   It's these simple acts that matter most, because the greatest service to a human soul has always been the kindness of recognition.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“The first thing you notice, coming to Israel from the Arab world, is that you have left the most courteous region of the globe and entered the rudest. The difference is so profound that you're left wondering when the mutation in Semitic blood occurred, as though God parted the Red Sea and said: "Okay, you rude ones, keep wandering toward the Promised Land. The rest of you can stay here and rot in the desert, saying 'welcome, most welcome' and drowning each other in tea until the end of time.”
― Tony Horwitz, Baghdad Without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia

“When we make friends then we change from being animals to being human.”
― Stephen Richards

“No matter how kind you are, always expect a few imbeciles.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood.”
― Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

“The difference between a friend and an enemy is friendliness.”
― Frank Delaney, The Matchmaker of Kenmare

“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, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“She's like an island
Made of rock, with one lone tree at the top
Of the only mountain. She's like the sole
Incongruous goat tethered to the tree,
Smiling almost as you approach, scraping
The ground with its horns, and then--
Lickety split--lurching hard, daring
The rope to snap.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Wade in the Water: Poems

“And after all, can we come to so great evil if we keep a little fire on our hearths and in our souls, and welcome with open hand whatever of excellent come to warm itself, whether it be man or phantom, and do not say too fiercely, even to the dhouls themselves, ‘Be ye gone’? When all is said and done, how do we not know but that our own unreason may be better than another’s truth? For it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey. Come into the world again, wild bees, wild bees!”
― W.B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight

“The pretence leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.”
― C.S. Lewis

“All of us risk being taken advantage of to some degree, but what would it be like to go through life this irremediably vulnerable, biologically unable to peel your heart from your sleeve and lock it safely inside?”
― Jennifer Latson, The Boy Who Loved Too Much: A True Story of Pathological Friendliness

“After he had taught himself to be friendly, everything else became harder. He had to let go of his nerdy passions. He couldn't do both at once.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Lake Success

“He was a strange mix--congenial but reserved in a way that told you being friendly was an act of will.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“He showed me that there was another world where strangers helped strangers for no other reason than that it is good to do so, and where callousness was unusual, not the norm.”
― Hyeonseo Lee

“The cruel irony of the disorder is that the very people who crave social connection the most aren't well adapted to get it. Their insatiable drive to connect is, in itself, what ultimately pushes people away.”
― Jennifer Latson, The Boy Who Loved Too Much: A True Story of Pathological Friendliness

“They hold up a mirror to the part of ourselves we're trying our best to conceal: that utterly defenseless, deeply tender inner part that yearns for connection and kindness- and can be so easily crushed.”
― Jennifer Latson, The Boy Who Loved Too Much: A True Story of Pathological Friendliness

“If another person is friendly to me, I find it easy to be friendly back. However, I don’t wait to make sure the other person is friendly before I’m friendly in return.”
― Debra Fine

“Don’t just treat your prospects as someone to get into your business. Treat them as a friend. Ask them about their family and lives. Get to know them. All of your interactions with your prospects don’t have to be exposures where you talk about the opportunity. People want to know you care first.”
― christopher gregas

“Friendliness can fade away, but true friends are forever.”
― Anthony Liccione

“If there are whole parts of yourself that you are always running from, that you even feel justified in running from, then you’re going to run from anything that brings you into contact with your feelings of insecurity.
And have you noticed how often these parts of ourselves get touched? The closer you get to a situation or a person, the more these feelings arise. Often when you’re in a relationship it starts off great, but when it gets intimate and begins to bring out your neurosis, you just want to get out of there.
So I’m here to tell you that the path to peace is right there, when you want to get away.
You can cruise through life not letting anything touch you, but if you really want to live fully, if you want to enter into life, enter into genuine relationships with other people, with animals, with the world situa-tion, you’re def i nitely going to have the ex-perience of feeling provoked, of getting hooked, of shenpa. You’re not just going to feel bliss. The message is that when those feelings emerge, this is not a failure. This is the chance to cultivate maitri, unconditional friendliness toward your perfect and imperfect self.”
― Pema Chödrön, Practicing Peace in Times of War

“People in the country wave because it’s important to them that they wave. The response doesn’t alter what they feel they should do. Apart from that, they generally don’t overthink things. They have too much to do.”
― Donna Goddard, Purnima

“Your friendliness with people does not make them your friends.”
― John Arthur

“Charity can be a lifestyle, not merely a gift.

Read charitably. Give the author your most favorable interpretation.

Listen charitably. Donate your undivided attention.

Work charitably. Be generous with your expertise.

In this way, you make charity a daily habit.”
― James Clear

“Before I met Lisette, America wasn't what I'd imagined; it's only natural, I expect. Everyone was friendly, but bafflingly so, as though each person had a series of invisible hedges around them that I didn't know how to penetrate.”
― Te-Ping Chen, Land of Big Numbers: Stories

“When you sense yourself about to commit an unfriendly act, talk yourself out of it by asking yourself two questions and making two statements. They won't all apply at the same time, but at least one of them should work.
- Will this fix anything?
- Is this how I want to be remembered?
- You are welcome here.
- I should be helping you.”
― Tim Sanders, The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life's Dreams

“Morse found it nerve-wracking to cross the St. Jude grounds just as school was being dismissed, because he felt that if he smiled at the uniformed Catholic children they might think he was a wacko or pervert and if he didn't smile they might think he was an old grouch made bitter by the world, which surely, he felt, by certain yardsticks, he was. Sometimes he wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't even a wacko of sorts, although certainly he wasn't a pervert. Of that he was certain. Or relatively certain. Being overly certain, he was relatively sure, was what eventually made one a wacko.”
― George Saunders, Pastoralia