In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

Talent grips us. We are overtaken by the beauty of Michelangelo’s sculpture, riveted by Mariah Carey’s angelic voice, doubled over in laughter by the comedy of Robin Williams, and captivated by the on screen performances of Denzel Washington.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

I have a really close relationship with Mike Bloomberg.

A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.

Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

I never smoked. I never drank and I never took drugs. The funny thing is, nothing is more boring, people like this. For me, it’s OK. But most of my friends, at least they smoke and drink.

If people wonder, yes, Hillary Clinton is my friend. She has been a friend to me and Barack and Malia and Sasha, and Bill and Chelsea have been embracing and supportive from the very day my husband took the oath of office.

What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.

When you’re supposed to be close and friends in the film, the moment you’re talking as friends off the set, it makes it that much better when you’re filming.

The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn’t feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.

Digital reading will completely take over. It’s lightweight and it’s fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over.

Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

I’ve missed out on a lot of things, going out with friends.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Oh, this base heart of ours! Hath it not enough tinder in it to set on fire the course of nature? If a spark do but fall into it, any one of our members left to itself would dishonour Christ, deny the Lord that bought us, and turn back into perdition.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.

I am the most helpful and open up doors for everyone and I like to share.

Our pleasures were simple – they included survival.

Friendship is essentially a partnership.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.

You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

We can be civil. We can still be friends, and be Democrats and Republicans, and have different views.

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.

When befriended, remember it; when you befriend, forget it.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

God’s mercy is fresh and new every morning.