25 Quotes From Inspirational Women On The Power Of Female Friendship

Pearl / Lightstock
Pearl / Lightstock

1. “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” ― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey


2. “Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses — pretty but designed to SLOW women down.” ― Roxane Gay


3. “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” ― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934


4. “There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar


5. “Friendship however is a plant which cannot be forced―true friendship is no gourd spring up in a night and withering in a day.” ― Charlotte Brontë, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë


6. “Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.” ― Dorothy Parker


7. “One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion.” ― Simone de Beauvoir


8. “There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self, the very meaning of one’s soul.” ― Edith Wharton


9. “Women understand. We may share experiences, make jokes, paint pictures, and describe humiliations that mean nothing to men, but women understand. The odd thing about these deep and personal connections of women is that they often ignore barriers of age, economics, worldly experience, race, culture — all the barriers that, in male or mixed society, had seemed so difficult to cross.” — Gloria Steinem


10. “Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me. Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.” ― Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides


11. “Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can’t see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.” ― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You


12. “The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.” ― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein


13. “I’m so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much.” ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea


14. “Nobody sees a flower―really―it is so small it takes time―we haven’t time― and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” ― Georgia O’Keeffe


15. “We are friends for life. When we’re together the years fall away. Isn’t that what matters? To have someone who can remember with you? To have someone who remembers how far you’ve come?” ― Judy Blume


16. “This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.” ― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye


17. “My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges.” ― Helen Keller


18. “Friends are a weird thing. It seems like they know all about you, but then they don’t understand you at all.” ― Natsuo Kirino, Real World


19. “Remember, ‘No one’s more important than people’! In other words, friendship is the most important thing―not career or housework, or one’s fatigue―and it needs to be tended and nurtured.” ― Julia Child, My Life in France


20. “You send a girl to school in order to make friends – the right sort.” ― Virginia Woolf


21. “A lot of women, when they’re young, feel they have very good friends, and find later on that friendship is complicated. It’s easy to be friends when everyone’s 18. It gets harder the older you get, as you make different life choices, as people say in America. A lot of women’s friendships begin to founder. I was interested in why that was, why it’s not possible for a woman to see her friend living differently and just think, Oh, she lives differently.” ― Zadie Smith


22. “And like a favorite old movie, sometimes the sameness in a friend is what you like the most about her.” ― Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed


23. “One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.” ― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?


24. “Only hang around people that are positive and make you feel good. Anybody who doesn’t make you feel good, kick them to the curb. And the earlier you start in your life the better. The minute anybody makes you feel weird and non-included or not supported, you know, either beat it or tell them to beat it.” — Amy Poehler


25. “Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn’t exist. We met before we were born and we’ll probably still know each other after we die. At least, that’s the way we’re planning it.” ― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Elizabeth is a NYC writer and tabby cat collector. You can find her on twitter @elizabethtsung.

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