We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.”

Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

“I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“What statement about friendship can be more sublime, more true, more valuable than this: it has been proved that friendship must begin in Christ, continue with Christ, and be perfected by Christ.”

St. Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship

"God alone is free enough from wounds to offer us a fearless place. In and through God we can be faithful to each other: in friendship, marriage, and community. This intimate bond with God, constantly nurtured by prayer, offers us a true home.”

― Henri Nouwen, Lifesigns

“What numbers are to a mathematician and what colors to a landscape artist, names are to Christian language.”

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

“… friendship is the freest, the least constrained, the least fixed and determined, of all human loves.”

Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship

“What statement about friendship can be more sublime, more true, more valuable than this: it has been proved that friendship must begin in Christ, continue with Christ, and be perfected by Christ.”

St. Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship