99 Best Quotes About Old Friendships And Cherished Memories

When I’m 99, I hope I can look back at my life and see a lot of beautiful memories with all kinds of friends I had over the years. Today I’m only 28 but I have 99 best quotes about old friendships to share with you!

This collection of quotes covers all kinds of old friendships: from childhood and school friends you still keep in touch with to long-lost friends who you happen to meet again and reconnect with.

If you have old friends like that, you’ll love these quotes and probably feel lots of warmth and kindness inside while reminiscing on your memories together.

Looking for the best old friends quotes for Instagram? Look no further! I’ve got 99 cool ones you can just copy and share with your own friends on any social media platform you prefer!

So take your time to relax and read these wise thoughts, enjoy, and who knows, maybe some of these quotes will inspire you to organize your own get-together of old friends!

Why old friends are the best

Old friends are the absolute best because they can always remind you who you really are. Growing up together and strengthening your friendship through different phases of your life creates a kind of connection a new friend can never understand.

Your childhood friends know the real you, how you were when you were a little innocent human being without too many restrictions. At that precious time when none of you were overthinking anything, the days were careless, and your only problem was how to have fun today.

Old friends are the ones who stick to your relationship and still stay with you as you grow and change over the years. They are people who still love you after everything you’ve been through and who never stopped being friends with you, even when you chose different paths in life.

New friends are also great, but they have a long road ahead of them to get to the same level of knowing you as your old friends do. All the people, events, and memories you have in common to reminisce about every time you get to see each other. Endless talking about the wonderful times in the past…

At the same time, new friendships have their perks. You get to be whoever you want with new people, maybe a better version of yourself, and you’ll never get compared to the previous you or pulled back from growth. Oftentimes old friends may unwillingly keep you from moving forward or in a different direction, just because they like the version of you they knew before, and don’t want things to change.

I hope this helps you decide which is better: old friends or new friends!

With that said, let’s proceed to the quotes you came here for!

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Best quotes about old friendships

The first bunch of quotes in my collection are these sharp quotes for old friendships:

1. A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow. – William Shakespeare

2. Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. – Athenaeus

3. Do not abandon old friends; for new ones cannot equal them. A new friend is like new wine; when it has aged, you can drink it with pleasure.

4. It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance that knows what you know. I see so many of these new folks nowadays, that seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation’s got to have some root in the past, or else you’ve got to explain every remark you make, an’ it wears a person out. – Sarah Orne Jewett

5. It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

6. One old friend is better than two new ones. – Yiddish Proverb

7. As in the case of wines that improve with age, the oldest friendships ought to be the most delightful. – Cicero

8. Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.

9. I love coming back home and seeing old friends and family. I would say it keeps me grounded. – Coy Bowles

Quotes about meeting old friends

These next few are quotes on meeting old friends after a long time. Enjoy!

10. When you meet with your old friends, you recollect some of the finest moments of your life and find yourself in a joy that has no comparison. – Syed Badiuzzaman

11. An old friend met in a far country is like rain after a drought. – Chinese Proverb

12. To be with old friends is very warming and comforting. – Ian Ziering

13. 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. – Anais Nin

14. When old friends get together, everything else fades to insignificance. – Robert Lynn Aspri

15. Happiness is meeting up with old friends after a long time apart.

16. It’s not what we have, but who we have. – Winnie the Pooh

17. While they talked they remembered the years of their youth, and each thought of the other as he had been at another time. – John Williams

18. Millions of memories, thousands of jokes, hundreds of secrets, one reason: Best Friends.

Funny quotes to laugh with old friends

19. Friends are like whiskey. The older, the better.

20. Say what you want about aging, it’s still the only way to have old friends.

21. The only thing old about you is our friendship, which makes us ancient… – Nanette L. Avery

22. It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

23. The degree of our intellectual growth is inversely proportional to the number of people with whom we are still close friends. – Mokokoma Mokhonoana

24. When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not. – Jonathan Swift

25. This the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected. – Charles Lamb

26. Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend. – G.K. Chesterton

27. Make new friends, but don’t forget the old. One is silver, the other is gold.

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Reconnecting with old friends quotes

How wonderful is to see your old friend after all these years and reconnect with a cup of tea or your favorite drink from the past! Here are some good quotes about old friends reuniting:

28. Childhood friends are like chocolate chip ice cream. One bite and the taste will forever linger in your mouth.

29. To be with old friends is very warming and comforting. – Ian Ziering

30. Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at first speech are old friends. – Mary Catherwood

31. Talking to an old friend makes you realize how much your life has changed.

32. When we forget old friends, it is a sign we have forgotten ourselves.

33. No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth. – Robert Southey

34. Some friendships are timeless.

35. Spend a new penny on an old friend and share an old pleasure with a new friend. – Chinese Proverb

36. Breezy days deserve the union of two old friends. – Sanober Khan

Best quotes on memories with old friends

37. Real friends know all of your best memories because they’ve spent them all with you.

38. There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise. – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

39. Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart. – Eleanor Roosevelt

40. We do not remember days, we remember moments. – Cesare Pavese

41. Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief. – Marcus Tullius Cicero

42. Beautiful memories are like old friends. They may not always be on your mind, but they are forever in your heart. – Susan Gale

43. Stay with the ones who bring you wine, cake, and sunshine.

44. Friendship is a gift that is fair in all things. It roots from one’s heart and involves memories that stay not for a while but life.

45. So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good. – Helen Keller

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Long lost friend quotes

If you lived long enough, you probably have lost a few childhood friends as your went your separate ways. These next few quotes are all about catching up with old friends who you haven’t seen in a very long time.

46. Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side. – Ally Condie

47. Finding an old friend is like finding a lost treasure. – Anthony Douglas Williams

48. An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost. – Samuel Johnson

49. Don’t be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends. – Richard Bach

50. The wind taught me never to forget old friends, by blowing them back to me. – Michael Bassey Johnson

51. Old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air; love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were. – Samuel Coleridge Taylor

52. He felt lost and alone without his old friend, though he barely recognized him anymore. He wondered if they could ever be friends again. – Erin Hunter

53. It’s best to have an old friend far away, than a new friend nearby that makes you question your care. – Shanna Rodriguez

54. True friends are never apart, maybe in distance but never in heart. – Hellen Keller

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Relatable quotes on missing old friends

Are you missing the good old days with friends? These sayings will likely make you feel better!

55. You can through life and make a new friend every year – every month practically – but there was never a substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. – Alexander Mccall Smith

56. Old stories are like old friends. You have to visit them from time to time. – George R.R. Martin

57. A good friend is a connection to life – a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world. – Lois Wyse

58. Old friends, we say, are best, when some sudden disillusionment shakes our faith in a new comrade. – Gelett Burgess

59. We are friends and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn’t mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often. – Jeanette Winterson

60. Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all. – Bob Dylan

61. Old friends remind us what it’s like to live with nothing to prove.

62. Breaking with old friends is one of the most painful of the changes in all that piling up of a multitude of small distasteful changes that constitutes growing older. – John Dos Passos

63. There’s a thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die — their silence. For a while an echo stays in your ear. You hear a laugh, a knowing phrase or two, a certain quality of enunciation. Then, nothing. Another death takes place — voices. – Ben Hecht

Old best friend quotes

64. Everyone has a ‘best friend’ during each stage of life, but only lucky ones have the same one.

65. You don’t have to have anything in common with people you’ve known since you were five. With old friends, you’ve got your whole life in common. – Lyle Lovett

66. Old friends are the great blessing of one’s later years… They have a memory of the same events and have the same mode of thinking. – Horace Walpole

67. There’s no friend like someone who has known you since you were five. – Anne Stevenson

68. People from the past, have a tendency to walk back into the present, and run over the future. – Anthony Liccione

69. We need old friends to help us grow old and new friends to help us stay young. – Letty Cottin Pogrebin

70. We would never become friends with most if not all of the people with whom we have been friends for many years, if we had met them only a few weeks ago.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

71. Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one’. – C.S. Lewis

72. Once a friend, always a friend. – Kurdish Proverb

Reminiscing quotes about good old days with friends

73. Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget. – G. Randolf

74. One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention. – Clifton Fadiman

75. My old friend, I recall the times we had hanging on my wall. I wouldn’t trade them for gold ‘cause they laugh and they cry me, somehow sanctify me. They’re woven in the stories I have told and tell again. – Tim McGraw

76. A moment lasts all of a second, but the memory lives on forever.

77. Friends are the most important part of your life. Treasure the tears, treasure the laughter, but most importantly, treasure the memories. – Dave Brenner

78. To reminisce with my old friends, a chance to share some memories, and play our songs again. – Ricky Nelson

79. I look to the sea, reflections in the waves spark my memory. Some happy, some sad, I think of childhood friends, and the dreams we had in our world. – Styx

80. You may have lost things, persons in your life. But you can capture them in your memories forever.

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New friends vs old friends quotes

81. Old friends are best. – John Selden

82. You can make a new friend but you can’t make an old one. – Tom Bodett

83. With clothes the new are the best, with friends the old are the best.

84. One should not forsake old friends for new, because the old friends, having already proven their calibre, are more trustworthy. – G. Llewellyn Watson

85. I love everything that’s old, – old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. – Oliver Goldsmith

86. New friends may be poems but old friends are alphabets. Don’t forget the alphabets because you will need them to read the poems. – William Shakespeare

87. In forming new friendships, forget not old friends. – Roman Proverb

88. There’s not a word yet, for old friends who’ve just met. – Jim Henson

89. Whoever neglects old friends for the sake of new deserves what he gets if he loses both. – Aesop

90. There is only one thing better than making a new friend, and that is keeping an old one. – Elmer G. Letterman

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Old school friends quotes

91. School is not really about the education, it’s about the people and places.

92. True friends are those you haven’t seen in years, but it feels like you were never apart.

93. Childhood friends are the benchmark of our lives, no matter where we go, what we do. They will always come by and take you to the place where you belong. – Burhan Din Wani

94. You can’t make old friends. You either have them or you don’t. – Kenny Rogers

95. We find home in our old friends.

96. The best mirror is an old friend.

97. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival. – C.S. Lewis

98. It’s always hard when you’ve known a person for a long time and then you have to recognize that you have nothing left in common but your memories. – Eva Heller

99. Friendship is a promise that is difficult to keep – that makes old friends precious.

Final sayings about old friends

I hope you liked my collection of 99 quotes about old friendships! Tell me in the comments which one is your favorite! (I made my own favorites in bold, in case you were wondering.)

Would you rather reconnect with an old friend from the past or find a new one?

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