National Best Friends Day is an unofficial U.S. holiday observed on June 8 each year to celebrate friendships with our closest friends. Those celebrating can mark the day by sharing quotes and images themed around friendships available on different websites.
Friends can have a "major impact" on our health, explains the Mayo Clinic, the nonprofit academic medical center.
The Mayo Clinic website says: "Good friends are good for your health. Friends can help you celebrate good times and provide support during bad times. Friends prevent loneliness and give you a chance to offer needed companionship, too.
"Friends also play a significant role in promoting your overall health. Adults with strong social support have a reduced risk of many significant health problems, including depression, high blood pressure and an unhealthy body mass index (BMI).
"Studies have even found that older adults with a rich social life are likely to live longer than their peers with fewer connections," it adds.
Quotes
Here are some quotes about friendship from different public figures that can be shared on National Best Friends Day:
"What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."—Aristotle
"Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which increases with the setting sun of life."—Jean de La Fontaine
"A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside."—Winnie the Pooh, the fictional character from the book of the same name by A.A. Milne
"Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."—Muhammad Ali
"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."—from the book Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
"Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life."—Amy Poehler
"Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses... swapped back and forth and over again." — Michelle Obama
Below are some other friendship-themed quotes from Hallmark, the greeting card company, that can be shared on National Best Friends Day:
- The best cure for a bad day is a good friend.
- It's not that other people don't get me at all...it's that you get me completely.
- Between friends, words are optional.
- Friends make the good things better and the bad things not so bad...simply by being there.
- Good heart, strong spirit, kind soul—true friend...that's you.
Images
Unsplash offers over 7,000 different high-resolution images portraying friendships that can be downloaded for free from its website.
Some of the images on offer from Unsplash include ones of a group of friends enjoying the outdoors, silhouettes of friends against a sunset backdrop, as well as friends embracing and laughing together.
Similar images of groups of friends in different settings, as well as others, are also available at Pixabay. Users can choose from over 8,000 free images themed around friendship and friends.
WallpaperAccess also offers dozens of free high-definition images that can be shared with friends to celebrate National Best Friends Day, or be used as wallpapers and backgrounds for your smartphones and computers.
Some of the images offered on WallpaperAccess include various graphics with cartoon characters, such as Winnie the Pooh and Tom and Jerry, and other images featuring friendship-themed quotes.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Soo Kim is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. She covers various lifestyle stories, specializing in travel and health.
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