Is this really a Shakespeare quote? "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."

In My Humble Opinion
1

Is this really a Shakespeare quote?

“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.”
I’ve seen it surfacing in odd places lately. I just sounds a little too modern to be Shakespeare’s.

2

It’s definitely not Shakespeare. Everything about it, from the phrasing to the word choice to the lack of poetic rhythm to the overall triteness of it suggests it originated sometime in the last 40 years on one of those kitschy posters your mom likes to hang in the bathroom or post as a Facebook meme with a picture of a Minion, Stitch, or Baby Yoda.

3

“But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.”

Sonnet 30

Now that’s Shakespeare.

4

Pretty sure that’s Abraham Lincoln.

5

No, he said “I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours”.

6

Oh! And I thought that was Albert Einstein all along…

7

Some sources claim that the quotation comes from a writer named Elbert Hubbard.

8

I did a little poking around on Google Books. The phrase first shows up in the mid 1970s, attributed to either “anonymous” or “author unknown”. The author remains anonymous through the 1980s and 1990s, but in the early 2000s the phrase is firmly established as being a Shakespeare quote.

So apparently Shakespeare stole the quote and published it under his own name in the early 2000s. :stuck_out_tongue:

9

I saw that when I was poking around on Google, but the cite they gave attributed the quote to Shakespeare.

I wasn’t able to find anything with any sort of cite to back it up.

10

Probably a rumor started by Elbert Hubbard.

11

Sure it’s Shakespeare. Joe Shakespeare down at the filling station.

I said that.

12

The way I heard it, there was always something about getting into my car.

13

I can’t tell you how many memes/pieces of wall art I’ve spotted that misattribute quotes. For example, attributing a quote from one of the Disney Pooh movies (which, don’t get me wrong, I love) to A.A. Milne. Or one from the Tim Burton Alice In Wonderland movie to Lewis Carroll. (“You’re entirely bonkers, but I’ll tell you a secret…all the best people are”, seems to be a favorite.)

But the all-time capper has to be attributing the quote “Dream in light years, challenge miles, walk step by step” to Shakespeare.

I mean…I’m just…EXACTLY HOW WOULD WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE KNOW WHAT A “LIGHT YEAR” EVEN WAS?!

14

15

Since almost all we know if Shakespeare is from his works, any quote without referencing the works chapter and verse is pretty suspect.

“It doesn’t take a genius to know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad”
Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3.

16

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring barque,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”

Eminem, The Real Slim Shady.

17

This isn’t Jacobean writing.

18

As Walter Raleigh once said, “Live, laugh, love.”

19

Yeah, it sounds like Hallmark

20

It appears to originate in a book called All In A Family by Michael Gaydos, 1977. At least, it’s the earliest I can find, and he doesn’t indicate that it’s a quote from someone else.