A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.

The earliest form found is a ten-year-old schoolboy’s definition, quoted by Agnes Deans Cameron, principal of South Park School in Victoria, British Columbia, in her piece ‘Humor in School’ in The Century Magazine, April 1905 (section ‘In Lighter Vein’, p. 960): ‘A single definition and I am done. It is the most soul-satisfying conception of a friend that it has been my fortune to meet with. May its ten-year-old originator find a David for his Jonathan. “A friend is a fellow who knows all about you, but likes you.”’ (checked in the archive.org scan). Newspapers reprinted it within weeks (Salt Lake Tribune, 4 June 1905, which credits it to ‘a Manchester schoolboy in an essay the other day’: ‘A friend is a person who knows all about you, and likes you just the same’, per Barry Popik, not seen), and Volney Streamer’s anthology What Makes a Friend? printed it, credited to ‘A Ten-year-old Schoolboy’, in its tenth edition (New York: Brentano’s, 1907, p. 38; checked in the Library of Congress copy on archive.org; the ninth edition of 1904 does not have it). Hubbard’s reworded version, ‘Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you’, is cited from The Philistine of August 1910 (p. 65) and A Thousand & One Epigrams (1911, p. 88) by Barry Popik, and is in the Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams (1923) and The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927, p. 112), both checked in archive.org scans. Hubbard’s line adds ‘still’ and credits no one; how he came by the saying is not documented. Wikiquote lists the ‘still loves you’ form under Hubbard’s Misattributed quotes and gives his ‘still likes you’ line from the Note Book. The ‘someone ... still loves you’ wording was not found in any dated print source among those searched (newspaper archives could not be searched); it is a modern blend of the boy’s opening (‘A friend is ...’) and Hubbard’s ‘still’. Searched: Wikiquote (Elbert Hubbard), barrypopik.com, archive.org full text of The Century Magazine (April 1905), Streamer’s What Makes a Friend? (1904 and 1907 editions), the Roycroft Dictionary (1923), the Note Book (1927) and Hubbard’s Motto Book (1909, which does not have it); no Quote Investigator article on it turned up in a web search; HathiTrust, Chronicling America and Google Books could not be searched from here.

One of the most liked quotes on Goodreads (84,547 likes on its quote page in October 2026), credited to Elbert Hubbard without a source, and a staple of friendship cards and Friendship Day posts. Hubbard did print a version of it: ‘Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you’, in The Philistine in 1910 and in later collections of his epigrams. But the saying was already in print five years earlier as a schoolboy’s definition, and the popular wording, with ‘someone’ and ‘loves’, is neither his nor the boy’s.

A real friend has seen your faults and failings and is fond of you anyway: friendship is affection that survives being known.

If you quote Hubbard, quote his words (‘Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you’) and know that the saying was already in print in 1905 as a schoolboy’s definition. The popular ‘still loves you’ wording is not his.

• The form on posters and social mediaA friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you. The Goodreads form, credited to Elbert Hubbard with no source (84,547 likes, October 2026; #18 among Goodreads’ popular quotes). Hubbard printed ‘Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you’. Where it was seen
• A misquotationA friend is someone who knows all about you but likes you anyway. A common later form without Hubbard’s name; Barry Popik cites it from the Boston Record American, 6 October 1965 (not seen here). Where it was seen

Love, Friendship, Emotions

• To love someone means to see him as God intended him. (misattributed) Fyodor Dostoevsky
• You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. (not found) Dr. Seuss
• Loving someone means giving them power to destroy you and trusting they won’t. (not found) Fyodor Dostoevsky
• A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The language of friendship is not words but meanings. Henry David Thoreau

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elbert_Hubbard (Misattributed: the ‘still loves you’ form; Note Book (1927), p. 112: the ‘still likes you’ line)
• barrypopik.com/blog/a_friend_is_someone_who_knows_all_about_you_but_likes_you_anyway (dated citations, 1905 to 2004)
• archive.org/details/century-illustrated-monthly-magazine_1905-04_69_6 (The Century Magazine, April 1905, p. 960)
• archive.org/details/whatmakesfriendd00stre (Streamer, What Makes a Friend?, 1907, p. 38)
• archive.org/details/whatmakesfriendd00str (Streamer, What Makes a Friend?, ninth edition, 1904: not present)
• archive.org/details/roycroftdictiona00hubb (Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams, 1923)
• archive.org/details/notebookofelbert00hubb (The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard, 1927, p. 112)
• goodreads.com/quotes/16949-a-friend-is-someone-who-knows-all-about-you-and (the circulating form)

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” Attributed to Elbert Hubbard. No. An unnamed ten-year-old schoolboy, quoted by Agnes Deans Cameron in ‘Humor in School’, The Century Magazine (April 1905) wrote it, not Hubbard. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/a-friend-is-someone-who-knows-all-about-you/ (checked 21 October 2026).

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