The quote "A friend is somebody who knows everything about you and loves you anyway" captures the essence of what makes friendship so precious.
This is very true. There's also another quote about friends: Friends are the family we choose.
We're born into the families to which we belong, and we can't change that. However, we can chose to be friends with people who help us in our development and growth as people. We don't need that many friends, but the friends we have need to be the kind of people who ride into battle with us, or talk sense into us by telling us what we need to hear while the rest of the world tells us what we want to hear.
In some cases, we develop a friendship so strong with someone that we want that person to become our mate and eventually part of us. If that friend feels the same way about us, then we are truly blessed.
How many times have we heard stories about people being forced to distance themselves from others because of offensive and "offensive" social media content? Even people considered to be good friends end up distancing themselves from those people. A real friend would have stood by that person even while slapping that friend upside the head for being an oaf on social media. Anyone can be a friend to another when times are good. True friends are discovered when times are bad.