On Friendship (Penguin Great Ideas)

Yet it is far from being the best he was capable of.

[Love is the striving to establish friendship on the external signs of beauty.]*

Aristotle says that good lawgivers have shown more concern for friendship than for justice.

Not one of his actions could be set before me – no matter what it looked like – without my immediately discovering its motive.

one soul in bodies twain,

Moreover what we normally call friends and friendships are no more than acquaintances and familiar relationships bound by some chance or some suitability, by means of which our souls support each other. In the friendship which I am talking about, souls are mingled and confounded in so universal a blending that they efface the seam which joins them

hoping by this mental alliance to strike a more firm and durable match.

Mediating this union there was, beyond all my reasoning, beyond all that I can say specifically about it, some inexplicable force of destiny.

[Whilst I am in my right mind, there is nothing I will compare with a delightful friend.]*