On Friendship (Penguin Great Ideas)

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

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

one soul in bodies twain,

For the perfect friendship which I am talking about is indivisible: each gives himself so entirely to his friend that he has nothing left to share with another: on the contrary, he grieves that he is not two-fold, three-fold or four-fold and that he does not have several souls, several wills, so that he could give them all to the one he loves.

This friendship has had no ideal to follow other than itself; no comparison but with itself.

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

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

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

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