Of Friendship

There is nothing to which nature seems so much to have inclined us, as to society. And Aristotle says that the good legislators had more respect to friendship than to justice. Now the most supreme point of its perfection is this: to be friends.

For generally, all those that pleasure, profit, public or private interest forge and nourish, are so much the less beautiful and generous, and so much the less friendships, by how much they mix another cause, and design, and fruit in friendship, than itself.

In the friendship I speak of, our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them, and cannot find it again. If you press me to tell why I loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed, except by answering: because it was he, because it was I.

“Beyond all my discourse, and what I can say in particular, there was I know not what inexplicable and fated power that brought on this union.”

We sought each other before we saw each other, and by the reports we heard of one another, which wrought upon our affections more than, in reason, mere reports should do; I think it was by some secret appointment of heaven. We embraced in our names. And at our first meeting, which was by chance at a great feast and gathering in the city, we found ourselves so taken with each other, so well acquainted, and so bound together, that from that time forward nothing was so near to us as one another.