Friendship
as Love
and Brotherhood and Friendship as Play, Complicity and Shared
Joy
We like to place friendship in its highest stage. «Nobody
would choose to live without friends even if he had all the
other good things of life», says Aristotle, illustrating our
penchant to drive friendship to its top and most demanding
expressions, where it mimics love.
Friendship may indeed be a form of love and fraternity in
the deepest sense of the words. There are many definitions
of friendship in these very terms:
A faithful friend is the medicine of life
Bible, Ecclesiastes
Friends cannot lend or give anything to each other. (…)
Everything should belong to each of them.
(…)
The union of two such friends being truly perfect, it causes
them to lose the sense of such duties, and to detest and
banish as between themselves those words implying separation
and difference – benefit, obligation, gratitude, entreaty,
thanks, and their like.
Montaigne, 1533-1592, French writer, Essays
And yet friendship may also not involve love. Currently,
friendship stands at a less demanding stage: the one of
conviviality, of social interactivity, of shared joy.
This second view of friendship doesn’t truly diminish it. We
need our spaces of conviviality, of play, of joy, of social
interaction, as much as we need love. Our nature doesn’t
dispense it.
Friendship feeds on communication.
Montaigne, 1533-1592, French writer, Essays
Human beings also live of music, contemplation, flowers, smiles.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Método V
To like and dislike the same things, that is indeed true
friendship.
Sallust, 86-35 b.C., Roman historian, Jughurta
To share the happy and sad moments, to confess secrets and
intimate projects, all these is a major part of friendship.
A. Rievaulx, 1109-1167, French religious, L'Amitié
spirituelle
But that doesn’t alter much our way of seeing things. We
persevere seeing friendship as having high standards of
brotherhood, complicity and help. And when these last dimensions
– very close to love, or mingled with it – fail, we regret it,
and consider the very fact as treason:
What is commonly called friendship isn’t but a society, a
combination of interests, a change of good intentions; a
commerce, where self-interest wants to win something.
Rochefoucauld, 1613-1680, French writer, Maxims
My dear friends, there is no such thing as a friend.
E.
Kant, 1724-1804, German philosopher, Fundamentos da Filosofia
dos costumes
Extreme and delicate friendship can be wounded by a thorn of a
rose.
S. Chamfort, 1740-1794, French writer, Maximes et pensées
As love, friendship also involves jealously and
susceptibilities.
Eric Blondel, French writer, L'Amour
A true friendship is as rare as a black swan.
E. Kant, 1724-1804, German philosopher, Fundamentos da
Filosofia dos costumes
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Quotations
It’s good to have friends
Of all the heavenly gifts that mortal men commend,
What trusty treasure in the world can countervail a friend?
N. Grimald, 1519-1562, English poet, Of friendship
It is a good thing to be rich and a good thing to be strong, but
it is a better thing to be loved by many friends
Attributed to
Euripides, 480-406 b. C., Greek writer
Friendship redoubles joys and cut grieves in halves.
A crowd is not company, faces are but a gallery of pictures, and
talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
F. Bacon, 1561-1626, English philosopher and politician, Essays
Hell is all in the word solitude.
Victor Hugo, 1802-1885, French writer, in E. Morin Method V
Quotations
Friendship features
We need to know to feel love to well know friendship.
S. Chamfort, 1740-1794, French writer, Maximes et pensées
What’s friendship can’t do, when guided by love?
Jean Racine, 1639-1699, French poet, Andromaque
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
Ralph W. Emerson, 1803-1882, American writer, Essays
These and similar tokens of friendship, which spring
spontaneously from the hearts of those who love and are loved in
return - in countenance, tongue, eyes, and a thousand
ingratiating gestures - were all so much fuel to melt our souls
together, and out of the many made us one.
Saint Augustine, 354-430, Christian theologian, Confessions
Friendship is the path by which each of us learns to know
oneself as another self.
Paul Ricœur, 1913, French philosopher, Soi- même comme un
autre
The knowing is not only in books, labs or files; it’s also in
friendship, and acts through it.
Claude Roy, 1915-1997, French writer, Les rencontres des
jours
It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be
deceived by them.
Rochefoucauld, 1613-1680, French writer, Maximes
Gratitude is the secret of friendship, not because we feel
indebted to our friends, since we owe them nothing, but because
we share with them an overabundance of common, reciprocal joy.
André Comte-Sponville, French philosopher, A short Treatise
on the Great Virtues
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a
joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Mark Twain, 1835-1919, American writer, Following the Equator
The best mirror is an old friend.
George Herbert, 1593-1633, English poet, Temple
A brother may not be a friend, but a friend will always be a
brother.
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, American scientist and politician,
Poor Richard's Almanac
True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and
withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the
appellation.
George Washington, 1732-1799, 1st American President,
Letter Jan. 15, 1783
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Love and Friendship? See also:
Friendship,
Treason, False Friends and Family
Friendship,
lovers and sex
Friendship in Literature
and Philosophy
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