We rejoice in the joys of our friends as much as we do our own, and we are equally grieved at their sorrows. Wherefore the wise people will feel toward their friends as they do toward themselves, and whatever labor they would encounter with a view to their own pleasure, they will encounter also for the sake of their friends.
The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it might deify both.
My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself,I find them, or rather not I, but the Deity in me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of the individual character, relation, age, sex, circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one.
Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.