But even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognized by the police, there must be degrees in the freedom and sympathy realized, and some principle to guide simple folk in their selection.
Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends.
I have always laid it down as a maxim -and found it justified by experience -that a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist between two of the same sex -but then with the condition that they never have made or are to make love to each other.
I want someone to laugh with me, someone to be grave with me, someone to please me and help my discrimination with his or her own remark, and at times, no doubt, to admire my acuteness and penetration.
I don't think life offers any greater experience than the joyful sense of recognition when one finds in a new acquaintance a real friend, or when an old relationship deepens into friendship, or when one finds an old friendship intact despite the passage of years and many absences.