When I was young I thought of friendship as a matter of total loyalty and unchanging preference and I was often disappointed. But as an adult I had come to see that it was more the refraction of some total faithfulness and joy of which we all had some primordial notion. The exchange of trust and the experience of understanding between two people was like a sign or witness to the possibilitity of eternal caring and understanding and communication.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger.
And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were.
There is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. What has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us?