Friendship exists outside our modern economy of scarcity... It's not about apportioning vanishing resources of time and energy. Friendship is a blessed relic of the ancient economy of the gift, and the time freely given to people dear to you actually creates magical abundance.
I have had, and may have still, a thousand friends, as they are called, in life, who are like one's partners in the waltz of this world -not much remembered when the ball is over.
Friends make pretence of following to the grave but before one is in it, their minds are turned and making the best of their way back to life and living people and things they understand.
It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.
Hast any philosophy in thee shepherd? .• • • • . . . He that wants money, means and content, is without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep, and a great cause of the night is lack of the sun; that he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding or comes of a very dull kindred.
It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men - so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship.
Not chance of birth or place has made us friends, Being oftentimes of different tongues and nations, But the endeavor for the selfsame ends, With the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations.