Michel de Montaigne

“ In this noble commerce, duties and benefits, nurses of the other friendships, do not merit even to be noticed; the entire confusion of our wills is the cause: for just as the friendship I have for myself is not aggravated by the assistance I give myself when in need, whatsoever the Stoics may say, and as I feel no gratitude for the service I do myself, so the union of such friends, being veritably perfect, makes them lose the sentiment of such duties, and hate and drive away those words of separation and difference, benefit, obligation, gratitude, entreaty, thankfulness, and the like. ”

“ Our souls drove so uniformly together; they considered each other with so ardent an affection, and with equal affection sounded everything to the very bottom of each other’s innermost parts, that not only did I know his soul as well as my own, but I should certainly have more willingly trusted myself to him than to myself. ”

“ Then too, to say the truth, the ordinary capacity of women is not sufficient for that confidence and self-disclosure which is the nurse of this sacred bond; and their souls seem not strong enough to sustain the pressure of a knot so tight and so lasting. And surely, except for that, if there might arise a free and voluntary relation, wherein not only the soul should have her entire enjoyment, but the body too have a share in the partnership, so that the whole man was engaged, it is certain that the friendship would be all the more full and complete ”

“ Qua dulcem curis miscat amaritiam,—
(For neither is the goddess unknown to us, who mingles a sweet bitterness with our pain)
is livelier, hotter, and sharper; but ’t is a daring and fickle flame, flickering and changeable, a fever flame, subject to increase and diminution, and touching us only at one corner. In friendship, there is a general and universal warmth, temperate moreover, and equable; a warmth that’s constant and serene, all sweetness and smoothness, with nothing sharp or poignant in it. ”

“ As for marriage, besides that it is a bargain whose entrance only is free, its duration being compelled and forced and dependent on circumstances beyond our choice, and a bargain too which is ordinarily made for other purposes, there come to light here many fortuitous kinks to disentangle, sufficient to break the thread and trouble the course of a lively affection: whereas in friendship, there is no other business or concern but friendship itself. ”

“ That is why the lawmakers, to honour marriage with some likeness to this divine union, forbid donations between husband and wife ; inferring by this that everything should belong to them both and that they have nothing to divide and separate.
If, in the friendship whereof I speak, one could give to the other, it would be he who received the favour that would oblige his fellow: because, since each seeks, more than aught else, to do good to the other, he who furnishes the occasion is the liberal one, giving his friend the satisfaction of effecting through him what he most desires. ”

“ Friendship feeds on confidence, and that cannot exist between them because of too great disparity, and perhaps it would interfere with their natural duties: for neither can all the secret thoughts of parents be confided to their children, for fear of creating an unseemly familiarity; nor can the advice and reproofs which are among the first offices of friendship, be exercised by children toward their parents. ”

“ In a word, all one can admit in favour of the Academy, is to say that it was a love terminating in friendship; which does not agree badly with the Stoic definition of love: Amorem conatum esse amicitia faciende ex pulchritudinis specie. (Love is the endeavour to form friendship out of an appearance of beauty.) ”

“ And besides, in so far as these are friendships which law and natural obligation impose on us, they are so much the less of our own choice and free will; and our free will has no product more punctually its own than affection and friendship. ”

“ Eudamidas the Corinthian had two friends, Charixenus a Sicyonian and Areteus a Corinthian: being about to die, and being poor, and his two friends rich, he made this will: “I give and bequeath to Areteus to keep my mother and to care for her in her old age; to Charixenus to have my daughter marry and to give her the largest dowry he can: and in case one of them should die, I substitute the survivor in his place.” ”

“ But at the same time those who accuse this reply of sedition, do not well understand this mystery, and do not presuppose, which is the truth, that he kept Gracchus’s desires in his pocket, both by power of friendship and by understanding him: they were more friends than citizens, more friends than friends or enemies of their country, than friends of ambition and of disturbance. ”

“ For, in truth, if I compare all the rest of my life, although by the grace of God I have passed a pleasant one, easy, and save for the loss of such a friend, exempt from heavy affliction, full of tranquillity of spirit, for I have accepted my natural and individual advantages, without seeking others, if, I say, I compare it all with the four years it was given me to enjoy the sweet company and society of that person, it is only smoke, it is only dark and tedious night. ”

“ And that other Greek license is justly abhorrent to our customs: the which, moreover, since, by their practice, it required a so necessary disparity of age and difference of vocation between the lovers, also did not quite respond to the perfect union and agreement that we are here demanding: Quis est enim iste amor amicitia? Cur neque deformem adolescentem quisquam amat, neque formosum senem? (What then is this love in friendship? Why does nobody ever love an ill-favoured youth or a handsome old man?) ”

“ As everything is really common between them, desires, thoughts, opinions, property, wives, children, honour, and life, and their agreement gives them but one soul in two bodies, according to the very apt definition of Aristotle, they are not able to lend or give each other anything. ”

“ For which reason they prefer the beloved, and prove that the gods also prefer him; and severely reprove the poet Æschylus because in the love of Achilles and Patroclus he gave the rôle of lover to Achilles, who was in the first beardless verdure of his youth and the most beautiful of the Greeks. ”

“ This gift seems to me fitting for you, because there are few ladies in France who have better judgement, and who make a more apt use of poetry; and besides, because there are none who can render it alive and lively as you do by those beautiful, rich harmonies, wherewith, in addition to a million beauties, nature has endowed you Madame, these verses merit your cherishing ”

“ There have been nations where it was the custom for children to kill their parents, and others where the parents killed their children, to avoid the hinderance they may sometimes cause one another; and by nature one depends on the ruin of the other. Philosophers have been found who despised this natural tie: witness Aristippus, who, when importuned about the affection he owed his children as being issued from him, fell to spitting, saying that that was just as much issued from him ”

“ The rest of that story agrees very well with what I said: for Eudamidas holds it a kindness and favour to his friends to make use of them at need; he leaves them heirs to this liberality of his which consists of putting into their hands the means to do something for him: and without a doubt the strength of friendship is more richly shown in his action than in Areteus’s. ”

“ It wasn't bad, his saying, “if I found,” for we easily find men fit for a superficial acquaintance: but for this, wherein one negotiates the very bottom of oneself, wherein nothing is left over, certainly there is need for all the springs to be true and perfectly reliable. ”

“ In relations that hold together by only one end, we need not regard any imperfections except those that particularly concern that end. It makes no difference what my doctor’s religion is, and my lawyer’s ”