Platonic friendship

“ The world's platonic attachments are laughable enough. You have taught me that the ideal of friendship is possible—when we find two who are capable of a disinterested esteem. The rest of life is duty; duty to parents, duty to country. But friendship is the holiday of those who can be friends. Wives are plentiful, friends are rare. I know how rare!"
Laetitia swallowed her thoughts as they sprang up. ”

“ A Platonic friendship is perhaps only possible when one or other of the Platonists is in love with a third person. ”

“ The days of chivalry were not so far distant, and the subtle blending of exalted sentiment with thoughtful companionship, which revived their spirit in a new form, was too marked a feature of the time to be overlooked. These friendships, half intellectual, half poetic, and quite platonic, were mostly formed in mature life, on a basis of mental sympathy. "There is a taste in pure friendship which those who are born mediocre do not reach," said La Gruyere. Mme. de Lambert speaks of it as "the product of a perfect social culture, and, of all affections, that which has most charm." ”

“ A man never has a platonic friendship with a woman it is impossible for him to love. [Pg 19] Cupid is the high-priest at these rites of reading aloud and discussing everything under the sun. The two become so closely bound that one arrow strikes both, and often the happiest marriages are those whose love has so begun, for when the Great Passion dies, as it sometimes does, sympathy and mutual understanding may yield a generous measure of content. ”

“ For as people are beginning to see that the sexes form in a certain sense a continuous group, so they are beginning to see that Love and Friendship—which have been so often set apart from each other as things distinct—are in reality closely related and shade imperceptibly into each other. Women are beginning to demand that Marriage shall mean Friendship as well as Passion; that a comrade-like Equality shall be included in the word Love; and it is recognised that from the one extreme of a ‘Platonic’ friendship (generally between persons of the same sex) ”

“ It saves us both a deal of trouble. I start at once on platonic friendship, and ask her questions about twins, avoiding sausages and coke. She thinks me an unusually interesting man, and I am less bored than otherwise I might be. ”

“ Handsome, intellectual young men of at least twenty years, who must be of my own social station, seem to me to be suited rather for platonic love; but with them I satisfy myself completely with a straightforward, though ideal, friendship, which seldom goes beyond a few kisses. ”

“ CHARLES READE AND LAURA SEYMOUR
The instances of distinguished men, or of notable women, who have broken through convention in order to find a fitting mate, are very numerous. A few of these instances may, perhaps, represent what is usually called a Platonic union. But the evidence is always doubtful. The world is not possessed of abundant charity, nor does human experience lead one to believe that intimate relations between a man and a woman are compatible with Platonic friendship. ”

“ Truly understood, the Platonic sentiment does not denote love, in the distinctive significance of that word, but a pure and fervent friendship. Ideal love is ordinary love taken up, out of material organs and relations, into pure mentality, with the preserved correspondence of all it had on that lower plane where it naturally lives. Platonic love is a high personal passion, like the former, with the exception that no physical influence of sex enters into it; imagination exalting the soul, instead of inflaming the senses. ”

“ Certain slow-going men are able to maintain for life a strong but strictly platonic attachment for certain women. If any warmer impulse or more powerful feeling give threatening notice of arising, it is kept in due subjection and a wholesome state of coolness, perhaps by its very hopelessness even if returned, perhaps by the fear or the knowledge that it would be ill-received, and that the only passport to the pleasant friendship so delighted in is in this calm and sober platonism. ”

“ It deceives no one, and it does not make right that which, without it, would be improper.
Platonic friendships—that is, friendships between men and women without the element of physical love—are rare; rarer, indeed, than they should be. ”

“ Platonic love is the marriage of souls for the production of spiritual offspring, ideas, feelings, and volitions. The first looks ultimately to the perpetuation of life by providing new receptacles for it; the last looks ultimately to the enhancement of life by a sympathetic reflection of it. The children of actual love are organic reproductions of the being of the parents; the children of Platonic love are spiritual reflections of the being of the parents. The perfected offspring of love are boys and girls; the perfected offspring of friendship are states of consciousness. ”

“ But if you listen to me, in the first place, I, in my intercourse with you, shall not merely regard present enjoyment, but also future advantage, being not mastered by love, but my own master; nor for small causes taking violent dislikes, but even when the cause is great, slowly laying up little wrath—unintentional offences I shall forgive, and intentional ones I shall try to prevent; and these are the marks of a friendship which will last. Do you think that a lover only can be a firm friend? ”

“ She gets to know her husband’s every word, every mood, every gesture by heart. To call his presence companionship, or the boon that comes with friendship, would be to cast a slur on all companionship and friendship for ever. ”

“ And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. ”

“ It ever will evade. We are drawn together because we are drawn. We are content to abide together just because we are content. We feel that we have reached a certain harbour, after much or little drifting, just because it is for that haven, after all, that we have been moving on and on; with all the irresistible pilotry of the wide ocean-wash friendly to us. It is as foolish to make too much of the definite in friendship as it is in love—which is the highest expression of companionship. Friendship?—love? ”

“ She knew, she felt, that it was perfectly possible to be much pleased with, to be fond of, to seek companionship with, a person of the other sex, without one other feeling, without one other wish, than those comprised within the simple name of friendship. ”

“ On this refined affection, love, which is but a more interesting and tender kind of friendship, ought to be founded. The same virtues, the same dispositions and qualities which are necessary in a friend, are still more requisite in a companion for life. ”

“ and to have the same desires and the same aversions, is assuredly a firm bond of friendship. ”

“ Thus these companions in early studies—each afterwards foremost in important duties, pursuing divergent paths, yet always drawn towards each other by the attractions of mutual friendship—again meet and lie down together in the same sweet earth, in the shadow of kindred trees, through which the same birds sing a perpetual requiem. ”

“ In other friendships you must proceed bridle in hand; in the more exalted one, the offices and benefits which support other intimacies do not deserve even to be named. The perfect union of the friends causes them to hate and banish all those words that imply division and difference, such as benefit, obligation, gratitude, entreaty, thanks, and the like. All is in common with them; and, if in such a friendship one could give to the other, it would be him who received that would benefit his companion. ”

“ They may live apart and have little intercourse, but when they meet, the old tie is as strong as ever according to the common saying, they find one another always the same. The greatest good of friendship is not daily intercourse, for circumstances rarely admit of this ”

“ I suppose that equality of years inclines them to the same pleasures, and similarity begets friendship; yet you may have more than enough even of this; and verily constraint is always said to be grievous. Now the lover is not only unlike his beloved, but he forces himself upon him. For he is old and his love is young, and neither day nor night will he leave him if he can help; necessity and the sting of desire drive him on, and allure him with the pleasure which he receives from seeing, hearing, touching, perceiving him in every way. ”

“ If love is extinguished between a married couple, cannot friendship and confidence still survive? Are we not two companions united in making the same journey? Can it be said that during the journey the one must never hold out his hand to the other to raise up a comrade or to prevent a comrade’s fall? ”

“ It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act. We are all Mussulmen and fatalists in this respect. Impatient and uncertain lovers think that they must say or do something kind whenever they meet; they must never be cold. But they who are Friends, do not do what they think they must, but what they must. Even their Friendship is in one sense but a sublime phenomenon to them.
The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such terms as these. ”

“ These details, I confess, are not very amusing, but they serve to demonstrate that the former part of our education was well directed, since being, at such an early age, the absolute masters of our time, we found no inclination to abuse it; and so little in want of other companions, that we constantly neglected every occasion of seeking them. When taking our walks together, we observed their diversions without feeling any inclination to partake of them. Friendship so entirely occupied our hearts, that, pleased with each other's company the simplest pastimes were sufficient to delight us. ”

“ The confidence which new friends repose in each other usually developes itself by degrees. Common occupation and tastes are the first things in which a mutual harmony shows itself; then the mutual communication generally extends over past and present passions, especially over love affairs; but it is a lower depth which opens itself, if the connexion is to be perfected; the religious sentiments, the affairs of the heart which relate to the imperishable, are the things which both establish the foundation and adorn the summit of a friendship. ”

“ Still more does the sister of a couple of seasons wonder at the ardour and fidelity of buttercup friendships. In after-life men have friends and women have lovers. The home and the husband and the child absorb the whole tenderness of a woman where they only temper and moderate the old external affections of her spouse. But then girl-friendship is a much more vivid and far more universal thing than friendship among boys. ”

“ My careful heart was free again, — O friend, my bosom said, Through thee alone the sky is arched, Through thee the rose is red, All things through thee take nobler form, And look beyond the earth, And is the mill-round of our fate A sun-path in thy worth. Me too thy nobleness has taught To master my despair; The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy friendship fair. ”

“ I have no sympathy with free love, if it means that people should take up with each other although they presume they will tire of one another. It seems to me that even to break an ordinary platonic engagement is a slight stain on the one who breaks it. ”

“ With how tender a gradation the first passion of delight in possession had softened into friendship, and the calm love of happily wedded people, and the delicious intimate camaraderie which springs of the unbroken companionship of board and bed, and the sharing of every little confidence of life! ”

“ Perhaps Jean Paul’s maxim that friends may have everything in common except their room accounts for its existence. Brothers and sisters are commonly too much alike in their thoughts and tastes to become friends, in the special sense of the word. Hence it is that there is apt to be a deeper attachment between those brothers and sisters who have frequently been separated by school-terms than among those who are always together. For in friendship, as in love, a short absence is advantageous. ”

“ For men of the same tribe or family little value one another when dangers press; but a band cemented together by friendship grounded upon love is never to be broken, and invincible; since the lovers, ashamed to be base in sight of their beloved, and the beloved before their lovers, willingly rush into danger for the relief of one another. ”

“ To the tie, to the unity, to the common life, to the union of friends, you can be loyal. Without such loyalty friendship consists only of its routine of more or less attractive private sentiments and mere meetings, each one of which is one more chance experience, heaped together with other chance experiences. But with such true loyalty your friendship becomes, at least in ideal, a new life—a life that neither of you could have alone; a life that is not a mere round of separate private amusements, but that belongs to a new type of dual yet unified personality. ”

“ Usually from this beginning a real fellowship between the two persons will grow up which involves nearly their whole personalities. Many people who fell in love at first sight have made splendid marriages. But it does not always happen so. Sometimes this physical attraction remains the only bond between two people. Sometimes in the other departments of life they actually fret and annoy one another. Sometimes a friendship refuses to grow up. Sometimes even while the attraction still exists contempt lurks behind it. ”