Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone — but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
--
"On The Conduct of Life" (1822), reprinted in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt (1902-1904)William Hazlitt
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Part of them (citizens of Fiji) wishes to believe that we are all one people and as a nation must move forward together. Another part of them is fearful that the hand they extend in friendship will be either spurned or crushed.
Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi
Purpose is plain.
Endurance of friendship does not depend
Upon ourselves, but upon circumstance.
But circumstance is not undetermined.
Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended.
Sooner shall enmity turn to alliance.
The enmity that never knew friendship
Can sooner know accord.Thomas Stearns (T. S.) Eliot
The philosophers who wished us to have the gods for our friends rank the friendship of the holy angels in the fourth circle of society, advancing now from the three circles of society on earth to the universe, and embracing heaven itself. And in this friendship we have indeed no fear that the angels will grieve us by their death or deterioration. But as we cannot mingle with them as familiarly as with men (which itself is one of the grievances of this life), and as Satan, as we read, sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light, to tempt those whom it is necessary to discipline, or just to deceive, there is great need of God’s mercy to preserve us from making friends of demons in disguise, while we fancy we have good angels for our friends; for the astuteness and deceitfulness of these wicked spirits is equalled by their hurtfulness.
Augustine of Hippo
Friendship is a pact, a convention. Two beings tacitly promise never to broadcast what each really thinks of the other. A kind of alliance based on compromises. When one of them publicly calls attention to the other's defects, the pact is declared null and void, the alliance broken. No friendship lasts if one of the partners ceases to play the game. In other words, no friendship tolerates an exaggerated proportion of honesty.
Emil Cioran
It is often maintained that friendship between men and women can never approach the high level of friendship between men. How, it is objected, could sensuality not be present in such relationships? if it were not present, would not the least coquettish of women feel herself humiliated? It is contrary to every natural impulse for a man to associate with a woman as freely as is usual in friendship without occasionally being conscious of physical desire, and if he is conscious of it, the whole machinery of the passions is set in motion.
Andre Maurois
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