What men call friendship is no more than a partnership, a mutual care of interests, an exchange of favors - in a word, it is a sort of traffic, in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.
Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.
What men have given the name of friendship to is nothing but an alliance, a reciprocal accommodation of interest, an exchange of good offices; in it is nothing but a system of traffic, in which self-love always proposes to itself some advantage.
Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wish it were possible.
There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.
Love is a blazing, crackling, green-wood flame, as much smoke as flame; friendship, married friendship particularly, is a steady,intense, comfortable fire. Love, in courtship, is friendship in hope; in matrimony, friendship upon proof.
In all holiest and most unselfish love, friendship is the purest element of the affection. No love in any relation of life can be at its best if the element of friendship be lacking. And no love can transcend, in its possibilities of noble and ennobling exaltation, a love that is pure friendship.
Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.
Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love; it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.
The strong bond of friendship is not always a balanced equation; friendship is not always about giving and taking in equal shares. Instead, friendship is grounded in a feeling that you know exactly who will be there for you when you need something, no matter what or when.
The two greatest enemies of the individual in the modern world are communism and psychiatry. Each wages a relentless war against that which makes a person an individual: communism against the ownership of property, psychiatry against the ownership of the self (mind and body). Communists criminalize the autonomous use of capital and labor, and harshly punish those who "traffic" in the black market, especially in foreign currencies. Psychiatrists criminalize the autonomous use of the self, and harshly punish those who "traffic" in self-abuse, especially in self-medication and self-destruction.
I love traffic. It's fantastic. New York traffic is so relaxing.
The Church imposes nothing; she only proposes, she proposes like a lover to the beloved.
True friendship is self-love at second-hand.
Friendship has splendors that love knows not. It grows stronger when crossed, whereas obstacles kill love. Friendship resists time, which wearies and severs couples. It has heights unknown to love.
A lot of times, in our culture and our society, we put romantic love somehow on a higher plane than self-love and friendship love. You can't do that. You have to honor and really fully invest in all these different loving relationships.