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Ancient Books ~ Politics, Philosophy & Liberty Some Fruits Of Solitude ~ FRIENDSHIP | < Last - Next > FRIENDSHIPFriendship is an union of spirits, a marriage of hearts, and the bond thereof virtue. There can be no friendship where there is no freedom. Friendship loves a free air, and will not be penned up in strait and narrow enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is 'twill easily forgive, and forget, too, upon small acknowledgements. Friends are true twins in soul; they sympathise in everything, and have the same love and aversion. One is not happy without the other, nor can either be miserable alone. As if they could change bodies, they take their turns in pain as well as in pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse conditions. What one enjoys the other cannot want. Like the primitive Christians, they have all things in common, and no property but in one another. They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship. If absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die yet their friendship and society are in the best sense ever present, because immortal. Some Fruits Of Solitude ~ FRIENDSHIP | < Last - Next > |
