“A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know of stopping and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind. You may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs, coastoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.” – Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, from his essay “Of Friendship”
“Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of rivals endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 1900-1944, Wind, Sand, and Stars
“The English word ‘free,’ for instance, is derived from a German root meaning ‘friend,’ since to be free meant to be able to make friends, to keep promises, to live within a community of equals. This is why freed slaves in Rome became citizens: to be free, by definition, mean to be anchored in a civic community, with all the rights and responsibilities that this entailed.” – David Graeber, 1961-present, Debt