Dreams were with her the true realities; externals she accepted as other people accepted dreams—with difference. Visions are so wonderful that some people stop short of ascribing them directly to Heaven. The higher the intelligence, the more faith, and the less credulity: Paris rejects more than we, but outbelievers us all. Paris has a more comprehensive view of the moon, than the man in the moon himself. At school, friendship is a passion. It entrances the being; it tears the heart. All loves of after life can never bring its rapture, or its wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of jealousy or despair so crushing and so keen! There are jilts in friendship as well as in love; and, by the behavior of some people in both, one would almost imagine that they industriously sought to gain the affections of others with a view only of making the parties miserable. A treacherous friend is the most dangerous enemy. Friendship makes us warmly espouse the interest of others; but it is very cold to the gratification of their passions. Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking. That new sense which is the gift of sorrow,–that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to haggard men among the icebergs the mere presence of an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affections. The beauty and loveliness of friendship is too strong for dim eyes. It is the fate of most people who mingle with the World, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art.

Every person’s his own friend, except sometimes some people are nobody’s enemies but their own. True friendship disregards selfish considerations, and rather risks to offend by endeavoring to serve, than aims to please by concurring in what is injurious. Friends must be used as the musicians tune their strings, who finding them in a discord, do not break them, but either by intention or remission, frame them to a pleasant consent: or as riders handle their young colts, who finding them wild and untractable, bring them to a good pace, with a gentle rein, not with a sharp spur, or as the Scythians ruled their slaves not with cruel weapons but with the shew of small whips. The same may be said of friendship at first sight as of love at first sight as of love at first sight: it is the only true one, the only noble one. It bespeaks confidence. Who would go sounding his way into love or friendship, like a strange ship by night, into an enemy’s harbor? Love may do much, but friendship shall do wonders; friendship, the nobler passion of the mind, born with the heart, must still with that survive, when love, the silly baby of the fancy, can be no more.  Much less pleasure in being the master of acres than the friend of one. Generosity will not surely permit a worthy mind to doubt of its honorable and beneficent intentions: much less will it allow itself to shock, to offend any one; and, least of all, a person thrown by adversity, mishap, or accident, into its protection. It is the proud consciousness of certain qualities that it cannot reveal to the everyday World that gives to genius that shy, and reserved, and trouble air, which puzzles and flatters you when you encounter it.