On friendship

[fairyfeline]

Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fiber of the human heart.  The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of god, which many summers and many winters must ripen.  We seek our friend not sacredly, but with an adulterate passion, which  would appropriate him to ourselves.  In vain.  The good spirit of our life has no heaven which is the price of rashness. Fortunately, bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk, in which a delicate organization is protected from premature ripening.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson