The sympathetic friendship of a beautiful woman appeased instead of inflaming him, A woman's friendship is, as a rule, the legacy of love or the alms of indifference. Female friendship, indeed, is to a man the bulwark, sweetener, ornament, of his existence. To his mental culture it is invaluable: without it all his knowledge of books will never give him knowledge of the world. Beuve Author Michael de Montaigne Comte The only true and firm friendship is that Augusta between man and woman, because it is the only one free from all possible competition. What distinguishes this platonic affection from ordinary friendship, is, that the magic of imagination, with a religious emphasis is in it. One should choose for a wife only such a woman as he would choose for a friend, were she a man. I have always laid it down as a maxim, and found it justified by experience, that a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist between two of the same sex; but with this condition, that they never have made, or are to make, love with each other. William Joseph Lord Byron The reason why so few women are touched by friendship is that they find it dull when they have experienced love. Francois Thomas auley in "History of England" It is a common observation that differences of taste, understanding, and disposi-ton Maction are no impediments to friendship, and that the closest intimacies often exist between minds each of which supplies what is wanting in the other. Lady Churchill was loved and even worshipped by Anne. The princess could not live apart from the object of her romantic fondness. She married, and was a faithful and even an affectionate wife; but Prince George, a dull man, whose chief pleasures were derived from his dinner and his bottle, acquired over her no influence comparable to that exercised by her female friend, and soon gave himself up with stupid patience to the dominion of that vehement and commanding spirit by which his wife was governed. A woman friend! He that believes that weakness The men are the occasion the women do not love each other. To speak the truth, I never yet knew a tolerable woman to be fond of her sex. There is no friendship equal to that of a woman. Fletcher Jean Jonathan Alger |