The relationships between earthly souls are as complex and multiform as those between heavenly bodies.
In one thing does friendship excel love: it is always reciprocal; one friend presupposes another. Not so a lover.
Friendship is largely a masculine sentiment;—except among schoolgirls.
The friendship that exists between a man and a woman should be called by another name. It cannot be wholly Platonic (3); it need not be wholly Dantesque. Yet women generally strive to make it the one; and men often try to make it the other. And yet again,
How many women there be, would, if they could, transmute love into friendship! That is to say,
Women regard a man's friendship as a delicate flattery to themselves; yet they instinctively know, though they try hard to forget, that a man's friendship for a woman is extremely likely to transcend the bounds of friendship.
If only friendship would keep within bounds! How many women deceive themselves into thinking that were devoutly to be wished! Yet probably, as a matter of fact,
The very woman who avers she regrets that your friendship is not mere Platonic, would resent the Platonism did it exist. Possibly not every woman will understand this. Assuredly no woman will admit it. And yet,
It is impossible to conjecture in what an exchange of confidences may terminate: it may be a kiss, or it may be a quarrel. But
Confidences are evoked rather by friendship than by love: