HKB
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Often appears with: friendship and loyalty · will, choice, and freedom · the rambler · table of contents · spiritual selfhood · spiritual distance · speech and privacy · solitude and conscience · sexuality and desire · sexual desire and restraint · self-possession · reverence
Usually: exhortation (3) · reflection (2) · verse (2) · detachment (2) · lament (2) · argument (1) · list or catalogue (1) · betrayal (1) · grief and loss (1) · reconciliation (1)
“Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, doth the discerning one go unwillingly into its waters.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None · observation
“haec dea non stabili quam sit leuis orbe fatetur quem summo dubium sub pede semper habet.” Ovid, The Last Poems of Ovid · insight
“Friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays — First Series · precept
“There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until in their dialogue each stands for the whole world.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays — First Series · insight
Zarathustra contrasts the solitary anchorite with the need for a “friend,” arguing that the friend is the third presence who prevents self-talk from sinking, and that true friendship requires one to be capable of enmity.
XIII. CHASTITY. I love the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too many of the lustful. Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the dreams of a lustful woman? And just look at these men: their eye saith it—they know nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman. Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth hath still spirit in it! Would that ye wer…
A table of contents lists Book the First chapter headings for Montaigne’s Essays, including topics such as sorrow, friendship, idleness, liars, constancy, education, and philosophy as learning to die.
CHAP. I. That men by various ways arrive at the same end. II. Of Sorrow. III. That our affections carry themselves beyond us. IV. That the soul discharges her passions upon false objects, where the true are wanting. V. Whether the governor of a place besieged ought himself to go out to parley. VI. That the hour of parley is dangerous. VII. That the intention is judge…
A verse and epistle to The Rambler argue that when affliction presses people, they may naturally complain, especially when their troubles seem unlikely to be remedied.
et titulis, es fascibus olim Major habebatur dornandi gloria: solum Poscimus, ut coenes civiliter. Hoc face, et esto, Esto, ut nunc multi, dives tibi, pauper amicis. Juv. Sat. v. 108. No man expects (for who so much a sot Who has the times he lives in so forgot?) What Seneca, what Piso us'd to send, To raise or to support a sinking friend. Those godlike men, to wanting virtue kind, Bounty well plac'd, preferr'd…
Emerson argues that true friendship requires reverent distance, magnanimity, spiritual treatment, and long probation, discouraging possessiveness and close personal intrusion while praising spiritual correspondence through letters.
be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which, beneath these disparities, unites them. He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is sure that greatness and goodness are always economy; who is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. Let him not intermeddle with this. Leave to the diamond its ag…
Emerson continues, saying mutual peace and respect come only when each person stands for the whole world in dialogue; friendship should be approached with silence, waiting, and self-belonging rather than forced arrangements.
self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until in their dialogue each stands for the whole world. What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent,—so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select soul…
Ovid questions a former friend’s betrayal and asks why he avoids his earlier intimacy, blaming Fortune’s instability and ending with a charge of personal fickleness.
nobis quae meruere deae? at tu, cui bibitur felicius Aonius fons, utiliter studium quod tibi cedit ama, sacraque Musarum merito cole, quodque legamus huc aliquod curae mitte recentis opus! 50 41 quia nec *BCH(Iac)* me nec *IpcP* neque me *MFLT* || uinum] unum *C* || nec me] neque me *T* || 42 tacitum *add I1 in marg* tantum *C* || 43 nec me] nec *Iac* hec me *C, ut uid* || 45 frigida] frigora *C* || restant] restat …