“True friendship implies full confidence, which may only be completely given or completely withdrawn. If friendship has continually to be analyzed, nursed, and cured, it will cause more anguish than love itself, without having love's strength and its remedies. And if this confidence is ill-placed? Well - I would rather be betrayed by a false friend than deceive a true one.”

“However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.”

“It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.”

“Thus they are destitute of that very lovely and exquisitely natural friendship, which is an object of desire in itself and for itself, nor can they learn from themselves how valuable and powerful such a friendship is. For each man loves himself, not that he may get from himself some reward for his own affection, but because each one is of himself dear to himself. And unless this same feeling be transferred to friendship, a true friend will never be found; for a true friend is one who is, as it were, a second self.”
Ita pulcherrima illa et maxime naturali carent amicitia per se et propter se expetita nec ipsi sibi exemplo sunt, haec vis amicitiae et qualis et quanta sit. Ipse enim se quisque diligit, non ut aliquam a se ipse mercedem exigat caritatis suae, sed quod per se sibi quisque carus est. Quod nisi idem in amicitiam transferetur, verus amicus numquam reperietur; est enim is qui est tamquam alter idem.

“I would rather have your friendship than the love of any other woman in the world!”

“There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.”

“True friendship is that feeling in which one loves, one has trust and spontaneous smiles are born.”

“If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.”

“Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love.”

“Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.”