“Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.”
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
“The Theophilanthropists believe in the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul.”
1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)
“I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.”
Source: To Love This Life: Quotations By Helen Keller
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), III : The Hunger of Immortality
Context: I am dreaming...? Let me dream, if this dream is my life. Do not awaken me from it. I believe in the immortal origin of this yearning for immortality, which is the very substance of my soul. But do I really believe in it...? And wherefore do you want to be immortal? you ask me, wherefore? Frankly, I do not understand the question, for it is to ask the reason of the reason, the end of the end, the principle of the principle.
“There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care.”
Source: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012), Chapter 31 “Epilogue” (p. 288)
“All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.”
We the People interview (1996)
Context: I do not believe that friendship today can flower out — can come out — of political life. I do believe that if there is something like a political life to be — to remain for us, in this world of technology — then it begins with friendship.
Therefore my task is to cultivate disciplined, self-denying, careful, tasteful friendships. Mutual friendships always. I-and-you and, I hope, a third one, out of which perhaps community can grow. Because perhaps here we can find what the good is.