We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.

True friendship is self-love at secondhand

It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

Love is merely madness...