On Friendship

1. I love my friends for what they are, just as they are. Not for what I would like them to be.

2. I take pleasure in seeing them develop. According to the phases of their individual blossoming.

Not because their evolution takes place according to my own desires or preferences. But instead because in this way they fulfill their reason to be as human beings. And the happier they are — the more they realize their particular conception of life — the stronger my joy becomes.

3. I do not love them on the side of good and evil. I love them beyond good and evil.

If I loved them on the side of good and evil, I would love them in the manner of the moralist, the legislator, the inquisitor or the slavemaster.

4. Why do I love a friend?

For a characteristic trait of their character, a tendency of their nature, a detail of their way of being — a mode of thinking, of expression, of action or of realization that is their own — that makes a corresponding fiber vibrate within me.

As long as that vibration persists, they remain my friend.

5. Beyond good and evil, certainly. In disgrace or in triumph. In inconsistency or in conformity. In vice and in virtue. Even if the search for their individual equilibrium, even if the affirmation of their individuality leads or drives them to commit all sorts of acts: reprehensible to the great majority, incomprehensible to me.

6. As long as the vibration persists, I will remain faithful to my friendship. For friendship has nothing in common with caprice. My friendship is Adventure and Experience. Probably the most formidable of adventures. And perhaps the longest and most complicated of experiences. — E. ARMAND.