“There is only beauty / and it has only one perfect expression / poetry. All the rest is a lie /except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.”

There is only beauty / and it has only one perfect expression / poetry. All the rest is a lie /except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

What was that? Valentine's Day? Her heart gave a little skip at the thought, she had never spent it in a romantic way before, usually the day meant sending and receiving cute Cupid cards and heart shaped sugar candies, but it was all in a platonic celebration of friendship. This time, it would not be like that, it would be ... special.

When there is nothing left to give somone in need, we give them what we do have. We give them Divine Love, faith, and friendship. This is always enough to see anyone through anything. This, my friends, is how we save the world. (pg.99 of A Journey In to Divine Love)

I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

Two a.m.' He swallowed, then said, "You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they're asleep or it's cold or you need to be bailed out of jail...they'll come for you. It's like, the highest level of friendship.

Slowness means cleaving perfectly to time, so closely that the seconds fall one by one, drop by drop like the steady dripping of a tap on stone. This stretching of time deepens space. It is one of the secrets of walking: a slow approach to landscapes that gradually renders them familiar. Like the regular encounters that deepen friendship.

One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men haveno more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at theshops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and somen have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me. . .

“The environment that is created by this program is amazing. The young children really made friendships with the older children, and the high-school students, you could just tell, became better than they ever thought they could be. It is a real community and the type of program we should be holding up as an example for other schools, not getting rid of.”

But the summer had been a very happy one, too -- a time of glad living with summer suns and skies, a time of keen delight in wholesome things; a time of renewing and deepening of old friendships; a time in which she had learned to live more nobly, to work more patiently, to play more heartily.