essay about a perfect friendship

127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

When you have a good friendship topic, essay writing becomes as easy as it gets. We have some for you!

📝 Friendship Essay Structure

🏆 best friendship topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 good essay topics on friendship, 🎓 simple & easy friendship essay titles, 📌 most interesting friendship topics to write about, ❓ research questions about friendship.

Describing a friend, talking about your relationship and life experiences can be quite fun! So, take a look at our topics on friendship in the list below. Our experts have gathered numerous ideas that can be extremely helpful for you. And don’t forget to check our friendship essay examples via the links.

Writing a friendship essay is an excellent way to reflect on your relationships with other people, show your appreciation for your friends, and explore what friendship means to you. What you include in your paper is entirely up to you, but this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t structure it properly. Here is our advice on structuring an essay on friendship:

Begin by selecting the right topic. It should be focused and creative so that you can earn a high mark. Think about what friendship means to you and write down your thoughts. Reflect on your relationship with your best friend and see if you can write an essay that incorporates these themes. If these steps didn’t help – don’t worry! Fortunately, there are many web resources that can help you choose. Browse samples of friendship essays online to see if there are any topics that interest you.
Create a title that reflects your focus. Paper titles are important because they grasp the reader’s attention and make them want to read further. However, many people find it challenging to name their work, so you can search for friendship essay titles online if you need to.
Once you get the first two steps right, you can start developing the structure of your essay. An outline is a great tool because it presents your ideas in a clear and concise manner and ensures that there are no gaps or irrelevant points. The most basic essay outline has three components: introduction, body, and conclusion. Type these out and move to the next step. Compose an introduction. Your introduction should include a hook, some background information, and a thesis. A friendship essay hook is the first sentence in the introduction, where you draw the reader’s attention. For instance, if you are creating an essay on value of friendship, include a brief description of a situation where your friends helped you or something else that comes to mind. A hook should make the reader want to read the rest of the essay. After the hook, include some background information on your chosen theme and write down a thesis. A thesis statement is the final sentence of the first paragraph that consists of your main argument.
Write well-structured body paragraphs. Each body paragraph should start with one key point, which is then developed through examples, references to resources, or other content. Make sure that each of the key points relates to your thesis. It might be useful to write out all of your key points first before you write the main body of the paper. This will help you to see if any of them are irrelevant or need to be swapped to establish a logical sequence. If you are composing an essay on the importance of friendship, each point should show how a good friend can make life better and more enjoyable. End each paragraph with a concluding sentence that links it to the next part of the paper.
Finally, compose a conclusion. A friendship essay conclusion should tie together all your points and show how they support your thesis. For this purpose, you should restate your thesis statement at the beginning of the final paragraph. This will offer your reader a nice, well-balanced closure, leaving a good impression of your work.

We hope that this post has assisted you in understanding the basic structure of a friendship paper. Don’t forget to browse our website for sample papers, essay titles, and other resources!

Friendship of Amir and Hassan in The Kite Runner The idea of friendship in The Kite Runner is considered to be one of the most important, particularly in terms of how friendship is appreciated by boys of different classes, how close the concepts of […]
Classification of Friendship Best friends An acquaintance is someone whose name you know, who you see every now and then, who you probably have something in common with and who you feel comfortable around.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu Friendship Essay The role of friendship in the Epic of Gilgamesh is vital. This essay unfolds the theme of friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu that develops in the course of the story.
Friendship and Friend’s Support It is the ability to find the right words for a friend, help in a difficult moment, and find a way out together.
Friendship as a Personal Relationship Friends should be people who are sources of happiness to one another and will not forsake each other even when everybody around is against them.
Friendship in The Old Man and The Sea The book was the last published during the author’s lifetime, and some critics believe that it was his reflection on the topics of death and the meaning of life.
The Confessions of St. Augustine on Friendship: Term Paper Augustine of Hippo believes that the only real source of friendship is God, and he adds that it is only through this God-man relationship that people can understand the ideal meaning of friendship.
Friendship in the ‘Because of Winn Dixie’ by Kate Dicamillo In the book “Because of Winn Dixie”, Kate DiCamillo focuses on a ten-year-old girl India Opal Buloni and her friend, a dog named Winn Dixie.
Defining of True Friendship This is the same devotion that my friends and I have toward each other. Another thing that best defines friends is the sacrifices that they are willing to make for each other.
Friendship as Moral Experience One of the things I have realized over the course of the last few years is that while it is possible to experience friendship and have a deep, spiritual connection with another person, it is […]
The Theme of Friendship in the “Arranged” Film As can be seen, friendship becomes the source of improved emotional and mental well-being, encouraging Rochel and Nasira to remain loyal to their values and beliefs.
Friendship’s Philosophical Description In order for a friendship to exist, the two parties must demonstrate first and foremost a willingness to ensure that only the best occurs to their counterpart.
The Importance of Friendship in “The Epic of Gilgamesh” At the beginning of the story, Gilgamesh, the king of the Sumerian city of Uruk, despite achievements in the development of the town, causes the dislike of his subjects.
Greek and Roman Perspectives on Male Friendship in Mythology The reason for such attitude can be found in the patriarchal culture and the dominant role of free adult males in the Greek and Roman social life. However, this was not the only, and probably […]
Gender and Cultural Studies: Intimacy, Love and Friendship Regardless of the driving force, intimacy and sexual connections are common in many happy relationships. Of significance is monogamy whose definition among the heterosexuals and lesbians remains a challenge.
Effect of Friendship on Students’ Emotional Health The study discovered a significant positive correlation between the quality of new friendships and adjustment to university; this association is more robust for students living in residence than those commuting to university. Friday and Adkins […]
“Feminism and Modern Friendship” by Marilyn Friedman Individualism denies that the identity and nature of human beings as individuals is a product of the roles of communities as well as social relationships.
Friendship’s meaning around the world Globally it’s very ludicrous today for people to claim that they are in a friendship yet they do not even know the true meaning of friendship.
Childhood Friendship and Psychology Based on their research, they have founded a theory, according to which it is assumed that the children consider close relationship, appraisals, and sharing common interests as something very important to them and on the […]
Analysis of Internet Friendship Issues Despite the correlation that develops on the internet, the question of whether social media can facilitate and guarantee the establishment of a real friend has remained a key area of discussion.
How to Develop a Friendship: Strategies to Meet New Friends Maintaining a connection with old friends and finding time to share life updates with them is a good strategy not to lose ties a person already has. A person should work hard to form healthy […]
Social Media Communication and Friendship According to Maria Konnikova, social media have altered the authenticity of relationships: the world where virtual interactions are predominant is likely to change the next generation in terms of the ability to develop full social […]
Faux Friendship and Social Networking The modern-day relationships have dissolved the meaning of the word friendship; as aromatic lovers refer to each other as friends, parents want their children to think of them as friends, teachers, clergymen and bosses have […]
Friendship Type – Companionship Relationship A friendship is ideally not an obsession since the latter involves a craving for another person that might even lead to violence just to be in site of the other party.
Friendship and Peer Networking in Middle Childhood Peer networking and friendship have a great impact on the development of a child and their overall well-being. Students in elementary need an opportunity to play and network with their peers.
Friendship in “The Song of Roland” This phrase sums up Roland’s predicament in the book as it relates to his reluctance to sound the Oliphant horn. In the final horn-blowing episode, Roland is aggressively persuaded to blow the horn for Charlemagne’s […]
True Friendship from Personal Perspective The perfect understanding of another person’s character and visions is one of the first characteristics of a true friendship. In such a way, true friendship is an inexhaustible source of positive emotions needed for everyone […]
Trust Aspect of Friendship: Qualitative Study Given the previous research on preserving close communication and terminating it, the authors seek to examine the basics of productive friendship and the circumstances that contribute to the end of the interaction.
Educator-Student Relationships: Friendship or Authority? Ford and Sassi present the view that the combination of authority and the establishment of interpersonal relations should become the way to improve the performance of learners.
Friendship in the Film “The Breakfast Club” The main themes which can be identified in the storyline are crisis as a cause and catalyst of friendship, friendship and belonging, and disclosure and intimacy in friendship.
Friendship Police Department Organizational Change The one that is going to challenge the efforts, which will be aimed at rectifying the situation, is the lack of trust that the employees have for the new leader who they expect to become […]
Friendship in the Analects and Zhuangzi Texts The author of “The Analects of Confucius” uses the word friend in the first section of the text to emphasize the importance of friendship.
Is There Friendship Between Women? In conclusion, comparing my idea of women’s friendship discussed in my proposal to the theoretic materials of the course I came to a conclusion that strong friendship between women exists, and this is proved in […]
Online Friendship Formationby in Mesch’s View The modern world tends to the situation when people develop the greatest empathy towards their online friends because it seems that the ratio and the deepness of these relationships can be controlled; written and posted […]
Canadian-American Diefenbaker-Eisenhower Friendship In particular, the paper investigates the Mandatory Oil Import Program and the exemption of Canada from this initiative as well as the historical treaty that was officially appended by the two leaders in regard to […]
Friendship from a Sociological Perspective For example Brazilians studying in Europe and United States were met with the stereotypes that Brazilians are warm people and are easy to establish friendships.
Friendship Influencing Decisions When on Duty The main stakeholders are the local community, the judge, and the offenders. The right of the society is to receive objective and impartial treatment of its members.
Friendship: To Stay or to Leave Each member of the group found out who really is a friend and who is not. This implies that the level of trust is high between Eddie and Vic.
“Understanding Others, and Individual Differences in Friendship Interaction in Young Children”: Article Analysis The aspect of socio-cognitive abilities of small children in the process of interaction was disclosed with the help of psychological theories.
Friendship: Sociological Term Review But one is not aware of that type of friendship; it is necessary to study it. Friendship is a matter of consciousness; love is absolutely unconscious.
The Significance of Friendship in Yeonam The paper examines the depth and extent to which Yeonam was ready to go and if he was bound by the norms of the human friendship and association of his era.
Cicero and Plutarch’s Views on Friendship He believed that befriending a man for sensual pleasures is the ideal of brute beasts; that is weak and uncertain with caprice as its foundation than wisdom. It is this that makes such carelessness in […]
Friendship: The Meaning and Relevance Although the basic definition of a friendship falls under the category of somebody whom we feel a level of affection and trust for or perhaps a favored companion, the truth of the matter is that […]
“Is True Friendship Dying Away?” and “The Price We Pay” Then Purpose of the essay is to depict the way social media such as Facebook and Twitter have influenced the lifestyles of every person in the world.
Fate of Friendship and Contemporary Ethics Is friendship possible in the modern world dominated by pragmatism and will it exist in the future? For instance, Cicero takes the point of view of the social entity, in other words, he defines friendship […]
Feminism and Modern Friendship While criticizing these individuals, Marilyn asserts that the omission of sex and gender implies that these individuals wanted to affirm that social attachment such as societies, families, and nationalities contribute to identity rather than sex […]
Creating a Friendship Culture This family will ensure every church member and youth is part of the youth ministry. I will always help every newcomer in the ministry.
Friendship is in Everyone’s Life Though, different books were written in different times, the descriptions of a friendship have the same essence and estimate that one cannot be completely satisfied with his/her life if one does not have a friend.
Intimacy, Love and Friendship and how they translate to employability The use of love and its conventions in the NAB campaigns is an illustration of how love as a concept can be used to translate to employability.
Intimacy, Love and Friendship In the past, women in Australia led a life characterized by a lot of hardships because of the harsh traditions that they were supposed to follow.
Contemporary Understanding of Intimacy and Friendship The Social Network film discusses how Facebook was developed and the challenges of developing the giant social site. Many people are of the view that Facebook has the effect of enslaving them by making their […]
Interpretation of Friendship among Confucian and Neo-Confucian writers In his article “The Fifth Relationship; Dangerous Friendships in the Confucian Context”, Norman Kutcher explores the friendship as outlined under the Confucian system. The above writers have different interpretations of friendship of the under the […]
Why International Students Find It Hard to Make Friends On the other hand, in societies that promote a high power distance, less powerful individuals accept their position in the chain of command and acknowledge the strengths of their superiors in the hierarchy.
Gender Stereotyping and Friendship: Women Relationships The most interesting about this article is its ending which states that” the core of a friendship has to have more in-person interactions and experience”.
The Impact of Friendship in the Epic of Gilgamesh The elusive coalition between Enkidu and Gilgamesh, their fateful destinies and eventual epiphanies broaden the societal apprehension of the elements/value of friendship as expounded in the next discussion.
Woman Intimacy and Friendship with the Appearance of Social Media The anonymity provided by the social media makes this medium very appealing to both women and men as they are able to “reconstruct” themselves to a level they deem “cool” enough to garner more desired […]
Aristotle’s Ideas on Civic Relationships: Happiness, the Virtues, Deliberation, Justice, and Friendship On building trust at work, employers are required to give minimum supervision to the employees in an effort to make the latter feel a sense of belonging and responsibility.
Gender Role Development and Friendship As far as the conflict goes, the boy’s main problem is that he is unwilling to change his behavior towards a socially accepted one under the pretext that girls are more beautiful and, therefore, it […]
Article Study on the Friendship Concept In the critical review article, the views of Norman Kutcher on the formation of friendships are discussed in detail. In this article, the views of other scholars are discussed in order to strengthen the works […]
Henry Thoreau: The Concept of the Friendship Not every person is able to understand the essence of nature, its uniqueness, and importance. To my mind, his close connection to nature and a kind of isolation from people helped him to understand deeper […]
Why Honesty Is Important In A Friendship
The Truth and Friendship in the Movie Camelot
A Discussion About the Value of Friendship as Portrayed in Damon and Pythias
What Is the Meaning of True Friendship
A Literary Analysis of Friendship in Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
Factors Contributing to the Ups and Downs of Friendship in Knowles’ A Separate Peace
Friendship and Love in the Little Prince
Confidantes, Marriage, and Friendship in Pride and Prejudice
What Makes A Successful Friendship
Understanding Friendship Through The Staircase Model
An Analysis of Friendship and Rejection in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
A Discussion on the Different Types of Friendship
An Analysis of Friendship in Lord of the Flies by William Golding
A Literary Analysis of Friendship in a Separate Peace by John Knowles
An Analysis of the Concept of Friendship in A Separate Piece by John Knowles
A Separate Peace and Of Mice and Men – Real Friendship
The Theme of True Friendship in the Book of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Value of Friendship in Great Expectations
What Makes A Good Friendship
The Theme of Friendship in Separate Ways by Higuchi Ichiyo and Uncanny Stories by SongLing
Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism
The Waltz Of Sociability : Intimacy, Dislocation And Friendship
The True Meaning of the Word Friendship
A Description of Impartiality, Beneficence and Friendship According to Lawrence Blum
Aristotle ‘s Views On Friendship
Friendship and Courage in The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
An Analysis of Friendship and Loyalty in the Film The Deer Hunter
Turning Away from True Friendship
Different Types of Friendship and The Need for Friends
An Analysis of the Dangers of Friendship
The Victorian Female Friendship and Homosexual References in Emily Dickinson’s Work
What Is Friendship And How Is God Man ‘s Best Friend?
The Venerable Kassapa Thera: A Living Symbol of Dedication, Courage, Altruism and Intimate Friendship
“The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds” by Michael Lewis
Building from Happiness to Friendship
What Do You Think Steinbeck Says About the Theme of Friendship in of Mice and Men
Distributive Justice and the Problem of Friendship
How Does Shakespeare Demonstrate That Love and Friendship Can Overcome Greed in the Merchant of Venice?
Does Borrowing Money From Friends Harm Friendship?
Can Friendship Be Defined by Any Scientific Criteria?
How Can Enduring Happiness Arise From Friendship?
Does Campus Diversity Promote Friendship Diversity?
Is There Any Objection to the Teacher Establishing a Friendship Relationship With the Students?
How Do Children Cope With Friendship and Death After Reading Charlottes Web?
Does Ragging Develop Friendship?
How Does Shakespeare Create Friendship?
Should Becoming Friends With Benefits Ruin Your Friendship?
How Does the Nature of Children’s Friendship Change With Age?
Do Friendships Vary Across Countries?
What Are Friends for and How Can a Friendship Be Tested?
How Does the Theme of Loneliness Affect the Friendship and Relationships in “Of Mice and Men”?
What Are the Elements That Build a Strong Friendship?
How Does Friendship Help Students Succeed in the University?
What Does Friendship Mean?
How Does Friendship Help With Your Mental Health?
What Does True Friendship Require?
How Do Friendship Network Characteristics Influence Subjective Well-Being?
What Was Aristotle’s Thought on Friendship?
How Do Friendship Networks Work in Online P2P Lending Markets?
Why Is Friendship Important?
How Has Friendship Changed Because of the Spread of Social Networking?
Why Does Friendship End?
How Do Society and Culture Affect Friendship?
Can Everything Be Bought for Money?
How Do Gamers Take the Gaming Experience, Elements Such as Friendships Outside the Game Context?
Do Friends Generally Have Similar Educational Interests?
What Individual and Country-Level Factors Might Interact With Friendship Importance to Predict Health and Well-Being?
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

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Essay on Friendship: Samples in 100, 200, 300 Words

Updated on
Sep 14, 2023

Friendship is a lovely connection that thrives on pure love and care, free from demands. It’s recognized through respect, support, open communication, shared joys, empathy, and unwavering presence. True friends cherish and express this bond in countless meaningful ways. Mentioned below are the essay on friendship that you can write in your school assignments to express gratitude towards them.

Table of Contents

1 Friendship Sample Essay in 100 Words
2 Friendship Sample Essay in 200 words
3 Friendship Sample Essay in 300 Words

Friendship Sample Essay in 100 Words

Everybody needs friends in their life because friends with friendship fill that gap of proper understanding that at some point even our family fails to meet. Whenever challenges come up in life, this friendship becomes a path to overcome those challenges and boosts us toward progress. In the dark and bleak world of reality, friendship fills vibrant and vivid colours of life, enthusiasm, and motivation. Every occasion becomes extra happy when celebrated with that special circle of friends. Every moment spent and lived with your friends, be it sad or happy, dull or motivating, shapes us into who we are. It also helps us see the good in life.

Friendship Sample Essay in 200 words

Friendship is something exceptional. Whenever life gets rough, one thing that we can always rely on is our friendship. We know that we have our friends to support us through the tough times in life. Not only that, friendship is such a deep-rooted emotion that even when we don’t share what we are feeling at the same moment, just by looking at our faces, our friends can figure out that something is bothering us. And they, just by having a thoughtful talk with us, have the strength to make all the bothering go away in a snap. Such is the power of friendship. It’s more than meets the eye. However, there are times when we have those life tests that make us reach our limits and test us through thick and thin.

Everything in life isn’t always smooth and happy, there are phases when even friends get into a fight with each other, but when they come out of that situation with their friendship still intact, then that bonding reaches new heights of strength.

If you have deep friendships with people, always be grateful to god for that, because not every bond of friendship lasts forever. Those people who have friends who last a lifetime are truly blessed because friendship truly is beautiful.

Friendship Sample Essay in 300 Words

In this vast world, there are innumerable people we meet every day, yet we still meet people who are there with us for a lifetime. The term for those people is “Friends” and the emotion that sustains them is “friendship”. The word friendship may have a particular number of alphabets, but the meaning it conveys cannot be measured in numbers. The word “friendship” is more than meets the eye. The depth it holds in terms of emotions, bonding, trust, understanding, support, communication, and much more is unparalleled. At every phase of our lives, we come across people and don’t even realize the bonds that get forged with time. These bonds are filled with the spirit and essence of trust, honesty, support, etc. hence becoming the pillars of friendship.

In every person’s life, friendship plays different roles but one thing that every person can agree on without a doubt is that friendship sustains you. Now, there are basically 2 types of friends, first ones are those who are good friends while the other ones are best friends. The best friends are the ones that we share a special bond of affection and love with. They make our lives much richer and easier

In true friendship, there is no place for judgment. True friends can share anything they are feeling without the fear of being judged by the other. To put it simply, we can say that true friendship gives us a reason to become even stronger in life.

Friendship makes us stronger in all aspects. No matter how much we fight our friends, we always come back to them. This is what teaches us the virtue of understanding and being patient. Without an iota of doubt, we can conclude that there is nothing out there that is nearly as beautiful, and as strong as friendship. Lucky are those who have this blessing in their life. Forever cherish it.

True friendship is one where there is mutual respect, good communication, honesty, and trust. When you know that no matter what, you can rely on your friend and that friend has got your back in every situation.

The full form of “FRIEND” is” Few Relations In Earth Never Die”.

The word “friendship” is more than meets the eye. The depth it holds in terms of emotions, bonding, trust, understanding, support, communication, and much more is unparalleled. At every phase of our lives, we come across people and don’t even realize the bonds that get forged with time. The power of friendship is such that it can turn a dull day in any person’s life into a really happy one. Every moment spent and lived with your friends, be it sad or happy, dull or motivating, shapes us into who we are. If you have deep friendships with people, always be grateful to god for that, because not every bond of friendship lasts forever. Those people who have friends who last a lifetime are truly blessed because friendship truly is beautiful.

Hence, we hope that this blog has assisted you in comprehending what an essay on friendship must include. If you are struggling with your career choices and need expert guidance, our Leverage Edu mentors are here to guide you at any point of your academic and professional journey thus ensuring that you take informed steps towards your dream career.

Deepansh Gautam

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Essay on Friendship

List of essays on friendship, essay on friendship – short essay for kids (essay 1 – 150 words), essay on friendship – 10 lines on friendship written in english (essay 2 – 250 words), essay on friendship – for school students (class 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) (essay 3 – 300 words), essay on friendship – for students (essay 4 – 400 words), essay on friendship (essay 5 – 500 words), essay on friendship – introduction, benefits and qualities (essay 6 – 600 words), essay on friendship – essay on true friendship (essay 7 – 750 words), essay on friendship – importance, types, examples and conclusion (essay 8 – 1000 words).

Friendship is a divine relationship, which is defined by neither blood nor any other similarity. Who is in this world does not have a friend?

A friend, with whom you just love to spend your time, can share your joys and sorrows. Most importantly you need not fake yourself and just be what you are. That is what friendship is all about. It is one of the most beautiful of the relations in the world. Students of today need to understand the values of friendship and therefore we have composed different long essays for students as well as short essays.

Audience: The below given essays are exclusively written for school students (Class 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 Standard).

Introduction:

Friendship is considered as one of the treasures that anyone can possess. God has given us the liberty to choose friends because they are for our lifetime. It is quite normal for our parents and siblings to love us because they are our own blood but a friend is someone who is initially a stranger and then takes his/her place above all the other relations. Friendship is nothing but pure love without any expectations.

Role of a Friend:

True friends share and support each other even during the toughest of times. A true friend is one who feels happy for our success, who feel sad for our failures, fight with us for silly things and hugs us the next second, gets angry on us when we do any mistakes. Friendship is all about having true friends who can understand us without the need for us to speak.

Conclusion:

Friendship is very essential for a happy life. Even a two-minute chat with a friend will make us forget our worries. That is the strength of friendship.

Friendship is a divine relationship, which is defined by neither blood nor any other similarity. Friends are those you can choose for yourself in spite of the difference you both have from each other. A good friend in need will do wonders in your life, whenever you are in need of self-realization, upbringing your confidence and more.

Friendship serves you best not only in your happiest moments but also when you feel low in emotions. A life without a good friend is not at all complete and an emptiness will be felt all the time you think of sharing your emotion that can’t be told to anyone else.

Honesty and Patience in Friendship:

To maintain and keep going with a good deep friendship, honesty is the most important factor. You should choose a person who can be cent percent honest with you in all perspective like emotions, decision making, etc. Trustworthy friendship will help you to take better decisions and choose a better path for your future well-being.

Tolerance and patience with each other are another important characteristics of long-lasting friendship. Accepting the differences, friends should be able to be with each other in all situations. As a friend, the person should lead the other to success by being a motivation and criticize the person if they choose the wrong path.

Friendship will give you sweet and happy memories that can be cherished for a lifetime and if you succeed in maintaining that precious relation, then you are the luckiest person in this world. Love and care for each other will cherish the relationship and helps the person to appreciate each thing done without any fail.

Of all the different relations which we indulge in, friendship is considered to be the purest of them all. Friendship is the true confluence of souls with like minded attitude that aids in seamless conversation and the best of times. It is believed that a person who doesn’t have any friend lives one of the toughest lives.

The Desire to Belong:

Each one of us have been so programmed that we need a companion even if it’s not romantic, someone just to tag along. There are several definitions of friendship and it is upon you as to how you believe your relation to be. Friendship can happen when you are simply sharing a bowl of food with a person day after day. It can be expressed in the way you silently care for someone even when they may not be aware of your existence.

The Little Moments that Matter:

It is giving up the little things you love dearly for the sake of someone you cherish a great deal. Friendship often refers to the little moments of senseless laugh you two share when the rest of the world starts to look bleak. It is to know what your friend needs and being there for them even when the rest of the world has turned their back towards them.

Friendship is the kind of relation which sometimes even exceeds the realms of love because it is all about giving without even once bothering to sense what you shall get back. Every time spent is special because when you are with friends, you don’t feel the blues!

The Bottom-Line:

Of course the definition of friendship is going to vary a great deal from one person to another. But, remember one thing, when you are friends with someone, be prepared to put your heart on the line for their happiness because friendship often manifests into love, even if it is not romantic, it always is true!

Friendship is the most valuable as well as precious gifts of life. Friendship is one of the most valued relationship. People who have good friends enjoy the most in their live. True friendship is based on loyalty & support. A good friend is a person who will stand with you when times are tough. A friend is someone special on whom you can rely on to celebrate a special moment. Friendship is like a life asset and it can lead us to success. It all depends on our choice how we choose our friends.

The quality of friendship is essential for happiness. The benefits of healthy friendship remains long-life. In addition, having a strong friend circle also improves our self-confidence. Due to the strong relationship, we get much emotional support during our bad times. True friendship is a feeling of love & care.

Real friendship cannot be built within limited boundaries like caste or creed. It gives us a feeling that someone really needs us & we are not alone. This is true that man cannot live alone. True friends are needed in every stage of life to survive. A true friend can be an old person or a child. But it is generally believed that we make friend with people who are of the same age as ours. Same age group can give you the freedom to share anything.

The selection of a true friend is also a challenging task. We have to carefully make our friend selection. Friends might come & go. They will make you laugh & cry. Wrong selection can create various problems for you. In the modern world, many youngsters become a social nuisance. The reason behind it is wrong & bad friendships.

But if we successfully choose the right person as a friend then our life becomes easier. It doesn’t matter who you are, what type of clothes you wear. The most important thing is trust because the relation of friendship stands on the pillars of trust.

Friendship is a relation which can make or break us in every stage of life. But in other words, friendship is an asset which is really precious. Obviously, it is also not so easy to maintain friendships. It demands your time as well as efforts. Last but not the least, it is hard to find true friendship but once you succeed in this task you will have a wonderful time. In exchange for that a friend will only need your valuable time and trust.

The idea of friendship is either heartwarming or gives cold feet depending on individuals and the types of friendships. In the current world, friendships have had different definitions based on the morality and civilization of the society. Ideally, friendship is defined as the state of mutual trust between individuals or parties. Trust is an important component of friendship because it determines the reliability and longevity of the friendship. Trust is built through honest communications between the individuals and interested parties.

Once trust has been established, mutual understanding and support being to form the resulting in a friendship. This friendship can be broken through lack of trust. Trust can be breached through deceit and/ or some people, it differs with the frequencies. There are people who will break friendships after only one episode of dishonesty whereas some people give second chances and even more chances. Friendship types determine the longevity and the causes of breakups. The importance of friendship in the lives of individuals is the reason why friendships are formed in the first place.

Types of Friendships:

According to Aristotle’s Nichomachean ethics, there are three types of friendships. The friendships are based on three factors i.e. utility, pleasure and goodness. The first type of friendship is based on utility and has been described as a friendship whereby both parties gain from each other.

This type of friendship is dependent on the benefits and that is what keeps the friendship going. This type of friendships do not last long because it dissolves as soon as the benefits are outsourced or when other sources are found outside the friendship. The friendship was invented for trade purposes because when two people with opposite things that depend on each other re put together, trade is maximized.

The second type of friendship is based on pleasure. This is described as friendship in which two individuals are drawn to each other based on desires of pleasure and is characterized by passionate feelings and feelings of belonging. This type of friendship can ether last long or is short-lived depending on the presence of the attraction between the two parties.

The third type of friendship is based on goodness. In this friendship, the goodness of people draw them to each other and they usually have the same virtues. The friendship involves loving each other and expecting goodness. It takes long to develop this kind of friendship but it usually lasts longest and is actually the best kind of friendship to be in. the importance of such a friendship is the social support and love.

In conclusion, friendships are important in the lives of individuals. Trust builds and sustains friendships. The different types of friendships are important because they provide benefits and social support. Friendships provide a feeling of belonging and dependence. The durability of friendships is dependent on the basis of its formation and the intention during the formation. Friendships that last long are not based on materialistic gain, instead, they are based on pure emotion.

Friendship is an emotion of care, mutual trust, and fondness among two persons. A friend might be a work-mate, buddy, fellow student or any individual with whom we feel an attachment.

In friendship, people have a mutual exchange of sentiments and faith too. Usually, the friendship nurtures more amongst those people who belong to a similar age as they possess the same passions, interests, sentiments, and opinions. During the school days, kids who belong to the similar age group have a common dream about their future and this makes them all of them get closer in friendship.

In the same way, employees working in business organizations also make friends as they are working together for attaining the organizational objectives. It does not matter that to which age group you belong, friendship can happen at any time of your life.

Benefits of Friendship:

Sometimes friendship is essential in our life. Below are a few benefits of friendship.

1. It’s impossible to live your life alone always but friendship fills that gap quickly with the friend’s company.

2. You can easily pass the rigidities of life with the friendship as in your distress period your friends are always there to help you.

3. Friendship teaches you how to remain happy in life.

4. In case of any confusion or problem, your friendship will always benefit you with good opinions.

True and Dishonest Friendship:

True friendship is very rare in today’s times. There are so many persons who support only those people who are in power so that they can fulfil their selfish motives below the name of friendship. They stay with friends till the time their selfish requirements are achieved. Dishonest friends leave people as soon as their power gets vanished. You can find these types of self-seeking friends all around the world who are quite hurtful than enemies.

Finding a true friendship is very difficult. A true friend helps the other friend who is in need. It does not matter to him that his friend is right or wrong but he will always support his friend at the time of his difficulty.

Carefulness in the Selection of Friendship:

You must be very careful while choosing friends. You should nurture your friendship with that person who does not leave you in your bad times easily. Once you get emotionally attached to the wrong person you cannot finish your friendship so soon. True friendship continues till the time of your last breaths and does not change with the passing time.

Friendship with a bad person also affects your own thoughts and habits. Therefore, a bad person should not be chosen in any type of circumstances. We must do friendship with full attention and carefulness.

Best Qualities of Good Friendship:

Good friendship provides people an enormous love to each other.

The below are the important qualities of good friendship:

1. Good friendship is always faithful, honest, and truthful.

2. People pay attention and take note of others thoughts in good friendship.

3. Persons quickly forget and let off the mistakes of the other friend. In fact, they accept their friend in the way they are actually.

4. You are not judged on the basis of your success, money or power in it.

5. Friends do not feel shy to provide us with valuable opinions for our welfare.

6. People always share their joyful times with their good friends and also stay ready to help their friends in the time of need.

7. True friends also support others in their professional as well as personal life. They encourage their friends in the area of their interest.

Friendship is established over the sacrifice, love, faith, and concern of mutual benefit. True Friendship is a support and a blessing for everybody. All those males and females who have true and genuine friends are very lucky really.

Friendship can simply be defined as a form of mutual relationship or understanding between two people or more who interact and are attached to one another in a manner that is friendly. A friendship is a serious relationship of devotion between two or more people where people involved have a true and sincere feeling of affection, care and love towards each other devoid of any misunderstanding and without demands.

Primarily friendship happens between people that have the same sentiments, feelings and tastes. It is believed that there is no limit or criteria for friendship. All of the different creed, religion, caste, position, sex and age do not matter when it comes to friendship even though friendships can sometimes be damaged by economic disparity and other forms of differentiation. From all of these, it can be concluded that real and true friendship is very possible between people that have a uniform status and are like-minded.

A lot of friends we have in the world today only remain together in times of prosperity and absence of problems but only the faithful, sincere and true friends remain all through the troubles, times of hardships and our bad times. We only discover who our bad and good friends are in the times where we don’t have things going our way.

Most people want to be friends with people with money and we can’t really know if our friends are true when we have money and do not need their help, we only discover our true friends when we need their help in terms of money or any other form of support. A lot of friendships have been jeopardised because of money and the absence or presence of it.

Sometimes, we might face difficulty or crises in our friendships because of self-respect and ego. Friendships can be affected by us or others and we need to try to strike a balance in our friendships. For our friendship to prosper and be true, we need satisfaction, proper understanding and a trustworthy nature. As true friends, we should never exploit our friends but instead do our utmost best to motivate and support them in doing and attaining the very best things in life.

The true meaning of friendship is sometimes lost because of encounters with fake friends who have used and exploited us for their own personal benefits. People like this tend to end the friendship once they get what they want or stab their supposed friends in the back just to get what they think is best for them. Friendship is a very good thing that can help meet our need for companionship and other emotional needs.

In the world we live in today, it is extremely difficult to come across good and loyal friends and this daunting task isn’t made any easier by the lie and deceit of a lot of people in this generation. So, when one finds a very good and loyal important, it is like finding gold and one should do everything to keep friends like that.

The pursuit of true friendship Is not limited to humans, we can as well find good friends in animals; for example, it is a popular belief that dogs make the best friends. It is very important to have good friends as they help us in times and situations where we are down and facing difficulties. Our true friends always do their best to save us when we are in danger and also provide us with timely and good advice. True friends are priceless assets in our lives, they share our pains and sorrow, help provide relief to us in terrible situations and do their best to make us happy.

Friends can both be the good or the bad types. Good friends help push us on the right path in life while on the other hand, bad friends don’t care about us but only care about themselves and can lead us into the wrong path; because of this, we have to be absolutely careful when choosing our friends in this life.

Bad friends can ruin our lives completely so we have to be weary of them and do our best to avoid bag friends totally. We need friends in our life that will be there for us at every point in time and will share all of our feeling with us, both the good and bad. We need friends we can talk to anytime we are feeling lonely, friends that will make us laugh and smile anytime we are feeling sad.

What is friendship? It is the purest form of relationship between two individual with no hidden agenda. As per the dictionary, it is the mutual affection between people. But, is it just a mutual affection? Not always, as in the case of best friends, it is far beyond that. Great friends share each other’s feelings or notions which bring a feeling of prosperity and mental fulfillment.

A friend is a person whom one can know deeply, as and trust for eternity. Rather than having some likeness in the idea of two people associated with the friendship, they have some extraordinary qualities yet they want to be with each other without changing their uniqueness. By and large, friends spur each other without censuring, however at times great friends scrutinize do affect you in a positive manner.

Importance of Friendship:

It is very important to have a friend in life. Each friend is vital and their significance in known to us when certain circumstances emerge which must be supported by our friends. One can never feel lonely in this world on the off chance that he or she is embraced by true friends. Then again, depression wins in the lives of the individuals who don’t have friends regardless of billions of individuals present on the planet. Friends are particularly vital amid times of emergency and hardships. On the off chance that you wind up experiencing a hard time, having a friend to help you through can make the change simpler.

Having friends you can depend on can help your confidence. Then again, an absence of friends can make you feel lonely and without help, which makes you powerless for different issues, for example, sadness and drug abuse. Having no less than one individual you can depend on will formulate your confidence.

Choosing Your Friends Wisely:

Not all friends can instill the positivity in your life. There can be negative effects as well. It is very important to choose your friends with utmost wisdom. Picking the right friend is somewhat troublesome task however it is extremely important. In the event that for instance a couple of our dear friends are engaged with negative behaviour patterns, for example, smoking, drinking and taking drugs, at some point or another we will be attracted to their bad habits as well. This is the reason behind why it is appropriate to settle on an appropriate decision with regards to making friends.

Genuine friendship is truly a gift delighted in by a couple. The individuals who have it ought to express gratitude toward God for having genuine pearls in their lives and the individuals who don’t have a couple of good friends ought to always take a stab at better approaches to anchor great friends. No organization is superior to having a friend close by in the midst of need. You will stay cheerful in your one-room flat on the off chance that you are surrounded by your friends; then again, you can’t discover satisfaction even in your estate in the event that you are far away from others.

Types of Friends:

There is variety everywhere, so why not in friends. We can see different types of friends during our journey of life. For instance, your best friend at school is someone with whom you just get along the most. That friend, especially in the case of girls, may just get annoyed even if you talk to another of your friend more than her. Such is the childish nature of such friendships that at times it is difficult for others to identify whether you are best friends or competitors.

Then there is another category of your siblings. No matter how much you deny, but your siblings or your elder brother and sisters are those friends of yours who stay on with you for your entire life. You have a different set of friendship with them as you find yourself fighting with them most of the times. However, in times of need, you shall see that they are first ones standing behind you, supporting you.

There is another category of friends called professional friends. You come across such friends only when you grow up and choose a profession for yourself. These friends are usually from the same organisation and prove to be helpful during your settling years. Some of them tend to stay on with you even when you change companies.

Friendship Examples from History:

History has always taught us a lot. Examples of true friendship are not far behind. We have some famous example from history which makes us realise the true value of friendship. The topmost of them are the Krishna and Sudama friendship. We all must have read or heard as to how after becoming a king when Krishna met Sudama, his childhood friend, he treated him with honour even though Sudama was a poor person. It teaches us the friendship need not be between equals. It has to be between likeminded people. Next example is of Karna and Duryodhana, again from the Mahabharat era.

Despite knowing the fact that the Pandavas were his brothers, Karna went on to fight alongside Duryodhan as he is his best friend and even laid down his life for him. What more example of true friendship can one find? Again from the same era, Krishna and Arjun are also referred to as the best of the friends. Bhagavad Gita is an example of how a true friend can guide you towards positivity in life and make you follow the path of Dharma. Similarly, there are numerous examples from history which teach us the values of true friendship and the need to nourish such for own good.

Whether you accept or deny it, a friend plays an important role in your life. In fact, it is very important to have a friend. However, at the same time, it is extremely important to choose the friends wisely as they are the ones who can build you or destroy you. Nonetheless, a friend’s company is something which one enjoys all through life and friends should be treated as the best treasure a man can have.

Friendship , Relationship

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Writing Essay on Friendship: 3 Samples to Get Inspired

When in school or college, you won’t escape the task of writing an essay on friendship. It’s a paper revealing the power of having friends and reflecting on the corresponding values.

It seems easy to write. You craft a narrative about your mates, explaining what they mean to you. And yet, it’s an academic paper. So, some rules are still here on how to structure and format it.

In this article, you’ll find three samples of different essays on friendship. Feel free to use them to get inspired and better understand this paper’s nature and purpose.

Let’s answer all the questions related to friendship essays together!

What Is an Essay on Friendship?

First, the definition:

An essay on friendship is a short academic paper students write to express their thoughts and reflections on the topic.

The purpose is to:

explore the phenomenon;
understand what it means to you;
realize the significance of having close people nearby;
reveal the pros and cons of committing to a friendship;
reflect on how friendship can help our wellness.

Friendship essays aren’t about “my friends and I” topics only. You can write about the role of friendship for mental health, craft an expository essay explaining the topic, or build a reflective essay on what friendship means to you.

Friendship Essay Structure

Friendship essays have a standard structure of academic papers. They are short and consist of three parts:

Introduction about friendship
Paragraph about friendship
Friendship essay conclusion

In the intro, you start with an attention grabber. Feel free to use a quote, a surprising fact, or an anecdote. Introduce the topic and finish with thesis statements about friendship.

In a friendship paragraph, you support a thesis with facts, evidence, personal stories, etc. As a rule, essay bodies have three paragraphs minimum. So you can devote each paragraph to one aspect :

Definition of this concept
Why having friends is essential
What a friend can give you
Types of friendship
Challenges mates meet on their way
Characteristics of a good friend
How to strengthen a friendship, etc.

In the essay body, you can use stories and examples from your life to illustrate points. Tell about your friends and share personal thoughts — it will make your paper more compelling to read.

In the concluding paragraph, sum up the points and restate your thesis. Finish on a positive note, leaving readers with the food for thought.

Easier said than done, huh?

Below are three samples of friendship essays for you to see what they look like and how they sound.

3 Samples to Help You Write an Essay About Friendship

While Ralph Waldo Emerson friendship essay (1) is the top example of the paper on this topic, we’ll go further and provide several NEW samples.

Please check:

Short Essay on Friendship

This sample is perfect for high school students. As a rule, teachers ask them to write 150-200-word essays. The task is to describe concepts or things the way they understand them.

Narrative Essay on Friendship

Narrative essays are more about personal stories. Here, you can tell about your friends, include dialogues , and sound less academic.

500 Words Essay Sample on Importance of Friendship

Over to you.

Now, you have three samples and know how to structure this paper. Ready to write yours?

Let’s begin with the “Why is friendship important?” essay — and you’ll see that it’s not super challenging to craft. Be honest, share your thoughts, and don’t hesitate to write personal reflections on the topic.

Still don’t know how to start your essay on friendship? Our writers are here to help.

References:

https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/friendship.html
Essay samples
Essay writing
Writing tips

Expository Essay About Friendship: A Writing Guide

Expository Essay Definition

An expository essay is a type of academic writing that seeks to explain or inform the reader about a particular topic. Expository essays typically provide readers with evidence, facts, and arguments related to the subject in question.

They are written using an objective tone, meaning they do not take sides or attempt to persuade the reader. Instead, they are simply providing information and allowing the reader to make their own conclusions.

An expository essay about friendship would attempt to discuss friendship from any perspective. It could discuss the different types of friendship or the different components that make up a strong bond.

Now, let’s move on to the first step – writing the essay!

How To Write Expository Essay About Friendship Step-by-Step

Having read the above examples and topic ideas, you now have a good idea of what a friendship essay is. But how do you write one yourself?

Follow these steps to write an excellent essay about friendship:

Choose a topic

Start by deciding what type of essay you want to write, and choose a topic related to friendship that interests you. For example, you could write about the different types of friendships or how people become friends.

Do research

Research is a crucial part of writing an expository essay. Look for reliable sources such as scholarly books, peer-reviewed journals, etc, that provide factual information about the topic. Make sure to keep track of which sources you used and take detailed notes on important points.

Make an Outline

After researching, create an outline for expository essay that will serve as a roadmap for your essay. Decide how you want to format the essay and which points you’ll be discussing. This is also the time to decide on a thesis statement and any subtopics you want to cover in your essay.

Write Your First Draft

Now it’s time to start writing! Focus on each point in your outline and provide evidence, facts, and/or examples to back up your claims. Try to use a variety of sentence structures and don’t forget to proofread once you’re done.

Revise Your Essay

Once you have completed the first draft of your essay, look for areas that can be improved and revise accordingly. While making revisions , make sure that your essay is well-structured, logically organized, and coherent from start to finish.

Let's check out some essay samples to gain a deeper understanding.

Expository Essay Examples on Friendship

Here are some essay examples about the topic of friendship. You can use these for inspiration when writing your own expository essay about friendship.

Example of Short Essay About Friendship

Expository Essay About True Friendship

What is Friendship Essay 300 Words

Expository Essay About Friendship 1000 Words

Expository Essay About Friendship 500 Words

Want more examples? Have a look at these unique expository essay examples to get inspired!

Expository Essay Topics About Friendship

When it comes to writing an expository essay about friendship, you have plenty of options.

Here are some topics that you can consider:

How does a true friend help us cope with bad times?
How has technology changed the way we form friendships?
What roles do trust and communication play in a strong friendship?
What is the role of dogs in fostering friendship
Explore the friendship dynamics in relation to unique individuals
Addressing bullying and its impact on friendship circles
What is the importance of friendship?
How do different cultural backgrounds affect the way we form and think about friendships?
How can we define a good friend?

Remember to choose a topic that you are interested in exploring and one that resonates with your audience. This will help make your essay more engaging and interesting.

Need more topics to get started? Check out these creative expository essay topics on different themes!

To end the discussion,

Following these steps will make it easier to write an expository essay about friendship. Just remember to research as much as you can, stay organized, and don’t forget to proofread.

Do you still need more help in writing your essay? No need to worry, we're here to help you till the end.

At MyPerfectWords.com, we provide you with the top expository essay writing service you can find online.

Our essay writing service promises to provide you with a 100% original essay that is free of plagiarism and mistakes. Whether you need an expository essay about a person , or a book , our writers can tackle any topic.

So if you're looking for help in writing an expository essay about friendship, get our essay writing help online today!

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Friday essay: how philosophy can help us become better friends

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Friends, family, lovers – these are three mainstays in our intimate lives. We typically expect familial relationships to be solid, essentially for life. In our romantic lives, we search for the “one” to be with for life.

Friendships seem less important, at least in comparison. It is easy to think about friends as people who come and go with the seasons of life. This could be a massive miscalculation. There is a case to be made that friendship is not the third wheel to these other, more significant relationships.

Losing friends can be extremely painful. I was working as an ordained minister in the Anglican Church when I gave up my faith and ran off with a fellow church worker (who is still the love of my life). This had profound consequences, as you can well imagine. One of the most painful was that, almost overnight, I lost almost all of my friends.

I remember having lunch with one of them in the months after my sudden fall from grace. We had been best friends since high school. We had moved out of home together, shared a room together, played guitar together. We had been inseparable.

I tried to explain to him what I was thinking, why I could not believe what I used to believe. He looked me in the eyes and said, by way of conclusion, that the problem was not Christianity. “The problem is you.”

He refused to come to my wedding. That was 17 years ago and I don’t think we have spoken since.

Read more: Friday essay: on the ending of a friendship

Philosophers – both ancient and modern – have a lot to say about friendship. Aristotle theorised about friendship and has influenced our thinking about it ever since. In contemporary times, philosophers such as A.C. Grayling have written entire books about it.

But friendship remains perplexing – not least because it is hard to separate it from other kinds of love relationships. This is where my favourite philosopher – Friedrich Nietzsche – is helpful. From his work, we can see that friendship does not simply stand alongside these other kinds of relationships – it can be part and parcel of them.

The importance of being different

So what are the ingredients for durable, great friendships?

Nietzsche’s first insight is about difference: great friendships celebrate real differences between individuals.

This can be contrasted with a common ideal that people have about romance. We seem to be obsessed with romantic love as the key to a fulfilling life. Falling in love, and falling in love for life, is supposed to be the highest relationship goal. We see it in films (almost every romantic comedy and sitcom riffs on this idea), music (which is often to do with the personal catastrophe of not finding true love), and art.

Nietzsche is not so big on romantic love. One of his objections is that romantic love can manifest as a desire to disappear into the other person, a kind of mutual self-dissolution. In a short text called “Love makes the same”, he writes:

Love wants to spare the person to whom it dedicates itself every feeling of being other […] there is no more confused or impenetrable spectacle than that which arises when both parties are passionately in love with one another and both consequently abandon themselves and want to be the same as one another.

Putting aside whether all romantic love is like this (or only unhealthy versions of it), I think there is some truth here. People who are “in love” can fall into the trap of being possessive and controlling. It is not a stretch to understand this as a desire to erase difference.

By way of contrast, Nietzsche is big on friendship as a kind of relationship that maximises difference. For him, a good reason to invite someone into your personal life is because they offer an alternative and independent perspective. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he writes:

In one’s friend one should have one’s best enemy. You should be closest to him in heart when you resist him.

Obviously, not all friendships are like this. I think of the Aussie ideal of the “mate”: someone who always has your back, who always defends and protects, who always helps, no questions asked. According to Nietzsche, however, great friendship includes an expectation that the other person will pull away, push back, critique. A good friend will, at times, oppose you – become your enemy.

Read more: 3 reasons not to be a Stoic (but try Nietzsche instead)

Intimate knowledge

It might not seem feasible to include genuine enmity and opposition in your intimate life, but I would argue it is both possible and useful to have personal enmity in an intimate relationship. Only someone who knows you intimately can know how best to oppose you if they see you making mistakes or acting out; only someone with a deep and personal appreciation of your inner workings is able to be your enemy to help you.

This is the essence of great friendship. And we can see here how to solve the problem of bad romance. A.C. Grayling, an eminent British philosopher, has reflected on the problem of romance and friendship in his book Friendship (2013). Grayling can’t escape the basic assumption that friendship and romance are separate kinds of experiences, that one can’t mingle with the other. And, for him, friendship “trumps” all other types of relationship.

But for a romantic attraction to last and to be supportive and fulfilling, it must be based on great friendship – friendship that includes a celebration of difference, even to the point of welcoming critical reflection and opposition.

The difficulty we have with this idea reflects a general trend towards sameness in our social lives. This is exacerbated by our online existence. We live in a digital world that is fuelled by algorithms designed to push at us a million people who think and feel the same way we do.

Having a useful social circle, and maybe even a well-functioning society, cannot be about sameness – the same values, ideas, beliefs, directions, lifestyles. Difference is essential. But for this to work we must be able to occupy the same space with people who are wildly different to us, without taking offence or running away or getting aggressive or violent.

In fact, appreciation of profound difference is one of the signs of true intimacy. This is the art of great friendship, an art we seem to have lost. Recapturing it will produce larger social benefits.

I dream of a search engine I call “Gaggle”. It takes all the rejects from a Google search, the things that do not fit your profile, and sends you those results. That way, we could breathe the fresh air of new and unexpected ideas, and encounter strange people with weird approaches to life and confronting ethical and moral systems.

Read more: Sex, lies and Hegel: did the intimate lives of philosophers shape their ideas?

Giving and Taking

Another insight from Nietzsche has to do with giving and taking. His idea of great friendship suggests it is OK to be selfish in our most intimate relationships.

Selfishness has a terrible reputation. Our society demonises it, fetishising selflessness instead. This has the effect of making us feel bad about being selfish. As Nietzsche puts it:

The creed concerning the reprehensibility of egoism, preached so stubbornly and with so much conviction, has on the whole harmed egoism […] by depriving egoism of its good conscience and telling us to seek in it the true source of all unhappiness.

The idea that self-sacrifice is moral and selfishness is immoral has a long tradition. It can be traced to our society’s roots in the Christian faith. The idea that sacrificing yourself for someone else is somehow godlike is enshrined in Christian belief: Jesus died to save us from our sins, God the Father gave up his only Son, and so on.

This comes back to our obsession with love, but not romantic love this time. It is, rather, the kind of love where you put other people ahead of yourself as a kind of relationship goal. Sacrificing yourself for others is often celebrated as a great moral achievement.

I think this idea of sacrifice is especially true of our familial relationships. There is an expectation that mothers and fathers (but especially mothers) will sacrifice themselves for the wellbeing of their children. As parents age, there is an expectation that their children will make sacrifices. When financial or other trouble hits – siblings step in to help.

This morality of selflessness is, in my opinion, bereft. But so is a reaction against it. You see the latter everywhere in the world of “inspo quotes”, where selfishness is king: self-compassion, self-love, self-care. It’s everywhere.

To react vigorously against something vacuous is itself vacuous. The paradigm is wrong. Nietzsche offers us an alternative:

This is ideal selfishness: continually to watch over and care for and to keep our souls still, so that […] we watch over and care for to the benefit of all.

Think about it this way. Self-concern and concern for others are only mutually exclusive if there is a limited amount of “concern” to spread around. If that were true, you would have to choose whether to lavish it on yourself or give it to others.

But how do we get an infinite amount “concern” to spread around? We are looking for a kind of psychological nuclear fusion: an infinitely self-sustaining and self-generating source of concern for others.

This is not as hard as it sounds. There is a kind of relationship that allows for this. You guessed it: great friendship.

Because friendship insists on difference, it creates the space for two individuals to nurture themselves so each has something to give the other person. Because you don’t try to assimilate a true friend into a version of yourself, you are free to do whatever is needed to build their personal resources.

This means it is OK to be in a relationship for what you can get out of it. You can be in a friendship – a truly great one – selfishly.

Read more: Finding your essential self: the ancient philosophy of Zhuangzi explained

Virtue, pleasure, advantage

This might be difficult to absorb, primarily because it challenges that dearly held moral conviction about selflessness. And it’s not just our Christian heritage that leads us down this path. You can see something like this in Aristotle, who thought friendships were based on one of three things: virtue, pleasure or advantage.

Virtue friendships are about recognising each other’s qualities or “goodness”. Pleasure friendships are about the enjoyment a person can derive from an intimate connection. Friendships of advantage are based on what each person can gain from the other.

For Aristotle, virtue friendships are the most perfect, because they are truly reciprocal. The other two types do not lead to ideal friendship, because they easily become one-sided. In other words, the highest form of friendship is one in which you don’t use your friend for some other (selfish) goal. You value them for who they are in themselves.

I am not an expert in Aristotelian philosophy, but I have many questions about this approach. What if the “good” in someone gives you pleasure? What if someone’s chief virtue is compersion – the ability to take pleasure in someone else’s pleasure? What if someone wants you be their friend so they can provide you with some sort of advantage?

I think Nietzsche’s concept of ideal selfishness works well with his ideal of friendship. Instead of seeing relationships as snapshots – you are either in it for yourself, or you are in it to help the other – we can see them as a cycle that repeats over time.

In great friendships, you give but you also take. There is space for you to be selfish – to top up, so to speak. You do this either in solitude or you draw on your friends. This might happen for a season, but then, having “topped up”, you have the personal and emotional resources to give back.

The key idea is that caring for yourself and caring for others are intertwined. One of the most important ways to look after yourself is to foster great friendships.

It is in this limited sense that I think we can see good familial relationships as also underpinned by great friendship. It is not about being best mates with your kids or your parents or your siblings. Even as parents and children, we can think carefully about how much we give, and how much we take, and be OK with both.

This idea about friendship has a broader context, which can be seen in Nietzsche’s way of thinking about relationships in general. He starts with the ancient Greeks, for whom contest was an essential part of their social lives.

Contests established a common baseline for excellence. They were central to sport (as in the Olympics), as well as artistic and cultural life. Poets, public speakers, guitar players – all participated in publicly adjudicated contests. The winners established standards of excellence for everyone to celebrate, including the losers.

Nietzsche adapts this idea into his ethics. For him, contest is at the centre of every intimate human connection. It is entirely natural for human beings to strive for self-expression. And if everyone is doing this all the time, we will inevitably strive against each other in some way. This is not out of animosity or ill will, nor even from competitiveness, in which the goal is simply winning. For Nietzsche, it is just the way we are.

This is why friendship is so important. It is the form of relationship best suited to sustaining contest between individuals, without rancour or domination. The startling implication of his approach is that for any kind of human relationship to work, it must have great friendship at its core.

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Essays About Best Friends: 5 Essay Examples and 7 Prompts

If you’re writing an essay and want to put your best friend in the spotlight, check out these essay examples on essays about best friends.

Best friends are those with whom we have formed a deep and unique bond. What makes them remarkably special is that we chose them unlike with family. For this, some even consider their best friends to be extensions of themselves.

We all trust our best friends wholeheartedly; that’s why they are the best people to confide in. And many of the lasting memories in our lives are those that we create with them. These memories could be filled with waves of boisterous laughter or even the most piercing pain when your friendship is tested.

Read on and find essay examples and prompts that could motivate you to write about best friends.

5 Essay Examples

1. how friendships change in adulthood by julie beck, 2. diamonds are not this girl’s best friend by courtney carver, 3. how to tell your best friend you’re in love with them – by those who have taken the plunge by sirin kale, 4. my best friend died: a real-life guide to coping by gabrielle applebury, 5. is it normal to not have a best friend by viktor sander, 7 helpful writing prompts on essays about best friends, 1. describe your best friend, 2. hanging out with your best friend , 3. long distance friendship, 4. cutting off toxic best friends, 5. falling in love with your best friend, 6. famous literary friendships, 7. a dog is a man’s best friend.

“Hanging out with a set of lifelong best friends can be annoying, because the years of inside jokes and references often make their communication unintelligible to outsiders. But this sort of shared language is part of what makes friendships last.”

The above essay delves into the evolution of friendship throughout the different stages of our lives, from childhood and teen years to family life and retirement. While we have all deferred a meetup with friends several times to attend to family and work, many people still treat their friendship as stable and continuous, even in long lapses in communication.

You might also find these essays about camping trips helpful.

“My best friend is a magical, rooftop sunrise. My best friend is the ocean. My best friend is a hike in the mountains. My best friend is a peaceful afternoon. My best friend is a really good book. My best friend is laughter. My best friend is seeing the world. My best friend is time with people I love.”

This essay takes on a broader definition of a “best friend,” deriving from Marilyn Monroe’s famous quote: “Diamond are a girl’s best friend.” From having excessive material wants for every occasion, the author realizes that the greatest “friends” in life are not material things but the simple joys that nature and love can bring.

“It was supposed to go the way things do in the movies. Nora would tell her best friend that she loved him, he would feel the same way and then they would kiss – preferably in the rain. So when the 30-year-old arts manager declared her love for her best friend when they were still teenagers, she expected a happy ending.”

Check out these essays about beauty .

The essay by Srirn Kale treats its readers to compelling stories of best friends ending up in marriage and those parting ways because of unrequited love. But, before taking the bold step of declaring your love for your best friend, a relationship guru advises lovers first to read the signs that signal any reciprocity of these deep feelings.

“Losing a best friend may be one of the most difficult and heartbreaking experiences you have in your lifetime. If you aren’t sure how to process that your best friend died, know that there are many healthy options when it comes to coping with this type of loss.”

Coping with losing a best friend could lead to depression or even suicidal thoughts, especially if your best friend means the world to you. Some coping tips include journaling your grieving process to understand your emotions and confusion better and doing things that can relive your best friend’s memories.

“If you are happy with the friends you currently have, there’s no need to try making a best friend for the sake of it. You might have friends but no best friend; that’s perfectly OK. It’s not necessary to have a BFF.”

Not everyone has a best friend. Some would find this fact hard to believe, but a YouGov survey has shown that 1 in 5 of the US population claims to have no close friends. The essay, therefore, explores the reasons for this friendlessness and gives tips on building a bond with potential best friends, starting with your existing circle of acquaintances.

Check out our top writing prompts to help you celebrate and write about best friends.

Essays About Best Friends: Describe your best friend

Begin this essay by describing what your best friend looks like and what traits you like most about them. Then, given these qualities, would you consider your best friend a role model? Your essay can also answer how similar you and your best friend are and what things you both agree on. But if you have more differences than similarities, write how you deal with them or put them aside.

In this essay, describe your favorite ways to hang out with your best friend. What do you like doing together? Describe what a day spent with your best friend looks like and which part you like most about your dates. If your conversations draw your mutual admiration for each other, then talk about what topics make you talk for hours on end and their perspectives on things that you find fascinating.

Do different time zones make friends grow apart? Or does distance make the heart grow fonder? First, interview two to three people whose best friends moved to a different country or city. Next, learn how frequently they communicate with each other. Finally, compile these stories and make a smooth transition to each one such that the structure highlights the challenges of long-distance friendships and how each set of friends gets by.

Discarding best friends is a hard decision. But it is also brave if you feel they are dragging you down. For this prompt, you can pose a list of questions readers can ask themselves to grasp the situation better. For example, is your friend doing you more harm than good? Have you set boundaries that they find hard to respect? Then, explain how reflecting on each question can help one determine when it is time to cut some ties loose.

Falling in love with your best friend can only end in two scenarios: a happy ever after or an end of a beautiful relationship. Expanding on our essay prompt above, list down more tips to know when it is best to confront your best friend about your feelings or work hard to quash your emotions for the continuity of the relationship.

Pick out best friends from novels that formed friendships that touched you the most. They could be Harry, Ron, Hermoine of Harry Potter, Frodo, Sam of the Lord Of The Rings, or even Sherlock and Watson From The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes. First, describe what it is in their friendship that you find most riveting. Then, narrate events that served as the biggest tests to their friendships and how they conquered these challenges.

What about dogs that some people find more lovable than others? Answer this in your essay by outlining the traits that make a dog the ideal best friend. For one, their loyalty makes us confident that they will not betray us. If you have a dog, write about the qualities that make your dog a reliable and fun companion. Then, narrate events when your dog proved to be your best friend.

If you’re still stuck, check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

If you want to ensure that your thoughts flow smoothly in your essay, check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Essay on Qualities Of A Good Friend

Students are often asked to write an essay on Qualities Of A Good Friend in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Qualities Of A Good Friend

Introduction.

A good friend is like a treasure. We all want friends who are kind, loyal, and honest. But, what makes a friend truly good? Here are some qualities that define a good friend.

Trustworthiness

Trust is a key quality. A good friend is someone you can rely on. They keep your secrets safe, and you know they won’t let you down. They show you that you can trust them through their actions.

A good friend is kind. They are always there to lend a helping hand. They care about your feelings and try to make you feel better when you’re sad. They share your happiness and your sadness.

Honesty is another important quality. A good friend tells you the truth, even when it’s hard. They give you honest advice because they want the best for you. They don’t lie or hide things from you.

Loyalty is a must in a good friend. They stand by your side no matter what. They support you and defend you. They stay true to you even when times are tough.

In conclusion, a good friend is trustworthy, kind, honest, and loyal. These are the qualities that make a friend special. So, if you have a friend with these qualities, treasure them. They are truly a gift.

250 Words Essay on Qualities Of A Good Friend

Friends play a crucial role in our lives. They are like the family we choose for ourselves. Good friends are a blessing, and they possess certain qualities that make them special.

Trustworthy

A good friend is trustworthy. They keep our secrets safe and never break our trust. We can rely on them in tough times, knowing they won’t let us down.

Loyalty is another quality of a good friend. They stand by us in good and bad times. They don’t leave us when things get tough. They are always there to support us.

Understanding

A good friend understands us. They know our strengths and weaknesses. They accept us as we are without trying to change us. They are patient and tolerant with us.

Honesty is a key quality of a good friend. They are truthful and sincere. They tell us the truth, even if it’s hard to hear. They don’t lie or deceive us.

Kind and Caring

A good friend is kind and caring. They show love and care for us. They help us when we need it and share our happiness and sadness.

In conclusion, a good friend is like a treasure. They are trustworthy, loyal, understanding, honest, and kind. They enrich our lives and make our journey more enjoyable. Everyone should strive to be a good friend and value the good friends they have.

500 Words Essay on Qualities Of A Good Friend

Friendship is one of the most beautiful relationships in the world. It is a bond that is built on trust, respect, and mutual understanding. A good friend is a treasure that can make our lives more meaningful and enjoyable. But what makes a good friend? Let’s explore some of the qualities that a good friend should have.

Trust is the foundation of any friendship. A good friend is someone who you can trust completely. They will keep your secrets safe, and you can count on them to be there for you in times of need. They will never betray your trust or let you down.

Honesty is another important quality of a good friend. They will always tell you the truth, even if it might hurt your feelings. They believe in the importance of being honest and will not deceive you or lie to you. Their honesty helps to build trust in the friendship and makes the relationship stronger.

Supportiveness

A good friend is always supportive. They stand by you in your ups and downs, cheering you on when you succeed and lifting you up when you fall. They believe in you and your abilities, and they are always there to encourage and motivate you. They are your biggest cheerleader and your most reliable shoulder to lean on.

Understanding is a vital quality of a good friend. They understand your feelings, your thoughts, and your actions. They accept you for who you are, with all your strengths and weaknesses. They do not judge you or try to change you. Instead, they appreciate your individuality and respect your decisions.

Respect is another essential quality of a good friend. They respect your opinions, your choices, and your personal space. They consider your feelings and are careful not to hurt you. They value your friendship and show it through their actions and words.

In conclusion, a good friend is someone who is trustworthy, honest, supportive, understanding, and respectful. These qualities make a friend more than just a companion; they make them a confidant, a supporter, and a valuable part of our lives. Having such a friend can bring joy, comfort, and richness to our lives. Therefore, it’s important to choose our friends wisely and to strive to be a good friend ourselves. After all, to have a good friend, we must first be a good friend.

Remember, a good friend is like a four-leaf clover, hard to find and lucky to have. So, if you have such a friend, cherish them, appreciate them, and hold onto them tightly. Because a good friend is a true blessing in life.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Qualities Of A Good Father
Essay on Qualities Of A Good English Teacher
Essay on Qualities Of A Good Police Officer

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

True Friendship Essay

500 words true friendship essay.

Friendship is an essential part of everyone’s lives. One cannot do without friends, we must have some friends to make life easier. However, lucky are those who get true friendship in life. It is not the same as friendship. True friendship is when the person stays by you through thick and thin. Through true friendship essay, we will look at what it means and its importance.

Importance of True Friendship

Friendship has a significant value in our lives. It is responsible for teaching us a lot of unforgettable lessons. Some are even life-changing so we must cherish friendship. It is not common to find true friendship in life.

But when you do, make sure to hold on tightly to it. True friendship teaches us how to love others who are not our family. Ultimately, our friends also become our family. A true friendship makes life easy and gives us good times.

Thus, when the going gets tough, we depend on our friends for solace. Sometimes, it is not possible to share everything with family , that is where friends come in. We can share everything with them without the fear of being judged.

Moreover, true friendship also results in good memories. You spend time with friends and enjoy it to the fullest, later on, the same moments become beautiful memories. Only a true friendship will cheer on you and help you do better in life.

Through true friendship, we learn about loyalty and reliability. When you have a true friend by your side, nothing can stop you. Your confidence enhances and you become happier in life. Thus, it changes our life for the better and keeps us happy.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Maintaining True Friendship

While it is lucky to get true friendship in life, it is also important to maintain this friendship so that one does not lose out on it. A time comes when we separate from our true friends, but one shouldn’t let distance act as a barrier.

It is essential to keep in touch with your friends so they know you are there for them. Most importantly, we must give our friends the love and respect they deserve. It is essential to treat them nicely so they never forget their worth.

Further, we must also remain honest with our friends. If you do not offer them all this, your friendship may begin to fade. Thus, make sure to pour equal shares of love, respect and honesty.

Conclusion of True Friendship Essay

Thus, we must never rush to make friends. Remember, true friendship cannot be faked. It will need a good foundation. So, a true friendship accepts the person for who they are instead of changing them. A true friendship will never have an ulterior motive, it will always offer selflessly.

FAQ on True Friendship Essay

Question 1: What are the signs of true friendship?

Answer 1: The signs of a true friendship are that they will accept you for who you are instead of trying to change you. Similarly, they will be there for you in good and bad times. They will celebrate your achievements and push you to do better if you fail. Most importantly, they will tell you the truth even if you don’t like it.

Question 2: Who is a true friend?

Answer 2: A true friend is someone who is always completely honest. Moreover, even if we don’t talk to them every day, we know they will be there for us. Thus, silence never gets awkward with them. We may not talk to them or see them for a long time, but when we meet them, it will be like old times.

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Aristotle On the 3 Types of Friendship (and How Each Enriches Life)

There is not one type of friendship, Aristotle argues, but three. The highest type — the friendship of virtue — contributes most to our pursuit of the good life; but it is difficult to cultivate, and we may only achieve it a few times (if at all) in our lifetimes.

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W hat does the good life look like for human beings? What does happiness mean, and how can we achieve it? What does virtue mean, and how can we exhibit it?

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle outlines his monumentally influential answers to these questions in his Nicomachean Ethics , his most studied work on ethics, which was written around 350 BCE (and features in our list of Aristotle’s best books ).

Ultimately, Aristotle thinks the good life boils down to one thing: achieving eudaimonia , which is variously translated from Greek as ‘well-being’, ‘happiness’, ‘blessedness’, and in the context of the virtue ethics Aristotle endorsed, ‘human flourishing’.

The way we can achieve eudaimonia , Aristotle argues, is by habitually striving for excellence in all that we do.

In other words, happiness means excellent activity (and typically involves, Aristotle suggests, establishing a happy medium between excess and deficiency in our behavior and character, a recommendation we cover in more detail in our explainer on Aristotle’s ‘golden mean’ ).

Born in 384 BC in Northern Greece, Aristotle joined Plato’s Academy in Athens when he was approximately 17 years old, quickly becoming Plato’s most brilliant student. He studied under Plato until the latter’s death 20 years later, whereupon Aristotle left Athens and became tutor to a young Alexander the Great. Transforming most of the subjects he investigated ― from metaphysics and ethics to politics and biology ― Aristotle is considered to be one of the most signficant figures in the history of Western philosophy.

While regulating our individual behavior to achieve excellence is perhaps the main ingredient in Aristotle’s recipe for happiness, he acknowledges that the good life wouldn’t mean as much without friendship. He writes in the Nicomachean Ethics :

We consider a friend to be one of the greatest of all good things, and friendlessness and solitude a very terrible thing, because the whole of life and voluntary interactions are with loved ones.

The importance of friendship: Aristotle

O f the Nicomachean Ethics ’s ten sections, Aristotle dedicates two of them to friendship, perhaps indicating its importance in his vision of the good life. “Friendship is one of the most indispensable requirements of life,” he writes:

For no one would choose to live without friends but in possession of everything else that is good. Friends are of help to the young by protecting them from mistakes; to the elderly by looking after them and making up for their failing powers of action; to those in the prime of life, to help them in doing good things.

So important is friendship, Aristotle declares, that it may even trump justice when it comes promoting the good life for all:

When men are friends they have no need of justice, while when they are just they need friendship as well, and the truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality.

The 3 levels of friendship

I n his detailed analysis of friendship, Aristotle discusses its nature, principles, cultivation, how it contributes to the good life, when it is right to break off a friendship, and the part friendship plays in (and its resemblance to) various forms of political system.

One of his most enduring contributions to philosophical discussions on friendship is his distinction between its three kinds or levels. He prefaces this by stating:

Those who think there is only one [kind of friendship] because it admits of degrees have relied on an inadequate indication; for even things different in species admit of degree.

He then identifies the following ‘species’ of friendship:

The friendship of utility . These friendships are based on what someone can do for you, or what you can do for another person. It might be that you put in a good word for someone, and they buy you a gift in return. Such relationships have little to do with character, and can end as soon as any possible use for you or the other person is removed from the equation.
The friendship of pleasure . These are friendships based on enjoyment of a shared activity or the pursuit of fleeting pleasures and emotions. This might be someone you go for drinks with, or join a particular hobby with, and is a common level of association among the young, so Aristotle declared. This type of relationship can again end quickly, dependent as it is on people’s ever-changing likes and dislikes.
The friendship of virtue . These are the people you like for themselves, who typically influence you positively and push you to be a better person. This kind of relationship, based as it is on the character of two self-sufficient equals, is a lot more stable than the previous two categories.

Unsurprisingly, it is this final level — the friendship of virtue — that Aristotle lauds. While friendships of utility and pleasure have their place, it is the rare yet pure friendships of virtue that are the greatest contributors to the good life.

The requirements for close friendship

V irtuous friendship takes time — indeed, the length of a relationship indicates its stability — and requires effort on both sides.

“For perfect friendship you must get to know someone thoroughly,” Aristotle says, “and become intimate with them, which is a very difficult thing to do.” It involves honesty, acceptance, and selflessness. It is two equal parties coming together to forge a bond that provides mutual benefit, enjoyment, and appreciation over the course of a lifetime.

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Aristotle thinks loving is more the essence of close friendship than being loved . To illustrate this, he compares the love we feel for close friends to that a mother feels for her child, reflecting on the “delight mothers take in loving”:

for some mothers hand over their children to be brought up, and so long as they know their fate they love them and do not seek to be loved in return (if they cannot have both), but seem to be satisfied if they seem them prospering; and they themselves love their children even if these owing to their ignorance them them nothing of a mother’s due.

Aristotle then connects this kind of selfless love — wishing the best for someone else for their sake — to the best kinds of friendship, writing:

Now since friendship depends more on loving, and it is those who love their friends that are praised, loving seems to be the characteristic virtue of friends, so that it is only those in whom this is found in due measure that are lasting friends, and only their friendship that endures.

Aristotle does not limit the formation of such friendships to non-relations; they can take place between spouses and family members, too — though he does add some qualifications for relationships that include inequalities, such as the parent-child relationship (suggesting such imbalances should be taken into consideration when reviewing the contributions of each party).

His one strict limitation is the number of virtuous friendships you can maintain. “To be a friend to many people in the way of perfect friendship is impossible,” he warns:

it is difficult to share intimately in the joys and sorrows of many people; for one may very likely be called upon to rejoice with one and to mourn with another at the same time.

It would be surprising if anyone could manage more than, say, five of such intensive relationships, meaning some close friends and even family members may be relegated to friendships of pleasure or even utility. So, choose your close friends wisely, and cultivate them virtuously.

Friendship and the good life

A ristotle’s account of friendship underscores his view that excellent activity is central to a life well-lived, the highest good, and the most accurate definition of happiness.

In forming relationships, he urges us to go beyond utility and pleasure and seek to fulfill our human potential by connecting with others in the most sincere, meaningful, and prosperous way possible: by cultivating mutual love.

For mutually loving relationships — those in which two people strive to be the best they can be to each other and themselves — are not just key sources of happiness, Aristotle judges, but among the pinnacles of human achievement.

(Contrast this with Schopenhauer, who with his porcupine dilemma suggests solitude is a better match for achievement than companionship.)

So a life of excellent activity, bolstered by excellent relationships, is very much a recipe for happiness for Aristotle.

Learn more about Aristotle’s vision of the good life

W hat do you make of Aristotle’s analysis of friendship? Do you agree with the distinctions he makes? And what characteristics do the best relationships in your life exhibit?

If you’re looking to delve deeper into Aristotle’s teachings, you might enjoy our article on the ‘golden mean’, Aristotle’s guide to living excellently , as well as our quick explainer on why Aristotle thinks leisure defines us more than work .

You can also further explore Aristotle’s ethics and discuss your thoughts with others in our new course and community, How to Live a Good Life , which explores 7 of the world’s most influential philosophies for living — including Aristotelianism, Buddhism, and Existentialism. If you’re interested, consider learning more here: How to Live a Good Life (According to 7 of the World’s Wisest Philosophies) .

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11 qualities of a good friend & ways to be an even better one.

One of the most important and formative types of relationships you will experience in a lifetime is friendship. Friends are people you can share intimacies and experiences with, and you are an important part of each other's lives. They give you a sense of belonging and security knowing you are loved and cherished by the people you most care for.

The beauty of friendship is that you get to choose your friends, unlike with family. But anyone who's ever had a negative experience with someone they thought was a friend can probably attest to the fact that it isn't always easy to spot true friendship. So we spoke with mental health experts Chaute Thompson, LMHC, and Jinnie Cristerna, LCSW, Rh.D., CHt, about what exactly makes someone a good friend and some tips on how to be a good friend yourself.

What makes a good friend?

Of all the traits a good friend could have, honesty is certainly among the most important. An honest friend is someone who can and will tell you the truth instead of lying to you to keep you happy or placate you. A good friend will tell you the truth even if it's hard, Cristerna says, because they love you.

Being nonjudgmental

A nonjudgmental friend makes you feel confident in and loved for who you are and not someone who instills self-doubt or insecurity in you. Nonjudgmental friends listen to you and do their best to see things from your point of view.

True friends accept you even when your lives move in different directions. True friends understand that your choices are yours and accept those decisions because they know that what's right for them isn't necessarily right for you.

Trustworthiness

Trust lets us feel safe with friends—safe to be vulnerable and to share our plans, our true selves, and our lives. A trustworthy friend keeps your secrets, keeps their promises, and is dependable.

Low-maintenance

Many longtime friends point to the fact that when they haven't been in touch for a while and finally reconnect, it is as if no time has passed. In other words, friends shouldn't require all of your attention all of the time and understand when life gets busy.

Tips for how to be a good friend:

Prioritize making time for each other..

Free time is sacred because we don't have much of it. At the same time, friendships grow through shared experiences and quality time together. The mark of a good friend is someone who makes time for you and makes spending time with you a priority. A good friend will also look for opportunities to maximize the time you have together by seeking fun and unique experiences that strengthen and maintain your bond.

Open up and allow each other to be vulnerable.

A good friend is someone genuine, someone with whom you can be yourself and they can be themselves around you, Cristerna explains. A good friend allows you to be vulnerable with them and vice versa, meaning you can expose your emotions and circumstances with each other and trust one another to listen, be supportive, and have each other's best interests at heart.

"Being able to have fun and share special memories are the result of having a trusting relationship that feels safe," Cristerna adds. "For example, all of my friends and I have an understanding that we support one another in every way (yes, even ridiculous ways!), unless the level of ridiculousness is too much or would create a situation where we feel uncomfortable."

Pay attention to the little things.

"A good friend is able to read between the lines of what's being said because they pay attention, and they know your heart," Thompson says. "For example, if I ask, 'How are you doing?' to a close friend and the response is 'OK,' I know immediately that she is not OK. A good friend pays attention to the details because you care to take the time to understand the heart of your friend."

Be willing to challenge each other.

A good friend pushes you to grow, will let you know when you are on the wrong path, and will "challenge you when you need to be challenged," says Thompson. And this is "all done in love and with respect." In this way, you can grow together and support each other along the way.

"In a personal story, I was angry with someone, and one of my good friends stopped me midway through my rant and said, 'Jinnie, you know you're wrong. I am always with you, but on this one, I can't ride with ya. Stop and think about the role you played in this.' That moment stays with me to this day because she loved me enough to tell me to knock it off, and it came from a place of love. I was able to receive it because of that," Cristerna explains. "That's what friends do."

But be open-minded.

To be a good friend, you have to be open-minded, says Thompson. Being open-minded allows your friend to be their true selves, especially when they are making decisions. By remaining open-minded and not inserting your own biases into your friend's decision-making, you demonstrate that you are understanding and supportive.

"Good friends support us, give us space to be ourselves and make mistakes, and they respect boundaries," Cristerna adds.

Look out for them.

"A good friend is a courageous friend who will stand up and do the right thing when no one is looking and even if it doesn't benefit them. This may not be the type of definition most people have about courage, but trust me—it takes a lot of courage to do this," Cristerna says.

For example, you might find yourself in situations where other people aren't treating your friend well or where you know your friend may be put in a sticky situation. As much as possible, a good friend is willing to stick their neck out on behalf of their friends, whether that means shutting down gossip about them, making sure they get home safe after a night out, or something else.

What about bad friends?

Here are some signs of an unhealthy friendship, according to Thompson:

You feel drained whenever you talk to them.
The friendship is one-sided, meaning every time you talk to them or try to share with them, somehow the conversation turns around and goes back to them.
They aren't making time to listen to you or allow space for your contributions to the conversation.
Your time or boundaries are not being respected.
They don't respect your feelings.
You often feel belittled by them.
You feel overly reliant on each other, a hallmark of codependent friendship .

Friendship entails reciprocity and respect, Cristerna adds. Without these two qualities, the relationship will be limited and fizzle over time. When you are in what feels like a toxic friendship or codependent friendship, it is best to determine what is the healthiest way for you to end the friendship .

In communicating the need to end the friendship, you want to ensure that you own the decision and be clear about how the relationship does and doesn't work for you. This is not the time to blame, however—in fact, this is a time to forgive and ask for forgiveness with grace and ease. Ending a friendship is already hard enough. Cristerna recommends trying to be compassionate, so if you cross paths again (and you usually do), you can say hello and catch up in a comfortable and natural way.

The bottom line.

A true friendship is defined by knowing someone has your back, no matter what. A good friend will watch out for you and ensure you are safe, feel supported, and are loved. A good friend will never purposely lead you into making decisions or taking actions that aren't good for you. A true friend will always have your best interests at heart.

Here's more on how to deepen adult friendships and how to create a lasting friendship .

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Essay on Friendship

Here we have shared the Essay on Friendship in detail so you can use it in your exam or assignment of 150, 250, 400, 500, or 1000 words.

You can use this Essay on Friendship in any assignment or project whether you are in school (class 10th or 12th), college, or preparing for answer writing in competitive exams.

Topics covered in this article.

Essay on Friendship in 150 words

Essay on friendship in 250-300 words, essay on friendship in 500-1000 words.

Friendship is a cherished bond that brings joy, support, and companionship into our lives. It is based on trust, understanding, and shared experiences. True friends offer comfort and a sense of belonging.

Friends play a significant role in our lives. They celebrate our successes, provide support during tough times, and make our journey more enjoyable. Through friendships, we learn, grow, and gain new perspectives. Friends inspire us and motivate us to become better versions of ourselves.

Maintaining friendships requires effort and commitment. It involves mutual respect, trust, and open communication. Quality time spent together strengthens the bond.

In a fast-paced world, friendships are invaluable. They offer love, acceptance, and understanding. True friends stand by us, providing support and making life more meaningful.

In conclusion, friendship is a precious gift that enriches our lives. It brings happiness, support, and a sense of belonging. Nurturing and cherishing friendships is essential for our well-being and happiness.

Friendship is a beautiful bond that brings joy, support, and companionship into our lives. It is a connection built on trust, mutual understanding, and shared experiences. True friendship goes beyond superficial interactions and offers a deep sense of comfort and belonging.

Friends play a significant role in our lives. They are there to celebrate our successes, lend a listening ear during challenging times, and provide a support system that helps us navigate the ups and downs of life. Friends bring laughter, happiness, and emotional support, making our journey more enjoyable and meaningful.

Friendship also allows us to learn and grow. Through our interactions with friends, we gain new perspectives, broaden our horizons, and develop important life skills such as empathy, communication, and compromise. Friends inspire us to be better versions of ourselves and provide a sense of motivation and encouragement.

Maintaining and nurturing friendships require effort and commitment. It involves mutual respect, trust, and open communication. Spending quality time together, sharing experiences, and being there for each other strengthens the bond of friendship.

In a fast-paced and often lonely world, friendships are invaluable. They provide a sense of belonging, happiness, and a support network that enriches our lives. True friends stand by us through thick and thin, offering love, acceptance, and understanding. They are the pillars of support who make life’s journey more meaningful and enjoyable.

In conclusion, friendship is a precious gift that adds immense value to our lives. It is a connection built on trust, understanding, and shared experiences. Friends offer support, laughter, and companionship, making our lives more fulfilling. Nurturing and cherishing friendships is essential for our well-being and happiness.

Title: Friendship – The Essence of True Connection

Introduction:

Friendship is a unique and valuable bond that enriches our lives with joy, support, and companionship. It is a connection that goes beyond mere acquaintanceship, rooted in trust, understanding, and shared experiences. This essay explores the significance of friendship, its qualities, the benefits it brings, and the ways to nurture and cherish these precious relationships.

The Meaning of Friendship

Friendship is a deep and meaningful relationship between individuals characterized by mutual affection, trust, and empathy. It is a bond that offers companionship, understanding, and support in both good times and bad. True friendship is built on honesty, respect, and genuine care for one another.

Qualities of True Friendship

True friendships possess several key qualities. Trust is paramount, as friends confide in each other without fear of judgment or betrayal. Mutual understanding allows friends to empathize and provide emotional support. Respect is essential, as friends accept and appreciate each other’s individuality. Loyalty ensures that friends stand by one another through thick and thin. Communication is vital for maintaining open and honest dialogue, fostering a strong and lasting connection.

Benefits of Friendship

Friendship brings numerous benefits to our lives. Emotional support from friends helps us cope with challenges, reduces stress, and boosts our mental well-being. Friends offer a safe space for sharing thoughts, feelings, and experiences, providing a sense of comfort and validation. They provide a support network during difficult times, lending a listening ear and offering guidance. Friends also bring joy, laughter, and fun into our lives, creating cherished memories and experiences.

Nurturing and Cherishing Friendships

To foster and maintain strong friendships, it is essential to invest time and effort. Regular communication and quality time spent together strengthen the bond. Active listening and empathy are crucial, allowing friends to truly understand and support one another. Celebrating each other’s successes and offering support during challenges cultivates a sense of solidarity. Honesty and transparency build trust, ensuring a foundation of authenticity in the relationship. Respecting boundaries and accepting differences helps sustain harmony within friendships.

The Role of Friendship in Personal Growth

Friendship plays a significant role in personal growth and development. Friends offer different perspectives, expanding our horizons and challenging our beliefs. They provide constructive feedback, helping us improve and grow as individuals. Through shared experiences, we learn valuable life lessons and acquire new skills. Friends inspire us to pursue our passions, push our boundaries, and achieve our goals. Their support and encouragement fuel our motivation and self-confidence.

Types of Friendship

Friendships come in various forms, ranging from childhood friends to work colleagues, from online companions to lifelong confidants. Each type of friendship brings unique dynamics and contributes to our personal growth and well-being.

Conclusion :

Friendship is a precious and invaluable connection that enhances our lives in countless ways. It offers companionship, support, and a sense of belonging. True friends stand by us through thick and thin, celebrating our successes and providing comfort during difficult times. Nurturing and cherishing friendships require effort, empathy, and open communication. By investing in these relationships, we create a support system that enriches our lives and helps us grow as individuals. Friendship is a gift that brings joy, love, and understanding, making life’s journey more meaningful and fulfilling.

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Aristotle on Friendship: What Does It Take to Be a Good Friend?

Author: G. M. Trujillo, Jr. Category: Ethics , Historical Philosophy Wordcount: 992

Imagine that you could choose between living two lives. Option 1 promises amazing beauty, wealth, power, fame, and health. But you would have zero friends. Option 2 offers only average beauty, wealth, reputation, and health. But you would have profound friendships.

Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) bet that no one would choose the first option. [1] He argued that we need friends to live a good life. After all, when life is bad, they help us. And when life is good, they celebrate with us. [2]

Aristotle’s claims about friendship began debates that continue today. [3] This essay presents his views on friendship and a contemporary debate he inspired.

An image of Aristotle and Hypatia laughing together, next to the first page of a Latin and Greek version of Nicomachean Ethics. Generated using Midjourney AI and edited by G.M.Trujillo.

1. Friendship, Useful Friends, and Pleasurable Friends

For Aristotle, all friendships are relationships where people mutually like each other, do good for one another, and share goals for the time they spend together. [4] But the friendship changes depending on the reasons that friends value each other and the ways that they do good for each other.

Consequently, Aristotle split friendship into three types. The first two types—useful and pleasurable friendships—are similar to each other.

Useful friendships are those between people whose foremost goal is to work together to accomplish some practical goal. Think coworkers or teammates.

Pleasurable friendships are those between people who routinely enjoy themselves together. Think friends who you invite to meals or nights out, or those you play games with. [5]

Useful and pleasurable friendships have upsides. They are casual and easy to form, as they are defined by their small-scale goals. Useful friends focus on getting things done, and pleasurable friends focus on enjoying each other’s company. The basis for these friendships, and the reason behind the mutual affection and planning, is simple use or pleasure.

But these friendships also have downsides. As soon as the task or fun disappears, so do these friendships. Consider what often happens to friendships with your coworkers when you leave your job, or what usually happens with most of your teammates when you quit playing a sport. Useful and pleasurable friendships are mostly motivated by what people can get out of them. This is why Aristotle deemed them as imperfect compared to the last type.

2. Virtuous Friends, the Best Friends

For Aristotle, the best friendships have a deeper meaning than utility or pleasure: becoming better people together. They are rare and hard to form. But they are the most important for living a good life. [6] Aristotle called these virtuous friendships .

Virtuous friends not only focus on getting things done or having a good time together. Rather, they primarily focus on each other as persons , attending to character and flourishing. They want their friends to be good people and live good lives for their own sake . And they work together to accomplish this. [7]

Virtuous friends become a part of each other’s lives by spending time together and having deep conversations. They share the same core ideas about what it means to be a good person and live a good life. [8] Aristotle argued that this deep bond makes virtuous friends “other selves,” or, “One soul dwelling in two bodies.” [9] Together, virtuous friends live, learn, struggle, and improve.

Living a full life is difficult. Not only do we need to become good as individuals, but also as family members, citizens, and contributors to our communities. And we need to avoid the common dangers of pursuing money above all things, caring too much about what strangers think, and losing ourselves in hobbies or addictions. Virtuous friends help with this. In success, friends celebrate. In failure, friends offer comfort and counsel, and sometimes they speak hard truths that only people who know and love you can. [10]

3. Do Good Friends Have to Be Good People?

When philosophers discuss friendship, they usually have Aristotle’s virtuous friendship in mind. Implicitly, it is taken as the most important type of friendship to scrutinize. Specifically, some philosophers debate whether immoral actions or bad people corrupt the quality of friendships. [11]

Imagine that your phone wakes you up late at night. It’s your best friend. She says it’s an emergency, and she needs your help. So you rush to the address she gave you. Then she reveals that she’s murdered someone. She asks you to help hide the body. But now you wonder: would a good friend help to hide the corpse, or would she encourage her friend to explain the situation to the authorities? [12]

This case raises some related questions: is being a good friend compatible with doing immoral things together? Can bad people really be good friends? And generally, are the good things about friendship also things that we should judge by moral standards?

Aristotle and Aristotelians argue that good friends must be ethically good people. Virtuous friends largely share the same values and help each other become excellent—and they hold each other accountable. Such explicitly ethical goals make immorality incompatible with deep friendship. So, in this scenario, Aristotelians would say that your friend who calls you to ask for help hiding a corpse is no longer a good friend. This request changes the friendship fundamentally for the worse. [13]

Non-Aristotelians disagree. They argue that the qualities that we appreciate in friendship are separate from complying with moral principles. Good friends share interests and are loyal to each other. And this is compatible with sometimes doing immoral things. A moral failure does not mean a failure in friendship. In fact, helping your friend in morally dubious circumstances might indicate that you are a real friend. [14]

4. Conclusion

Philosophers might disagree with Aristotle about how to define friendship or who can be a good friend. However, most agree that we must analyze our own ideas about what it means to be a good friend and whether we live up to them. Friendships reveal important things about who we are and how we love. And if, as Aristotle argued, good friends make us better and bad friends make us worse, our friendships could make or break us. [15]

[1] Aristotle wrote, “For no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all other good things” (2020, NE 1155a5-6). Aristotle’s greatest work, Nicomachean Ethics , dedicated two of its ten books to friendship, Books VIII and IX. And they have largely set the philosophical agenda for discussing friendship. Often, even philosophers who disagree with Aristotle start by summarizing his views. As far as philosophers and poets who came before Aristotle, none produced a definitive theory of friendship. For example, Plato’s Lysis discusses friendship. But as with many Socratic dialogues, there is no conclusive definition or view. However, for an argument that Greek philosophers before Aristotle had a theory of friendship, see: El Murr 2020.

Throughout, this essay will translate Aristotle’s Greek word philos as “friend” and philia as “friendship.” This is the most accessible way to render the Greek in English, and it captures the idea of being committed to someone in a specific context. The hope is that this broadens the terms outside of excessively specified roles in Greek society but doesn’t make friendship into a contemporary notion of abstract regard for others without context. However, a few things need clarification. First, the Greek philia refers to more types of relationships than the English “friendship.” Philia refers to friendship, but also the relationship between family members, spouses, lovers, members of a political community, or patrons and clients. Second, philia describes relationships with widely varying qualities. Some are deep with knowledge, emotion, and well-wishing; some are shallow and casual. Philia can be long-term and durable or transitory and quick to vanish. Philia encompasses voluntary associations replete with choice, as in choosing your friends or confidants, but it can also include unchosen associations, such as family. Philia can be sexual and desirous, or it can be friendly and cool. Third, philia can be translated as “love.” But in the context of relationships with others, many Greek words might also be translated as “love.” Storgē means love, often within familial contexts or within the context of affection. Eros means love, often with romantic implications. And not as much a concern for ancient Greece, but important to mention because Christian philosophers make use of the term, agapē gets rendered as love, usually within the context of God loving creation, or selfless love. These complex associations lead some philosophers to leave terms untranslated and merely transliterate them into the English alphabet, e.g., change φιλία to philia (see: Nussbaum 2009). This essay, however, opts for translation, hoping that the context of this discussion about friendship removes ambiguities. But serious scholarship about Aristotle’s theory of friendship attends to the details of the original Greek. For more discussion on translation, see: Annas 1993, pp. 223-4; Nussbaum 2009, p. 354; Cooper 1999a, p. 313, no. 5.

[2] Aristotle, NE , 1171b28. Aristotle himself had powerful friends. His teacher was Plato, and his student was Alexander the Great. He also had powerful enemies who drove him into exile, where he died. There is a famous saying regarding Aristotle’s death. Aristotle was living in Athens and running his school, The Lyceum. But politics in Athens shifted against Aristotle’s home city-state of Macedonia and against the rulers who Aristotle associated with, Phillip II and Alexander the Great. Aristotle feared that Athens would try to do the same thing to him that they did to Socrates, hold a mockery of a trial and sentence him to death. Aristotle apocryphally said, “I will not let Athens sin twice against philosophy,” and he took exile in Chalcis, where he died. See: Diogenes Laertius, 2018, V.5-6, 10; Shields 2020, sec. 1, esp. n. 3; Nussbaum 2009, p. 345, n. 8.

[3] For many historical examples of philosophers celebrating and analyzing friendship, see: Pakaluk 1991. For the rare exceptions of historical philosophers who criticize friendship, see: Trujillo 2020.

It is also important to note that this small article cannot go into all the issues Aristotle covered when discussing friendship. For example, there is arguably a fourth type of friendship, civic friendship, that describes people living in a political community together. (See: Cooper 1999b for an overview of Aristotle’s theory of civic friendship. See: Cherry 2021 for a debate between her and Robert Talisse about civic friendship and whether it can solve political polarization in the USA.) Additionally, Aristotle discusses matters of equality in money and power, arguing that good friends must be as equal as possible. Also, because Aristotle usually focuses on the best people possible, his work leaves open questions about what friendships look like for the rest of us, those morally imperfect and without all the wealth and power that Aristotle (or the people he had in mind) had. All these questions have become invaluable in the philosophy of technology, where people now use these distinctions to talk about social media, online friendships, robots, and friendships involving far-future technology. Aristotelians shape many conversations about the past, present, and future of friendship. (See: Elder 2018.)

[4] This essay takes a general stance with respect to the common features of useful, pleasurable, and virtuous friendships, especially as characterized by Aristotle in Rhetoric II.4: “We may describe friendly feeling towards anyone as wishing for him what you believe to be good things, not for your own sake but for his, and being inclined, so far as you can, to bring these things about. A friend is one who feels thus and excites these feelings in return. Those who think they feel thus towards each other think themselves friends.”

It is clear that, for Aristotle, some amount of reciprocity and recognition is necessary from each friend, as far as feelings about one another and what the friendship involves. This is why Aristotle says we cannot be friends with wine, no matter how much we like it. Wine just doesn’t love us back. ( NE 1155b27-31). But beyond these generalities, philosophers disagree.

Julia Annas, for example, offers her own interpretation of qualities Aristotle seems to endorse as belonging to all forms of friendship: (1) friends wish and do good for each other, (2) friends want their friends to stay alive for their own sake, (3) friends spend time with each other, (4) friends make similar choices, and (5) friends find similar things painful and pleasant. 1993, p. 254. Martha Nussbaum proposes that all friendships involve mutual affection, mutual separateness and respect for that independence, mutual well-wishing for the friend and for that friend’s own sake, and mutual awareness of the good feelings and wishes. 2009, p. 355.

In addition to deciding what is common in all forms of friendships, philosophers argue over what distinguishes the different types. For example, philosophers argue over the kind of affection and interest that friends take in each other in useful, pleasurable, and virtuous friendships. There is no doubt that virtuous friends are interested in their friends being good and doing well for their own sake. But philosophers disagree about whether such disinterested or non-self-interested motivation exists in useful or pleasurable friendships. John Cooper (1999a), for example, takes the position that all friendships involve a not-completely-self-interested motivation. But Kenneth Alpern (1983) thinks that useful and pleasurable friendships are not disinterested, even if they exhibit dependence, cooperation, trust, communion, and sharing. Aristotle is borderline incoherent on this point, sometimes writing that useful and pleasurable friends are self-centered, sometimes implying that all friendships share disinterested other-regarding concern. See: Cooper 1999a, p. 317.

[5] Aristotle, NE , VIII.3.

[6] Julia Annas summarizes Aristotle’s arguments for why virtuous friendships are necessary for living a good life. She identifies two reasons that are important to highlight. First, friends help you to learn about yourself. Virtuous friends share values, so their perspectives on each others’ lives are important. And because friends are outside of your life, they have an outside perspective that allows for accurate assessment. (Sometimes your friends know you better than you know yourself.) Second, friends can do more together than separately. When friends work together, they can sustain activities for a longer time, make activities much more pleasant, and make activities much more effective. 1993, p. 251.

[7] Aristotle, NE , 1170b11-14. In this passage, Aristotle emphasizes that friends share conversation and thought while living together. Sharing a human life together means more than “feeding in the same location as with grazing animals.” So, the quality of the shared time and the content of the actions matter, not just the hours logged. On the point of sharing the same values, see also: Rhet . II.4. Thanks go to Alexis Elder for emphasizing this point in her work.

[8] Aristotle, NE , VIII.3, 13; IX.5–6. See also: Diogenes Laertius (2018), V.31.

[9] For the “other selves” claim, see: Aristotle, NE , 1166a31. For the “One soul dwelling in two bodies,” see: Diogenes Laertius (2018), V.20. Aristotle argues that the deepest friendships are those between equals, in almost all respects. This is part of what makes virtuous friends “other selves.” For the most part, virtuous friends have the same values, the same strategies in approaching life, and maybe a lot of other similarities, such as economic class and political status. This means that when virtuous friends see each other living life, they understand what they’re doing and why, and they can counsel each other well. Additionally, because friends would do basically the same things as each other, they get to live somewhat vicariously. Aristotle’s works are rarely beautiful or poetic. But the phrasing of friends being “other selves” has inspired admiration of the phrase, leading to much philosophical reflection.

[10] See: Aristotle, NE , IX.11. On bitter times in friendship, Aristotle wrote, “[F]or as the proverb has it, people cannot have got to know each other before they have savored all that salt together, nor indeed can they have accepted each other to be friends before each party is seen to be lovable, and is trusted, by the other. Those who are quick to behave like friends towards each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they are also lovable, and the other party knows it; for what is quick to arise is wish for friendship, not friendship” (2002, NE , 1156b27-33). In other words, friends need to spend a lot of time together to get to know each other, which would include difficult times. This reveals how good a person is (so how loveable they are) and how deep the friendship is. Good people and good friendships endure the bad times; they go beyond mere well wishes.

It is also worth noting that Aristotle thought you could not be good friends with many people at once ( NE , 1158a11-2). Diogenes Laertius took this claim to an extreme when he reported that Aristotle said, “He who has friends has no true friend” (2018, V.21). In other words, having more than one serious friend means you are not serious friends with any one person. Diogenes Laertius, however, reports this hundreds of years after Aristotle died.

[11] For an overview of recent scholarship on friendship, see: Helm 2021 and Jeske 2023.

[12] This case is based on the film Death in Brunswick (1990), which is the primary example for Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett in their influential article “Friendship and Moral Danger” (2000).

[13] See: Aristotle, NE , IX.9-10; Elder 2013.

There is an added complication here that many philosophers do not address. Aristotle seems OK with friends being vulnerable around each other and doing things around each other that might not be proper in public. Friends feel comfortable around each other and trust one another, and sometimes they confide their own weaknesses in friends. So, the requirement that virtuous friends be good has small exceptions and doesn’t require moral perfection. See: Rhet . II.4.

Aristotle’s theory of friendship has political implications too. For Aristotle, humans are fundamentally political, in that they live in communities. And he argues that a community of good people who are friends with one another wouldn’t need justice or rules. People would inherently share things with one another and treat each other fairly. Inversely, Aristotle also argues that friendship is impossible under conditions of severe injustice. NE , VIII.1, 9, 11. See also: Cooper 1999b, p. 356. It is important to qualify this claim, however. Aristotle’s work on friendship seems only to extend to actual, day-to-day relationships, and not to people we don’t have relationships with, as in people living in distant communities. See: Annas 1993, p. 253. It is not really until the Cynics and Stoics that philosophers develop a sense of cosmopolitanism. For a discussion of cosmopolitanism, see: Moles 1996.

[14] See: Cocking and Kennett 2000.

[15] Aristotle, NE , IX.12. Thanks go out to Nathan Nobis, Dan Lowe, Chelsea Haramia, Kristin Seemuth Whaley, Spencer Case, and Felipe Pereira for their feedback. They improved the paper significantly.

Annas, Julia. (1993) The Morality of Happiness . New York: Oxford.

Alpern, Kenneth D. (1983) “Aristotle on the Friendships of Utility and Pleasure,” Journal of the History of Philosophy , vol. 21, no. 3: pp. 303-15.

Aristotle. (1991) Rhetoric [ Rhet .]. Trans. W. Rhys. Roberts. In: The Complete Works of Aristotle , Vol. 2, ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton.

Aristotle. (2002) Nicomachean Ethics [ NE ]. Trans. Christopher Rowe. Oxford: Oxford.

Cherry, Myisha. (2021). “On the Cultivation of Civic Friendship,” Journal of Philosophical Research , vol. 46: pp. 193-207.

Cocking, Dean and Jeanette Kennett. (2000) “Friendship and Moral Danger,” The Journal of Philosophy , vol. 97, no. 5: 278-96.

Cooper, John M. (1999a) “Aristotle on the Forms of Friendship.” In: Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory . Princeton: Princeton, ch. 14.

Cooper, John M. (1999b) “Political Animals and Civic Friendship.” In: Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory . Princeton: Princeton, ch. 16.

Diogenes Laertius. (2018) Lives of the Eminent Philosophers . Trans. Pamela Mensch. Oxford: Oxford.

Death in Brunswick . (1990) Dir. John Ruane.

El Murr, Dimitri. (2020) “Friendship in Early Greek Ethics.” In: Early Greek Ethics , ed. David Conan Wolfsdorf. Oxford: Oxford. Ch. 24.

Elder, Alexis. (2013) “Why Bad People Can’t Be Good Friends,” Ratio , vol. 27, iss. 1: 84-99.

Elder, Alexis. (2018) Friendship, Robots, and Social Media: False Friends and Second Selves . New York: Routledge.

Helm, Bennett. (2021) “Friendship,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : plato.stanford.edu.

Jeske, Diane. (2023) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Friendship . New York: Routledge.

Moles, John L. (1996) “Cynic Cosmopolitanism.” In: The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy , eds. R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé. Berkeley: California.

Nussbaum, Martha C. (2009) The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy . Updated Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge.

Pakaluk, Michael. (1991) Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship . Indianapolis: Hackett.

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For Further Reading

Katz, Emily. (2023) “Three lessons from Aristotle on Friendship,” The Conversation .

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G.M. Trujillo, Jr. is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso. He specializes in ethics, especially virtue ethics and bioethics. www.Boomert.info

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Friendship — My Experience In Friendship

My Experience in Friendship

Categories: Admired Person Friendship

About this sample

Words: 714 |

Published: Nov 8, 2019

Words: 714 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Having a best friend

Works cited:.

Smith, Zadie. "Find Your Beach." The New York Review of Books, 26 Nov. 2020. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/11/26/zadie-smith-find-your-beach/
Whitehead, Colson. "City Limits." The New Yorker, 16 Aug. 1999. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/08/16/city-limits
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. HarperCollins, 1990.
Diener, Ed, and Robert Biswas-Diener. Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.
Fredrickson, Barbara L. Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive. Crown Publishers, 2009.
Gilbert, Daniel. Stumbling on Happiness. Vintage, 2006.
Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Basic Books, 2006.
Kashdan, Todd B., and Robert Biswas-Diener. The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self - Not Just Your "Good" Self - Drives Success and Fulfillment. Hudson Street Press, 2014.
Seligman, Martin E. P. Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Free Press, 2002.
Snyder, C. R., and Shane J. Lopez. Handbook of Positive Psychology. Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Importance of Friendship Essay

Essay on the Importance of Friendship -

The family, to whom we belong, are the ones chosen by God, but the family which we can choose on our own are friends. A person can be entirely himself in a sincere friendship without worrying about being criticised . You experience an emotion of acceptance and love. In essence, genuine friendship is what enables us to persist through life. Here are a few sample essays on Importance Of Friendship.

100 Words Essay on the Importance of Friendship

200 words essay on the importance of friendship, 500 words essay on the importance of friendship.

Importance Of Friendship In Childhood

Kids always show better understanding and holistic development when they are engaged with other kids of their own age group. In this way, they tend to learn faster by observing and imitating. In this age, friendship can yield fruitful results in their upbringing. This can also be seen if we talk about kindergartens. Here, kids learn to care for each other, share things among all and grow in a better way.

Importance Of Friendship In Middle Age

A person in middle age is stuck in his personal and professional life. Everyone is aware of the stress and burden nowadays which does not give enough time to make oneself happy. All are clutched into their routines. But if we have friends then we can plan some time out with family and friends to get that heaviness off our shoulders and enjoy it a lot.

Also Read | A friend In Need Is A Friend Indeed

Importance Of Friendship In Old Age

In the absence of joint families nowadays, it has become tough for the old generation to have a good time and chit-chat with their other family members. When the middle generation is out for work or even stays apart for professional or personal reasons, the old aged can survive well in the presence of their friend circle. They can spend quality time with friends and feel light and happy.

A True Friendship

One day we saw a person on the road who had met with an accident and was looking for his family, calling them on the phone but were unable to connect. He also made a call to his friend for help and within 10 minutes his friend reached the spot and took him to the hospital for further treatment. His friend reached the place of an accident even before his own family could come and he also informed his family members to reach the particular hospital. It shows the kind of connection between friends.

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33 Montaigne on Friendship

Eric MacPhail is Professor of French and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, where he has taught since 1988. He is the author of three monographs and numerous articles and book chapters on European Renaissance literature. Since 2013 he has served as editor of Erasmus Studies , published under the auspices of the Erasmus of Rotterdam Society. He is the coeditor, along with two colleagues, of the new scholarly edition of Jean Bodin’s Démonomanie des sorciers (Droz, 2016). His new project is entitled Atheist’s Progress: Religious Tolerance from Renaissance to Enlightenment and focuses on the intersection of religion and politics in France from Jean Bodin to Pierre Bayle.

Published: 10 December 2015
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This article surveys the numerous permutations and repercussions, political, ethical, and esthetic, of the hallowed notion of friendship in Montaigne’s Essays . It also studies the literary genealogy and intertextual relations of friendship in the classical and vernacular tradition. The fiction of friendship has sustained a long tradition in Montaigne studies and is no doubt one of Montaigne’s most generous gifts to posterity. Friendship in the Essays is by turns an artistic passion, a civil liberty, and a political profession, metamorphosizing and adapting through the different phases of composition. In this process, the written word remains the most trusted repository of friendship. The mutual obligation of author and book offers a most modern formulation of friendship.

Friendship is an integral part of literary posterity. When she wrote her preface to the first posthumous edition of Montaigne’s Essays in 1595, Marie de Gournay included a praise of friendship in her encomium of the author. Montaigne is preeminently the author of friendship, whose elegy for a lost friend earns him the friendship of countless readers beginning with Marie de Gournay. Friendship is, perhaps more so than for any other author, the key both to Montaigne’s literary vocation and to his reception. He became a writer when he lost his friend Étienne de La Boétie, whom he originally befriended after reading his book, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude . Montaigne tells us, in “A Consideration upon Cicero,” that he would have written letters rather than essays if he had had a friend with whom to correspond. 1 So the essays supply the place once occupied by the friend. Similarly, Marie de Gournay tells us that she befriended Montaigne through his book two years before meeting the author in person. 2 Friendship, as François Rigolot says, is intertextual. 3 Friendship forms a community of readers and writers and provides a guiding thread through literary tradition.

Friendship is also a prominent topic of moral philosophy, and Montaigne takes his place in the classical tradition as a moral philosopher. The most important resource for the moral philosophy of friendship is Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics . Commentaries on Aristotle’s theory of friendship usually focus on the initial chapters of Book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics , which offer a hierarchy of different types of friendship and an identification of the perfect type, or teleia philia . Unlike the other two types of friendship that Aristotle recognizes in his initial typology, which are based on either utility or pleasure, perfect friendship is disinterested.

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of their own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good—and goodness is an enduring thing. 4

Such friendship has no ulterior motive; perfect friendship is an end in itself rather than a means to an end. Like virtue, friendship is its own reward. This fact, as others have noticed, causes some embarrassment to Christianity, for which heaven is virtue’s reward. 5 In its absolute autonomy, Aristotle’s highest form of friendship does not tend toward salvation.

Moreover, Aristotle’s friends behave toward each other according to necessity or causal logic rather than by chance. The term that Ross has translated as “incidentally” in the above quotation from the Nicomachean Ethics ( κατὰ συμβεβηκός ) in other contexts means “coincidence” or “accident.” 6 Friendship for its own sake eliminates the accidental. Consequently, the behavior of friends conforms to probability or necessity just like the tragic plot according to Aristotle’s Poetics . Chapter 9 of the Poetics famously declares that “it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen, what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity.” 7 It is in this respect, rather than in respect to verse, that history differs from poetry and, we may add, from friendship. There is something inherently fictional in friendship’s exemption from chance.

One aspect of Aristotle’s discussion of friendship that appealed strongly to the European Renaissance was its frequent use of proverbs. Friendship is a prominent theme in the paroemiographic tradition, and Aristotle’s text offers a veritable cascade of proverbial wisdom to support and exemplify its argument about the nature of friendship. Among the proverbs that Aristotle collects in the friendship chapters of the Nicomachean Ethics is κοινὰ τὰ φίλων , cited twice, 8 which yields the very first of Erasmus’s 4,151 adages Amicorum communia omnia , or Friends hold all things in common . One thing that friends and friendship theorists share most willingly is proverbs. In this respect, friendship is a model for humanism and its shared fund of cultural references and memories. The commonplace culture of European Renaissance humanism was one of the most pervasive and even coercive forms of friendship known to Montaigne and his contemporaries.

By virtue of its integration in the commonplace tradition, friendship flows easily into a wide variety of literary works and genres of the European Renaissance, both vernacular works and works in humanist Latin. To concentrate on the French Renaissance phase of this tradition, we can examine an anthology of three dialogues on friendship by Plato, Cicero, and Lucian translated into French by Blaise de Vigenère and published in 1579, one year before Montaigne published his first two books of essays. 9 Vigenère prefaces his work with a dedicatory epistle addressed to his friend Jean Andreossi, to whom he offers the three translations as three “medallions” of friendship. 10 The preface has been rightly understood as a work of royalist propaganda, and Vigenère includes an encomium of the beleaguered king Henry III. 11 Since Henry was notorious for his relationship with his “ mignons ,” or favorite courtiers, Vigenère tries to orient the discussion of friendship in Henry’s favor. Praising the virtues of the triad, the translator offers his own tripartite typology of friendship in seeming disregard for Aristotelian theory. Whereas Aristotle identified three kinds of friendship based on utility, pleasure, or goodness, Blaise de Vigenère recognizes three degrees, or stages, in friendship: from inferior to superior, which is the most defective kind; between equals, which is the most frequent variety; and from superior to inferior, which is the best and not coincidentally the kind exemplified by the king’s patronage of his “ mignons .” This classification seems to contradict the commonplace notion that friendship is equality, cited by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics 12 and duly recirculated by Erasmus in the adage Amicitia aequalitas , or Friendship is equality . However, though he emphasizes the proverbial equivalence of friendship and equality, Aristotle also acknowledges “another kind of friendship, which involves an inequality between the parties, e.g., that of father to son and in general of elder to younger, that of man to wife and in general that of ruler to subject.” 13 Taking his cue from this claim, Vigenère appeals to the authority of Aristotle to support his preference for the third type of friendship, from superior to inferior: “Therefore Aristotle quite wisely and with good reason puts it at the highest rank of perfection in respect to mortal men; in as much as, according to him, it consists in the excellence of the favors and benefits conferred upon them.” 14 In the following lines of his preface, Vigenère translates more or less verbatim from Book 9, chapter 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics , where Aristotle considers the friendship between benefactors and those whom they benefit. Aristotle explains why the affection between benefactor and beneficiary is not reciprocal and that the affection of the benefactor, being disinterested, is superior to the affection of the one who receives the benefit. Then Aristotle adds what is, upon reflection, the rather odd example of the technites , or artisan, who loves his work more than his work would love him if it were to come alive and become ἐμψύχον , or endowed with a psyche . 15 This tendency, moreover, is conspicuously true of the poets, who cherish their own poems as if they were their children. None of this was lost on Montaigne nor, perhaps, on Ovid before him.

The idea of the art work that comes to life irresistibly suggests the myth of Pygmalion recounted in Book 10 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and invoked by Montaigne in his essay “Of the affection of fathers for their children” (II, 8), which is precisely the form of philia that Aristotle outlines in Nicomachean Ethics , Book 9, chapter 7. Essay II, 8 treats the form of friendship that consists in affection for posterity. Here, after reviewing several examples of the affection or disaffection of fathers for their biological children, and recounting some anecdotes about testamentary disposition of great interest to historians, 16 the essay turns to the affection we feel for “the children of our mind” or “ les enfantements de nostre esprit .” 17 At this point, Montaigne famously declares that he is not sure but that he wouldn’t rather have produced a child perfectly formed from the acquaintance of the Muses than from the acquaintance of his wife. 18 Nor does he seem quite sure how many or which ones he got from the acquaintance of his wife. The essay ends with the example of Ovid’s myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell in love with his statue and whose statue, by the grace of the gods, finally came to life. From Aristotle, we know that Pygmalion cannot expect an equal return of affection. This strategic citation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses has sponsored a great deal of reflection on the “metamorphic” sensibilities of the Essays and indeed of Renaissance esthetics in general. 19 I would like to emphasize instead the Aristotelian connection. When Montaigne reread his essay in the Bordeaux Copy, he added to the conclusion, just before the Pygmalion passage, a brief reference to Aristotle’s argument from Nicomachean Ethics Book 9, chapter 7 about the poets’ exemplary affection for their own work. 20 He also added a longer paraphrase of the same chapter to an earlier passage of his essay:

Add to that this other Aristotelian consideration, that he who does good to someone loves him better than he is loved by him; and that he to whom something is owed loves better than he who owes; and that every workman loves his work better than he would be loved by it, if the work had feeling. For being is something we hold dear, and being consists in movement and action. Wherefore each man in some sort exists in his work. 21

Clearly Montaigne reflected very carefully on Aristotle’s argument as he reread his own essay with its Ovidian conclusion, and he may have recognized the mythographic potential of this ethical argument about the disinterested nature of friendship. More specifically, the author of “De l’affection des pères aux enfants” may have recognized in Aristotle’s ergon empsychon an allusion to Pygmalion or else an anticipation of Pygmalion. For there is no pre-Ovidian genealogy of this myth. Pygmalion is not a Homeric or Hesiodic myth, nor does he figure in the fifth-century tragic corpus. Ovid may well have invented Pygmalion as the figure of the artist who loves his own creation. As the father of this myth, Ovid was naturally quite proud of his offspring, and Montaigne cites the story as the crowning example of the poet’s affection for his artistic progeny. In this way, Montaigne, like Vigenère, revives a neglected aspect of the Aristotelian friendship tradition.

The locus classicus of Montaigne’s treatment of friendship is naturally his essay “Of friendship” (I, 28), in which he first promises us and then denies us the text of his friend Étienne de La Boétie’s youthful political treatise Discourse on Voluntary Servitude . Montaigne’s essay has been subjected to relentless and often ingenious interpretation, particularly as regards his connection to classical friendship theory, from which he is thought to be laudably though intermittently independent, and in regard to the genesis of the Essays , conceived as a monument to the dead friend. La Boétie, who died in 1563, chose as his literary heir and executor Montaigne, who discharged a part of this function in 1570 when he published some of his friend’s translations from the Greek as well as some of his Latin and vernacular verse. However, he frankly suppressed his friend’s two most important texts, the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude and the Mémoire on the royal edict of January 1562 granting tolerance to French Protestants. Between La Boétie’s death in 1563 and the publication of the Essays in 1580, the text of the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude had been printed by Protestant polemicists and thus carried the stigma of resistance to monarchy.

These are the circumstances evoked in the conclusion to “Of friendship”:

Because I have found that his work has since been brought to light, and with evil intent, by those who seek to disturb and change the state of our government without worrying whether they will improve it, and because they have mixed his work up with some of their own concoctions, I have changed my mind about putting it in here. And so that the memory of the author may not be damaged in the eyes of those who could not know his opinions and actions at close hand, I beg to advise them that this subject was treated by him in his boyhood, only by way of an exercise, as a common theme hashed over in a thousand places in books. 22

Montaigne may have meant, as he claims, to protect the memory of La Boétie from the stigma of rebellion or he may have just meant to protect his own reputation as a Catholic loyalist, a reputation not immune to suspicion. However, more cynical readings of Montaigne’s censorship of his friend can be cited. Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani has shown quite acutely how Montaigne exalts La Boétie as a friend the better to diminish him as a thinker and a writer, the capacity in which he posed the most formidable challenge to the author of the Essays . 23 In effect, we are reminded that friendship also involves rivalry and even betrayal.

Moreover, by seeking to diminish the significance of La Boétie’s political theory, Montaigne also risks trivializing his own sublime friendship. For if the subject of the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude is in fact a “common theme hashed over in a thousand places in books,” the same can be said more readily and more obviously of the subject of Montaigne’s essay “Of friendship.” Is the essay on friendship really biographical or merely rhetorical, that is to say a declamatory exercise? What are the essays if not “exercises” and what was La Boétie if not an essayist? Characteristically, the essay undermines its most vigorous assertions. By his own admission, Montaigne’s friendship deserves neither more nor less credence than his friend’s politics.

In political terms, friendship can be a subversive theme and a divisive one among subjects of monarchy. As we know, Montaigne owes his perfect friendship to his encounter with the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude :

And yet I am particularly obliged to this work, since it served as the medium of our first acquaintance. For it was shown to me long before I had seen him, and gave me my first knowledge of his name, thus starting on its way this friendship which together we fostered, as long as God willed, so entire and so perfect that certainly you will hardly read of the like, and among men of today you see no trace of it in practice. 24

And yet, when he first read the Discourse , he may have felt a certain unease at his friend’s nostalgic enthusiasm for classical republican or democratic friendship. In denouncing tyranny, La Boétie commemorates the friendship of Brutus and Cassius, assassins of Julius Caesar, as well as the friendship of Harmodius and Aristogiton, who plotted to overthrow the Athenian tyrant Hippias. His Discourse ends with a paean to friendship as the solace of free men:

Friendship is a sacred name, it is a holy thing; it never exists save between morally upright people and stems only from mutual esteem. It is sustained not so much by favors rendered as by proper living. What makes one friend sure of the other is the knowledge he has of his integrity; the guarantees of it he has are his good character, faith, and loyalty. There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, where there is disloyalty, where there is injustice. 25

The tyrant has no friends because friendship is based on equality: “For since he is above everyone else and has no companion, he is already beyond the limits of friendship, whose fair game is equality; which never hobbles, but is always even-gaited.” 26 This enthusiasm for equality and nostalgia for regicide cast friendship as a republican ideal foreign to sixteenth-century France.

Montaigne addresses the political implications of friendship in his own essay “Of friendship” when he rehearses an anecdote taken from Cicero’s dialogue on friendship Laelius de amicitia . Cicero remembers the case of a certain C. Blossius Cumanus, who was in league with Tiberius Gracchus and who confessed that, for the sake of his friend, he would have set fire to the Capitol in Rome. For Cicero, Blossius’s case exemplifies the ethical principle that it is no excuse to do wrong for a friend’s sake: “ nulla est igitur excusatio peccati si amici causa peccaveris .” 27 Friendship is culpable when it enters into conflict with the citizen’s loyalty to the state. Accordingly, Montaigne says of Blossius and Gracchus, though without Cicero’s unequivocal disapproval, “They were friends more than citizens, friends more than friends or enemies of their country or friends of ambition and disturbance.” 28 Montaigne recognizes the conflict between friendship and citizenship.

Against the classical examples of conspiratorial friendship, Montaigne offers a definition of friendship that is consonant with contemporary theories of absolute monarchy. 29 The essay “Of friendship” recalls the exemplary figure of Eudamidas from Lucian’s dialogue Toxaris , which was one of the three texts translated by Blaise de Vigenère for his anthology of 1579. Eudamidas bequeathed to his friends his own financial obligations so that they would have the privilege of performing a benefit to him and to his family after his death. While others mocked such an unorthodox bequest, his friends accepted it with gratitude. This anecdote exemplifies the idea from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics , cited by Vigenère in his prefatory epistle, that the highest degree of friendship is from benefactor to beneficiary; for Eudamidas finds a way to make his heirs his benefactors, in a paradoxical gesture of altruism. The only fault Montaigne can find with this story is the prologue: “Eudamidas of Corinth had two friends.” 30 For Montaigne, perfect friendship is unique and indivisible: you cannot have more than one friend.

Common friendships can be divided up: one may love in one man his beauty, in another his easygoing ways, in another liberality, in one paternal love, in another brotherly love, and so forth; but this friendship that possesses the soul and rules it with absolute sovereignty cannot possibly be double. 31

The term he uses for the absolute authority of friendship is souveraineté , which refers to the new political theory developed by Jean Bodin in his Six Books of the Republic in 1576, four years before Montaigne’s essay.

Ten years earlier, in 1566, Bodin had offered a preliminary definition of sovereignty or summum imperium in his Method for the Easy Understanding of History , where he listed a certain number of attributes of sovereignty and insisted that these attributes, including the power to make and unmake laws, the power to declare war and peace, and the power of life and death, could never be shared with magistrates in a well-ordered state. 32 Above all, Bodin meant to dispel the popular notion of the mixed constitution advanced by admirers of ancient Sparta and modern Venice. 33 For Bodin, Sparta was an aristocracy, Venice like Rome a popular state or Respublica popularis , 34 and France a monarchy. Those are the only three types of republic: democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy; and each type has only one sovereign: the people, the optimates, or the king. Sovereignty cannot be distributed between different institutions of the same state as adherents of the mixed constitution pretended. At the time of the Methodus , this was primarily a theoretical, intellectual dispute, but when Bodin returned to the question of sovereignty ten years later in his Six Books of the Republic , he had to answer the monarchomachs, or Protestant writers, who, in the wake of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, formulated the theory of resistance to monarchy. These writers argued for the traditional separation of powers in the French government, among king, Parliament, and Estates General, which they felt had been abrogated by the tyranny of the Valois monarchs. Their theory, moreover, was indelibly associated with the practice of civil war. Chapter 8 of the first book of the Six Books of the Republic is devoted to a definition of sovereignty as the absolute and perpetual power of the state. 35 Now Bodin focuses on monarchy and shows that the sovereign, namely the king of France, cannot alienate or divide his sovereignty even if he wanted to. 36 In practical terms, this means that, contrary to what the monarchomachs claimed, the king of France is not accountable to the Paris Parliament or the Estates General or the French people, but only to God: “In a monarchy, everyone individually, and the whole people collectively, must swear to uphold the laws and take an oath of loyalty to the sovereign monarch, who, for his part, owes no oath to anyone but God.” 37 Though he is subject to the laws of God and nature, and even to certain fundamental laws of the realm such as the Salic law of royal succession, the king can never be bound by his own laws and does not share sovereignty with any legislative or deliberative body. Bodin’s sovereignty, like Montaigne’s friendship, is indivisible. 38

In that sense, we can say that friendship has its own history that moves from classical republicanism to the modern state, or from conspiracy to sovereignty. This history implies that friendship is political rather than exclusively personal or private. Friendship involves a relationship to political power, whether antagonistic, accommodating, or independent. While the classical republican model holds that friends conspire against the tyrant, who is, as Bodin reminds us, the sovereign, 39 Montaigne proposes a different political role for friendship. For he proposes to befriend the king. In his final essay, “Of experience,” Montaigne identifies his profession, that which he professes to know or to learn, as self-knowledge. Self-study is his whole curriculum, his encyclopedia as it were: “I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.” 40 This striking claim can be taken as an expression of indifference to theory or to theoretical curiosity. 41 The essayist disclaims any interest in the study of what he calls “this universe of things,” or what we might call the cosmos. As far as he is concerned, we do not need to know how the cosmos works as long as we have faith in its governor or creator: “The goodness and capacity of the governor should free us absolutely and fully from worrying about his government.” 42 His unique preoccupation is to understand himself. Such self-knowledge confers numerous benefits on its professor. First and foremost, the better he knows himself, the less susceptible he is to flattery and conceit and the more inclined to modesty and obedience. 43 Second, by means of assiduous self-study, he develops precisely the faculty of judgment necessary to perform the duties of friendship:

This long attention that I devote to studying myself trains me also to judge passably of others, and there are few things of which I speak more felicitously and excusably. It often happens that I see and distinguish the characters of my friends more exactly than they do themselves. I have astonished at least one by the pertinence of my description, and have given him information about himself. By training myself from my youth to see my own life mirrored in that of others, I have acquired a studious bent in that subject, and when I am thinking about it, I let few things around me which are useful for that purpose escape my notice: countenances, humors, statements. I study everything: what I must flee, what I must follow. So I reveal to my friends, by their outward manifestations, their inward inclinations. 44

As a self-critic, the essayist is the rare friend capable of admonishing others for their own good.

We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly; and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship; for to undertake to wound and offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him. 45

The paradox of offending someone for his own good is the mark of true friendship, and no one stands in greater need of such friendship than the king: “Now, there is no class of men that has as great need as they of true and frank admonitions.” 46 Courtiers are not friends; they look out for themselves rather than for their master. 47 So where can the king turn for frank advice? Montaigne suggests hypothetically that he would have been suited for the task if the kings of France had seen fit to employ him. When asked what service he would have been good for in public life, he always says, “nothing,” with one qualification.

But I would have told my master home truths, and watched over his conduct, if he had been willing. Not in general, by schoolmasterly lessons, which I do not know—and I see no true reform spring from them in those who know them—but by observing his conduct step by step, at every opportunity, judging it with my own eyes, piece by piece, simply and naturally, making him see how he stands in public opinion, and opposing his flatterers. 48

The counterfactual construction, “I would have helped the kings if they had wanted me to,” insinuates that it’s their fault and their loss if they did not. 49

This long development on hypothetical friendship from “Of experience” reprises the crucial themes of an essay by Montaigne’s favorite ancient author Plutarch, whose moral treatises were translated into French by Jacques Amyot under the title Les Œuvres morales et meslees de Plutarque in 1572. The essay in question is known in English as “How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend,” and it includes a very sensitive discussion of how to admonish a friend with the proper balance of candor and tact. The key concept in Plutarch’s discussion is παρρησία , or free speech, which corresponds to the “true and frank admonitions” of which the king, according to Montaigne, stands in such great and unmet need. Plutarch is acutely aware of the perils of parrhesia : candor, though it is a sacred duty of friendship, is not suited for all times or occasions. If used at the wrong time, it can be just as bad as flattery. Parrhesia , he stresses, is a matter of timing, or kairos : “Failure to observe the proper occasion [ καιρὸς ] is in any case exceedingly harmful, but particularly when frankness [ παρρησία ] is concerned it destroys its profitableness.” 50 Plutarch’s examples all involve untimely candor to the king: “For Antiphon was put to death by order of Dionysius and Timagenes lost his place in Caesar’s friendship” and Epicharmus offended Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse. 51 Similarly, Montaigne acknowledges that the truth, when spoken to the king, must be used with discretion:

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in any way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits. It often happens, as the world goes, that people blurt it out into a prince’s ear not only fruitlessly, but harmfully, and even unjustly. 52

Montaigne here seems to be very much in tune with the classical notion of kairos .

Plutarch’s theme of παρρησία as a duty and even a technique of friendship has broad implications for our understanding of Montaigne’s Essays today. In an important essay on Montaigne and Foucault, Reinier Leushuis has shown that Montaigne makes a reflexive use of parrhesia : he tells the truth about himself to himself. 53 In effect, with the essay form, free speech moves into the realm of soliloquy, and so too does friendship. Friendship is the duty that the essayist owes himself, and he discharges this duty by essaying himself and judging himself with candor and discretion. As he acknowledges, this duty extends beyond death and reaches out to posterity. Montaigne makes this acknowledgment in a passage from the essay “Of vanity” in which we can find the only instance of the term “ mémoires ” as a self-designation of his essays. Montaigne says that he has faithfully represented himself in these memoirs, and that he hopes they will provide for him the same loyal service that he has provided for an unnamed friend, whom we take to be La Boétie, whose memory he has always defended against detractors.

At all events, in these memoirs, if you look around, you will find that I have said everything or suggested everything. What I cannot express I point to with my finger: But if you have a penetrating mind These little tracks will serve the rest to find. I leave nothing about me to be desired or guessed. If people are to talk about me, I want it to be truly and justly. I would willingly come back from the other world to give the lie to any man who portrayed me other than I was, even if it were to honor me. Even the living, I perceive, are spoken of otherwise than they really are. And if I had not supported with all my strength a friend that I lost, they would have torn him into a thousand contrasting appearances. 54

Montaigne’s ability to survive himself and to come back from the dead to set the record straight depends on the vitality of his writing. If he can endow the written word with life, his book will keep his reputation alive. In this respect, he goes Pygmalion one better: he brings his work to life and it returns the favor. Or else we can say that he plays the role of Eudamidas to his own book, bequeathing to it the opportunity to be his benefactor. Between friends, such a legacy is a gift rather than a burden.

From this brief survey, it ought to be apparent that Montaigne’s ideas on friendship are unstable and evolving. Friendship, like so much in the Essays , undergoes its own metamorphosis. In 1580 Montaigne contrasted his ideal of friendship with other biological and social relations which he found wanting in one or another respect and which helped to define true friendship negatively, a process of negative definition that Richard Regosin found to be paradigmatic of the Essays as a whole. 55 One such inferior relation was paternity, which intimidates free speech:

From children toward fathers, it is rather respect. Friendship feeds on communication, which cannot exist between them because of their too great inequality, and might perhaps interfere with the duties of nature. For neither can all the secret thoughts of fathers be communicated to children, lest this beget an unbecoming intimacy, nor could the admonitions and corrections, which are one of the chief duties of friendship, be administered by children to fathers. 56

In 1588, when Montaigne emphasizes the free speech of friends and makes his book heir to his reputation, “admonitions and corrections” are precisely what he expects from his own writing, the child of his mind. A new idea of paternity opens up new possibilities of friendship. Though the king may have spurned Montaigne’s “true and frank admonitions,” 57 his book remains a trusted adviser, friend, and son.

The mutual obligation of author and book is the most modern formulation of friendship that Montaigne offers us in the “book of the self,” to borrow Regosin’s ever valid epithet. Friends cultivate self-knowledge through mutual and timely candor. Montaigne confides in his book, which discovers his faults and teaches him humility. In a late addition to the essay “Of giving the lie,” the author describes this mutual dependence as consubstantiality: “I have no more made my book than my book has made me—a book consubstantial with its author.” 58 The shared labor of book and author, like a collaboration between sculpture and sculptor, represents a singular image of friendship. The Essays reveal the striking individuality of their author, which emerges precisely through the reciprocity of writer and text. While Montaigne’s other friendships may have been more ideal than real, his book has stood by him like a true friend.

All quotations from Montaigne are taken from The Complete Works of Montaigne , trans. Donald Frame (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1957) , and Les Essais de Michel de Montaigne , ed. Pierre Villey and V. L. Saulnier (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978): I, 40, 185–186 [252] : “Sur ce subject de lettres, je veux dire ce mot, que c’est un ouvrage auquel mes amys tiennent que je puis quelque chose. Et eusse prins plus volontiers ceste forme à publier mes verves, si j’eusse eu à qui parler.”

Marie de Gournay , “Préface à l’édition de 1595 des Essais,” ed. François Rigolot , Montaigne Studies 1 (1989): 24. Rigolot points out that she actually discovered the essays four years before meeting their author in 1588.

François Rigolot , “L’amitié intertextuelle: Etienne de La Boétie et Marie de Gournay,” in L’Esprit et la Lettre. Mélanges offerts à Jules Brody , ed. Louis van Delft (Tübingen, Germany: Gunter Narr, 1991), 57–66. Floyd Gray has written very acutely of Montaigne’s friendship for books in “Montaigne’s Friends,” French Studies 15 (1961): 203–212.

Aristotle , Nicomachean Ethics , trans. W. D. Ross in The Basic Works of Aristotle , ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), 1156b7-12, 1061.

Ullrich Langer , Perfect Friendship: Studies in Literature and Moral Philosophy from Boccaccio to Corneille (Geneva, Switzerland: Droz, 1994), 47–64.

See Richard Sorabji , Necessity, Cause and Blame (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980), 4.

S. H. Butcher , Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (New York: Dover, 1951), 1451a36-38, 35.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , 1159b31 and 1168b8.

Trois dialogues de l’amitie: Le Lysis de Platon, et le Laelius de Ciceron; contenans plusieurs beaux preceptes, et discours philosophiques sur ce subiect: Et le Toxaris de Lucian; ou sont amenez quelques rares exemples de ce que les Amis ont fait autresfois l’un pour l’autre , trans. Blaise de Vigenère (Paris: Nicolas Chesneau, 1579).

Ibid ., “Il est impossible que … je ne vous respecte et honore … pour l’Amitié que vous me portez. Pour arres et tesmoignage de laquelle … Je vous en offre icy comme trois medalles,” ✝4 v .

Marc Schachter, work in progress on French translations of friendship texts.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , 1157b36.

Ibid ., 1158b11-14, 1065.

Trois dialogues de l’amitie : “Au moyen dequoy Aristote fort sagement et à bon droict la mect au plus haut degré de perfection, pour le regard des hommes mortels; d’autant, comme il dict, qu’elle consiste en l’excellence des faveurs et beneficences conferees en leur endroict,” ✝✝3 v .

Aristote, Nicomachean Ethics , 1167b35. Vigenère translates: “Pource que chacun aime plus sans comparaison son ouvrage, qu’il n’est reaimé d’iceluy; quand bien il auroit vie et seroit animé.”

Natalie Zemon Davis , “A Renaissance Text to the Historian’s Eye: The Gifts of Montaigne,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 15 (1985): 47–56.

II, 8, 291 [400].

II, 8, 293 [401]: “Et je ne sçay si je n’aimerois pas mieux beaucoup en avoir produict ung, parfaictement bien formé, de l’acointance des muses, que de l’acointance de ma femme.”

See especially François Rigolot , Les métamorphoses de Montaigne (Paris: PUF, 1988) , and Michel Jeanneret , Perpetuum mobile: Métamorphoses des corps et des oeuvres de Vinci à Montaigne (Paris: Macula, 1997).

II, 8, 293 C [402].

II, 8, 279 C [386–387]: “Joint cette autre consideration Aristotelique, que celuy qui bien faict à quelcun, l’aime mieus qu’il n’en est aimé; et celuy à qui il est deu, aime mieus que celuy qui doibt; et tout ouvrier mieus son ouvrage qu’il n’en seroit aimé, si l’ouvrage avoit du sentiment. D’autant que nous avons cher, estre; et estre consiste en mouvement et action. Parquoy chascun est aucunement en son ouvrage.”

I, 28, 144 [194]: “Parce que j’ay trouvé que cet ouvrage a esté depuis mis en lumiere, et à mauvaise fin, par ceux qui cherchent à troubler et changer l’estat de nostre police, sans se soucier s’ils l’amenderont, qu’ils ont meslé à d’autres escris de leur farine, je me suis dédit de le loger icy. Et affin que la memoire de l’auteur n’en soit interessée en l’endroit de ceux qui n’ont peu connoistre de pres ses opinions et ses actions, je les advise que ce subject fut traicté par luy en son enfance, par maniere d’exercitation seulement, comme subject vulgaire et tracassé en mille endroits des livres.”

Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani , Montaigne ou la vérité du mensonge (Geneva, Switzerland: Droz, 2000), 95–105.

I, 28, 136 [184]: “Et si suis obligé particulierement à cette piece, d’autant qu’elle a servy de moyen à nostre premiere accointance. Car elle me fut montrée longue piece avant que je l’eusse veu, et me donna la premiere connoissance de son nom, acheminant ainsi cette amitié que nous avons nourrie, tant que Dieu a voulu, entre nous, si entiere et si parfaite que certainement il ne s’en lit guiere de pareilles, et, entre nos hommes, il ne s’en voit aucune trace en usage.”

Étienne de La Boétie , Discourse on Voluntary Servitude , trans. James Atkinson and David Sices (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2012), 310 . De la servitude volontaire ou contr’un , ed. Malcolm Smith (Geneva, Switzerland: Droz, 2001), 73 : “L’amitié, c’est un nom sacré, c’est une chose sainte; elle ne se met jamais qu’entre gens de bien et ne se prend que par une mutuelle estime. Elle s’entretient non tant par bienfaits que par la bonne vie. Ce qui rend un ami asseuré de l’autre, c’est la connoissance qu’il a de son integrité: les repondens qu’il en a, c’est son bon naturel, la foi et la constance. Il n’i peut avoir d’amitié là où est la cruauté, là où est la desloiauté, là où est l’injustice.”

La Boétie, Discourse , 310 [74]: “il est desja au delà des bornes de l’amitié, qui a son vrai gibier en l’equalité, qui ne veut jamais clocher ains est tousjours egale.”

Cicero, De amicitia 37.

I, 28, 140 [189]: “Ils estoient plus amis que citoyens, plus amis qu’amis et qu’ennemis de leur païs, qu’amis d’ambition et de trouble.”

It seems that, on this point at least, the critical consensus is against me, emphasizing as it does the retrospective, classicizing features of Montaigne’s friendship. See for instance, François Rigolot , “Reviving Harmodius and Aristogiton in the Renaissance: Friendship and Tyranny as Voluntary Servitude,” Montaigne Studies 11 (1999): 107–119.

I, 28, 141 [191].

I, 28, 141 [191]: “Les amitiez communes, on les peut départir: on peut aymer en cettuy-cy la beauté, en cet autre la facilité de ses meurs, en l’autre la libéralité, en celuy-là la paternité, en cet autre la fraternité, ainsi du reste; mais cette amitié qui possede l’ame et la regente en toute souveraineté, il est impossible qu’elle soit double.”

Jean Bodin , Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem , ed. Sara Miglietti (Pisa, Italy: Scuola Normale, 2013), 388 : “haec enim magistratibus nunquam tribuuntur in imperio bene constituto.”

See Elizabeth Rawson , The Spartan Tradition in European Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 151–152.

Bodin, Methodus , 418.

Bodin , Les Six livres de la République (Paris: Jacques Dupuy, 1583; reprint 1961), 122: “La souveraineté est la puissance absoluë et perpetuelle d’une Republique.”

Ibid. , 132 : “Et tout ainsi que le Pape ne se lie jamais les mains, comme disent les canonistes: aussi le Prince souverain ne se peut lier les mains, quand ores il voudroit.”

Ibid. , 143 : “en la Monarchie chacun en particulier, et tout le peuple en corps, doit iurer de garder les loix, et faire serment de fidelité au Monarque souverain, qui ne doit serment qu’à Dieu seul.”

Ullrich Langer has developed a very different understanding of sovereign friendship in his Divine and Poetic Freedom in the Renaissance: Nominalist Theology and Literature in France and Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), chap. 5 . In the interests of friendship, I will allow him to yield to my interpretation.

Bodin, République , 126: “si c’est par force, cela s’appelle tyrannie: et neantmoins le tyran est souverain.”

III, 13, 821 [1072]: “Je m’estudie plus qu’autre subject. C’est ma metaphisique, c’est ma phisique.”

Montaigne has already conveyed his hostility to theoretical curiosity in the “Apology for Raymond Sebond.” For the notion of the trial of theoretical curiosity, see Hans Blumenberg , The Legitimacy of the Modern Age , trans. Robert Wallace (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983), pt. 3 , and for Montaigne’s place in this trial, Eric MacPhail , “Anthropology and Anthropocentrism in Giordano Bruno and Michel de Montaigne,” Bruniana & Campanelliana 20 (2014): 537.

III, 13, 821 [1073]: “La bonté et capacité du gouverneur nous doit à pur et à plein descharger du soing de son gouvernement.”

III, 13, 822–823 [1074].

III, 13, 824 [1076]: “Cette longue attention que j’employe à me considerer me dresse à juger aussi passablement des autres, et est peu de choses dequoy je parle plus heureusement et excusablement. Il m’advient souvant de voir et distinguer plus exactement les conditions de mes amys qu’ils ne font eux mesmes. J’en ay estonné quelqu’un par la pertinence de ma description, et l’ay adverty de soy. Pour m’estre, dés mon enfance, dressé à mirer ma vie dans celle d’autruy, j’ay acquis une complexion studieuse en cela, et, quand j’y pense, je laisse eschaper au tour de moy peu de choses qui y servent: contenances, humeurs, discours. J’estudie tout: ce qu’il me faut fuyr, ce qu’il me faut suyvre. Ainsin à mes amys je descouvre, par leurs productions, leurs inclinations internes.”

III, 13, 825 [1077]: “Il faict besoing des oreilles bien fortes pour s’ouyr franchement juger; et, par ce qu’il en est peu qui le puissent souffrir sans morsure, ceux qui se hazardent de l’entreprendre envers nous nous montrent un singulier effect d’amitié; car c’est aimer sainement d’entreprendre à blesser et offencer pour proffiter.”

III, 13, 826 [1078]: “Or il n’est aucune condition d’hommes qui ayt si grand besoing que ceux-là de vrays et libres advertissemens.”

III, 13, 826 [1078]: “Communement leurs favorits regardent à soy plus qu’au maistre.”

III, 13, 825 [1077]: “Mais j’eusse dict ses veritez à mon maistre, et eusse contrerrolé ses meurs, s’il eust voulu. Non en gros, par leçons scholastiques, que je ne sçay point (et n’en vois naistre aucune vraye reformation en ceux qui les sçavent), mais les observant pas à pas, à toute oportunité, et en jugeant à l’oeil piece à piece, simplement et naturellement, luy faisant voyr quel il est en l’opinion commune, m’opposant à ses flateurs.”

The frustration of Montaigne’s political ambitions is one of the primary themes of Philippe Desan’s biography, Montaigne. Une biographie politique (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2014).

Plutarch , Moralia , vol. 1, trans. Frank Cole Babbit (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927), 363.

III, 13, 826 [1078]: “Car la verité mesme n’a pas ce privilege d’estre employée à toute heure et en toute sorte: son usage, tout noble qu’il est, a ses circonscriptions et limites. Il advient souvant, comme le monde est, qu’on la lache à l’oreille du prince, non seulement sans fruict mais dommageablement, et encore injustement.”

“Montaigne Parrhesiastes: Foucault’s Fearless Speech and Truth-Telling in the Essays,” in Montaigne after Theory / Theory after Montaigne , ed. Zahi Zalloua (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), 100–121.

III, 9, 751–752 [983]: “Tant y a qu’en ces memoires, si on y regarde, on trouvera que j’ay tout dict, ou tout designé. Ce que je ne puis exprimer, je le montre au doigt: ‘Verum animo satis haec vestigia parva sagaci/sunt, per quae possis cognoscere caetera tute.’ Je ne laisse rien à desirer et deviner de moy. Si on doibt s’en entretenir, je veus que ce soit veritablement et justement. Je reviendrois volontiers de l’autre monde pour démentir celuy qui me formeroit autre que je n’estois, fut ce pour m’honorer. Des vivans mesme, je sens qu’on parle tousjours autrement qu’ils ne sont. Et si à toute force je n’eusse maintenu un amy que j’ay perdu, on me l’eust deschiré en mille contraires visages.”

Richard Regosin , The Matter of My Book: Montaigne’s Essais as the Book of the Self (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 22 : “In De l’amitié itself, and in what becomes through the work a characteristic mode of thought, what something is emerges through the depiction of what it is not.”

I, 28, 136 A [184]: “Des enfans aux peres, c’est plutost respect. L’amitié se nourrit de communication qui ne peut se trouver entre eux, pour la trop grande disparité, et offenceroit à l’adventure les devoirs de nature. Car ny toutes les secrettes pensées des peres ne se peuvent communiquer aux enfans pour n’y engendrer une messeante privauté, ny les advertissements et corrections, qui est un des premiers offices d’amitié, ne se pourroyent exercer des enfans aux peres.”

III, 13, 826 B [1078]: “de vrays et libres advertissemens.”

II, 18, 504 C [665]: “Je n’ay pas plus faict mon livre que mon livre m’a faict, livre consubstantiel à son autheur.” For the religious overtones of Montaigne’s choice of words, see Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle , “Montaigne’s Consubstantial Book,” Renaissance Quarterly 50 (1997): 723–749.

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Friendship Essay

500+ words essay on importance of friendship.

Friendship is the most beautiful relationship between two people. We cannot think of life without having someone whom we can call friends. Isn’t it? Making friends is based on how we want our friendship to be. It has to be filled with love, honesty, loyalty, and compassion towards each other. From a young age, we spend a lot of time with our friends. Friendship is something that has boundless love and care. The essence of friendship is that the mindset of people has to be the same in order to have a long-lasting relationship. In this friendship essay, let us know more about the benefits of friendship.

How well are you acquainted with the importance of friendship in your life? This feeling of friendship starts from an early age where you feel, share and care for your friend. Also, you will receive non-biased opinions and feedback from your friends. True friendship is when you stand with your friends through thick and thin. It is the moment where you need not express yourself and your friends totally understand what you’re trying to say. Moreover, there is no specific criteria to choose your friends. If your mind and heart match, that’s more than enough to become friends.

Benefits of Friendship

Friends are an essential part of your life. Good friends are hard to find, but if you have one then life is sorted. If you are confused or want to take advice from someone, you can just rely on friends. They will give the best advice and show the right path in taking important decisions in your life. Most importantly, they will be there for you no matter what. Sometimes, you might fight for silly reasons which is also a part of friendship. Healthy friendship has mutual love, care, and respect for each other. There is no one above or below in terms of friendship.

There are many people in your life but certain friendships can only touch your personal space. Kids especially are not always comfortable with any people they come into contact with. There are few people whom they like to spend time with and share their stories. There is authenticity in the relationships that you can eventually develop with your friends. It is filled with purity and love for the other person. Here are some reasons that underline the importance of friendship in your life.

Becoming part of social life and removing loneliness.
Reducing stress and other tensions in life when you have good friends around you.
Providing emotional support.
Helping you improve personally.
Providing strength and helping in things that are difficult for you.
Spending quality time with your friends.
Sharing happiness and sorrows with friends.

Also read: Essay on school and essay on dog .

How to Maintain a True Friendship?

Humans being social creatures need someone to share their happiness and sorrows with. Who can be more trustworthy other than your friends? To grow your friendship, you need to maintain and protect the relationship forever. For that, you have to inherit some qualities that will help in maintaining your friendship for a longer period of time. Friendship increases happiness and gives more meaning to your life. We expect our friends to be there for birthdays, festivals, and all other occasions. Therefore, we tend to become stronger as a person when there are good friends around us. Needless to say, there is no age for friendship, you can make friends in every stage of your life. Here are a few things that you do to keep your friendship interesting and everlasting.

Be available for your friends anytime.
Be part of their happiness and sorrows.
Spend time with your friends on a regular basis.
Be loyal and honest to your friends.
Respect your friends and their decisions in life.
Show appreciation and give feedback for the things that they do.

We hope this friendship essay was useful to you. Check essays for kids to explore more topics.

Frequently Asked Questions On Friendship Essay

What is a friendship essay.

It is a write-up on the friendship between people and the importance of having friends in life.

What is the importance of a friendship essay?

Writing a friendship essay will enable you to express your thoughts and feelings about friends and the qualities of friendship.

What is the benefit of friendship?

Friendship teaches you to become compassionate and loyal to your friends. They will always be with you throughout your life in happiness and sorrow.

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Guest Essay

Saying Goodbye to My Brilliant Friend, the Poetry Critic Helen Vendler

Two books, with nothing on their covers, sitting on a plain background. The two books are at close to a right angle with each other and most of their pages are touching.

By Roger Rosenblatt

The author, most recently, of “Cataract Blues: Running the Keyboard.”

One makes so few new friends in older age — I mean, real friends, the ones you bond with and hold dear, as if you’d known one another since childhood.

Old age often prevents, or at least tempers, such discoveries. The joy of suddenly finding someone of compatible tastes, politics, intellectual interests and sense of humor can be shadowed, if tacitly, by the inevitable prospect of loss.

I became friends with Helen Vendler — the legendary poetry critic who died last week — six years ago, after she came to a talk I gave at Harvard about my 1965-66 Fulbright year in Ireland. Our friendship was close at the outset and was fortified and deepened by many letters between us, by our writing.

Some critics gain notice by something new they discover in the literature they examine. Helen became the most important critic of the age by dealing with something old and basic — the fact that great poetry was, well, lovable. Her vast knowledge of it was not like anyone else’s, and she embraced the poets she admired with informed exuberance.

The evening we met, Helen and I huddled together for an hour, maybe two, speaking of the great Celtic scholar John Kelleher, under whom we had both studied; of Irish poetry; and of our families. Helen was born to cruelly restrictive Irish Catholic parents who would not think of her going to anything but a Catholic college. When Helen rebelled against them, she was effectively tossed out and never allowed to return home.

She told me all this at our very first meeting. And I told her the sorrows of my own life — the untimely death of my daughter, Amy, and the seven-plus years my wife, Ginny, and I spent helping to rear her three children. And I told Helen unhappy things about my own upbringing. The loneliness. I think we both sensed that we had found someone we could trust with our lives.

I never asked Helen why she had come to my talk in the first place, though I had recognized her immediately. After spending a life with English and American poetry — especially the poetry of Wallace Stevens — how could I not? The alert tilt of her head, the two parenthetical lines around the mouth that always seemed on the verge of saying something meaningful and the sad-kind-wise eyes of the most significant literary figure since Edmund Wilson.

And unlike Wilson, Helen was never compelled to show off. She knew as much about American writing as Wilson, and, I believe, loved it more.

It was that, even more than the breadth and depth of her learning, that set her apart. She was a poet who didn’t write poetry, but felt it like a poet, and thus knew the art form to the core of her being. Her method of “close reading,” studying a poem intently word by word, was her way of writing it in reverse.

Weeks before Helen’s death and what would have been her 91st birthday, we exchanged letters. I had sent her an essay I’d just written on the beauty of wonder, stemming from the wonder so many people felt upon viewing the total solar eclipse earlier this month. I often sent Helen things I wrote. Some she liked less than others, and she was never shy to say so. She liked the essay on wonder, though she said she was never a wonderer herself, but a “hopeless pragmatist,” not subject to miracles, except upon two occasions. One was the birth of her son, David, whom she mentioned in letters often. She loved David deeply, and both were happy when she moved from epic Cambridge to lyrical Laguna Niguel, Calif., to be near him, as she grew infirm.

Her second miracle, coincidentally, occurred when Seamus Heaney drove her to see a solar eclipse at Tintern Abbey. There, among the Welsh ruins, Helen had an astonishing experience, one that she described to me in a way that seemed almost to evoke Wordsworth:

I had of course read descriptions of the phenomena of a total eclipse, but no words could equal the total-body/total landscape effect; the ceasing of bird song; the inexorability of the dimming to a crescent and then to a corona; the total silence; the gradual salience of the stars; the iciness of the silhouette of the towers; the looming terror of the steely eclipse of all of nature. Now that quelled utterly any purely “scientific” interest. One became pure animal, only animal, no “thought-process” being even conceivable.

One who claims not to know wonders shows herself to be one.

She was so intent on the beauty of the poets she understood so deeply, she never could see why others found her appreciations remarkable. Once, when I sent her a note complimenting her on a wonderfully original observation she’d made in a recent article, she wrote: “So kind of you to encourage me. I always feel that everything I say would be obvious to anyone who can read, so am always amazed when someone praises something.”

Only an innocent of the highest order would say such a beautiful, preposterous thing. When recently the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her the Gold Medal for Belle Lettres and Criticism, Helen was shocked.

“You could have floored me when I got the call,” she wrote to me, adding: “Perhaps I was chosen by the committee because of my advanced age; if so, I can’t complain. The quote that came to mind was Lowell’s ‘My head grizzled with the years’ gold garbage.’”

She was always doing that — attaching a quotation from poetry to a thought or experience of her own, as if she occupied the same room as all the great poets, living with them as closely as loved ones in a tenement.

Shelley called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I never fully got that famous line. But if the legislators’ laws apply to feeling and conduct, I think he was onto something. If one reads poetry — ancient and modern — as deeply as Helen did, and stays with it, and lets it roll around in one’s head, the effect is transporting. You find yourself in a better realm of feeling and language. And nothing of the noisier outer world — not Donald Trump, not Taylor Swift — can get to you.

In our last exchange of letters, Helen told me about the death she was arranging for herself. I was brokenhearted to realize that I was losing someone who had given me and countless others so much thought and joy. Her last words to me were telling, though, and settled the matter as only practical, spiritual Helen could:

I feel not a whit sad at the fact of death, but massively sad at leaving friends behind, among whom you count dearly. I have always known what my true feelings are by whatever line of poetry rises unbidden to my mind on any occasion; to my genuine happiness, this time was a line from Herbert’s “Evensong,” in which God (always in Herbert, more like Jesus than Jehovah), says to the poet, “Henceforth repose; your work is done.”

She closed her letter as I closed my response. “Love and farewell.”

Roger Rosenblatt is the author, most recently, of “Cataract Blues: Running the Keyboard.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Why Tho? Friends were annoying on vacation. Is friendship over?

Published: May. 07, 2024, 2:00 p.m.

Lizzy Acker, Why Tho? advice columnist. Destiny Johnson/The Oregonian

Lizzy Acker | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Dear Lizzy,

My daughter and I spent a weekend at a vacation house with some very close, dear friends – another mother and daughter.

All throughout the weekend, both mother and daughter did small but obnoxious things like failing to wash their own dishes, complaining about the rooms or saying negative things about the place we were visiting.

The accumulation of these little things left my daughter and I both with the feeling that we don’t ever want to go away with them again and I am not sure how to address this. Do I say anything at all?

Part of me thinks the solution is to love these people but not spend this kind of intimate time with them. But what if this leaves them confused and wanting to understand why we aren’t making more plans?

I feel conflicted about the “right” thing to do both for this friendship but also for guiding my daughter to have healthy friendships.

It’s also confusing because at what point do we accept people for who they are without wanting to change them and at what point are we communicating in grown-up friendships in a mature and healthy way?!

Confused Friend

Dear Confused Friend,

Here’s the great thing about friends: They don’t have to be your everything.

What I mean is, you might have a really great adventure friend who is not a great hang-out-all-day-doing-nothing friend. You can have one friend who goes with you to every Dave Matthews Band concert and another friend who hates every chord Dave Matthews strikes on his guitar. Both are good! There is nothing wrong with either of them!

You and your daughter made a discovery about these friends: They aren’t your travel buddies. And that’s OK! There is nothing wrong with you and there’s nothing wrong with them. When you write: “Part of me thinks the solution is to love these people but not spend this kind of intimate time with them,” I hate to talk myself out of a job, but I think you answered your own question.

When people do things that we don’t like or that make us uncomfortable, the immediate reaction sometimes is to think, “They did something wrong and I should correct them.”

But actually, that’s not your job. Your job is to decide if you want to be friends with them as they are.

You don’t need to have some come-to-Jesus talk with your friends about their dishwashing or negative attitude. If these things haven’t bothered you in small doses, and you want to, keep hanging out occasionally for a couple hours at a time. If they invite you on another trip, just say you can’t go. Be nice about it, certainly, but I can’t go on 90% of the trips I want to go on, so that shouldn’t be a friendship ender.

And look, I’m not saying not to tell someone if they hurt your feelings or say, do something racist, which I think you should do in the moment if you care about a friendship and that’s something you can absolutely teach your daughter to work on.

But friendships wax and wane. I don’t know your kid’s age, but I know a lot of middle school for me was learning about how friendships change and struggling mightily not to take it personally. And mostly failing. No one comes out without tears. Your daughter will probably shed a few as she figures it out. Which I am sure she will.

But the bottom line is: Unless you are forced to live with someone, the way they do or do not wash dishes just doesn’t need to be your problem. Try out more travel buddies! And give yourself a break.

Have a burning question? Send me an email at [email protected] or tweet @lizzzyacker ! Or, if you want to ask me a question with total anonymity, use this Google form .

Read and listen to more Why Tho? here.

More Why Tho?

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A matador in a white costume holding a bright pink cape next to a bull in motion in a bullring.

Bullfighting firm in Seville to give free tickets to under-eights

Company says move is best way to introduce tradition but critic claims it could psychologically damage young children

A firm managing bullfights at Seville’s bullring is to give free tickets to children under eight, adding to a national debate about the controversial Spanish tradition.

The company, Pages, said adult spectators with a ticket for the “ novilladas ” – practice bullfights involving younger bulls – at Seville’s Maestranza may be accompanied by a child free of charge, which it said was “the best way to introduce the little ones” to the world of bullfighting.

José Enrique Zaldívar, who heads the Spanish Association of Veterinarians for the Abolition of Bullfighting, said attracting children was an attempt to regain a declining audience.

“We think it’s wrong that young children are allowed to attend these shows because watching animals suffer can cause psychological damage,” he added.

Supporters of bullfighting , in which the animal is usually killed by a sword thrust by a matador (“killer”), believe the tradition should be preserved, while critics say it is a cruel ritual with no place in modern society.

This week’s announcement by Pages came just days after the Spanish ministry of culture abolished its national bullfighting award over concern about animal welfare, prompting a rebuke from fans and the conservative opposition who see it as an art form and a staple of national identity.

The ministry of culture declined to comment on Pages’ campaign.

Animal rights party Pacma said it welcomed the award’s elimination but also called for an end to public subsidies to bullfighting foundations and related breeders, which it said amounted to nearly €6m (£5m) between 2020 and 2024.

Bullfighting
Animal welfare

More on this story

Spain bans decades-long tradition of ‘dwarf bullfighting’

Man dies after being gored at bull-running festival in Spain

Spanish region urges ‘respect for bulls’ after seven deaths at fiestas

Bull reportedly rammed to death by car after ring escape in Spain

Court rejects matador's bid to copyright his 'perfect kill'

Weird, wacky and utterly wonderful: the world's greatest unsung museums

The non-running of Pamplona's bulls – in pictures

Could lockdown be the death of bullfighting in Spain?

Spain's young bullfighters – a photo essay

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