Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. And the reason for this is important.... In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, 'Here comes one who will augment our loves.' For in this love 'to divide is not to take away.
When I was a youngster, all the progressive people were saying, __hy all this prudery? Let us treat sex just as we treat all our other impulses._ I was simple-minded enough to believe they meant what they said. I have since discovered that they meant exactly the opposite. They meant that sex was to be treated as no other impulse in our nature has ever been treated by civilized people. All the others, we admit, have to be bridled. Absolute obedience to your instinct for self-preservation is what we call cowardice; to your acquisitive impulse, avarice. Even sleep must be resisted if you__e a sentry. But every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned provided that the object aimed at is __our bare legs in a bed.__t is like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong__nless you steal nectarines.And if you protest against this view you are usually met with chatter about the legitimacy and beauty and sanctity of __ex_ and accused of harboring some Puritan prejudice against it as something disreputable or shameful. I deny the charge. Foam-born Venus _ golden Aphrodite _ Our Lady of Cyprus_ I never breathed a word against you. If I object to boys who steal my nectarines, must I be supposed to disapprove of nectarines in general? Or even of boys in general? It might, you know, be stealing that I disapproved of.
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When I was a youngster, all the progressive people were saying, __hy all this prudery? Let us treat sex just as we treat all our other impulses._ I was simple-minded enough to believe they meant what they said. I have since discovered that they meant exactly the opposite. They meant that sex was to be treated as no other impulse in our nature has ever been treated by civilized people. All the others, we admit, have to be bridled. Absolute obedience to your instinct for self-preservation is what we call cowardice; to your acquisitive impulse, avarice. Even sleep must be resisted if you__e a sentry. But every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned provided that the object aimed at is __our bare legs in a bed.__t is like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong__nless you steal nectarines.And if you protest against this view you are usually met with chatter about the legitimacy and beauty and sanctity of __ex_ and accused of harboring some Puritan prejudice against it as something disreputable or shameful. I deny the charge. Foam-born Venus _ golden Aphrodite _ Our Lady of Cyprus_ I never breathed a word against you. If I object to boys who steal my nectarines, must I be supposed to disapprove of nectarines in general? Or even of boys in general? It might, you know, be stealing that I disapproved of.
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