Friendship is above reason, for, though you find virtues (美德) in a friend, he has been your friend before you find them. It is a gift that we offer because we must; to give it as the reward of virtue would be to set a price upon it, and those who do that have no friendship to give. If you choose your friends on the grounds that you are virtuous and want virtuous company, you are no nearer to true friendship than if you choose them for commercial reasons. Besides, who are you that you should be setting a price upon your friendship? It is enough for any man that he has the power of making friends, and he must leave it to that power to determine who his friends shall be. For, though you may choose the virtuous to be your friends, they may not choose you. It comes, like sleep, when you are not thinking about it; and you should be grateful, without any misgiving, when it comes.
So no man who knows what friendship is will give up a friend because he turns out to be disreputable (声名狼藉的). His only reason for giving up a friend is that he has stopped caring for him; and, when that happens, he should blame himself for this poverty (缺乏) of affection, not the friend for having proved unworthy.
We have our judgments and our punishments as part of the political mechanism that is forced upon us so that we may continue to live; but friendship is not friendship at all unless it teaches us that these are not part of our real life. It is only in the warmth of friendship that we see how cold a thing it is to judge and how stupid to take a pleasure in judging; for we recognize this warmth as a positive good, a richness in our natures, while the coldness that sets us judging is a poverty.
There are men who cannot be friends except when they are under an illusion (幻觉) that their friends are perfect, and when the illusion passes there is an end of their friendship. But true friendship has no illusions, for it reaches to that part of a man's nature that is beyond his imperfections, and in doing so it takes all of them for granted. A man is your friend, not because of his superiorities (优越), but because there is something open from your nature to his, a way that is closed between you and most men.
—A. Clutton-Brock
