Of Friendship

Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extends. For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meets with it a little: Magna civitas , magna solitudo; because in a great town friends are scattered; so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable　solitude to want true friends; without which the　world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he takes it of the beast, and not from humanity. From hxw.red.

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind; you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt opens the heart, but a true friend; to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lies upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.

----F.Bacon

论友谊-好学英文网提供中文翻译：

很少有人了解孤独以及孤独的范围。因为人群并不是朋友，人群的不同面孔只是一系列画面；虽交谈，其实不过是像铙钹的丁零声，因为他们之间不存在友爱。一句拉丁格言描绘了这种情况：一座大城市即为一片大荒野。因为在一座大城镇中，朋友们是分散居住的；所以大体而言，只有在较小的街区里才有友情。但是我们不妨进一步并且真实肯定地说，缺乏真正的朋友才是唯一不幸的孤独，缺乏友谊的世界只不过是荒原。甚至我们可以从下面的意义来看待孤独：那些从本性及情感上不适宜交友的人，其性格不是来自人性，而是来自兽性。本文来自好学英文网。

友谊的一个主要功能是排放心中郁积的由各种各样情感引起的不平静。我们知道人体之中的阻塞及窒息病症是最危险的，而人的心灵疾病也是如此。你可以服莎直药治肝病，服含铁剂治脾脏，服硫磺治肺，服海狸胶治脑。可是除了挚友以外，没有任何药剂是通心的，因为你可以把你的忧愁、喜悦、恐惧、希望、怀疑、劝告等等传达给忠实的朋友——不管什么压在你心头上的事，如同一种民间的忏悔一样，都可以传达给忠实的朋友。