Some interesting thoughts on friendship.

"For when people are in trouble they should be left alone and not be bothered by visitors. That at least is my idea of friendship, and I am sure I am right. So I shall wait till the spring comes, and then I shall pay him a visit, and he will be able to give me a large basket of primroses and that will make him so happy." said the Miller in the story of "The Devoted Friend" from the book "The Happy Prince" when his friend Hans, a gardener was sick during the winter.

I heard from a little kid that she has a “bestest” friend among her best friends.

In the movie "The Sicilian" by Francis Ford Copolla, the Sicilian, when he was about to be killed by a trusted friend said "only a friend will betray."

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them." said Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Merriam Webster simply defines friend as a "person one likes." Last night, I watched the movie "Man from La Mancha." It was about the story of an old man, a dreamer, Don Quixote and his adventure with his trusted esquire Sancho Panza. Aldonza (whom Don Quixote affectionately calls Dulcinea) asked Sancho why he serves him. He, being not able to give sufficient reason simply says "I like him."

Friendship has a a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people. It is a word which different people put different value into, much like how people put different value into love. In fact, it has been thoroughly mixed up that the effect is that it is most often interchanged in meaning with love, or the adverse effect is that a dividing wall between love and friendship is created. That it often becomes taboo to love a friend, in a more romantic way I mean.

In depth, friendship has its levels as well. To some, a simple acquaintance is already a friend. Thus, they might be those who consider themselves to have lots of friends. Some people say that "your friends you can choose, but your relatives you cannot. Thus, there are those who end up discounting their relatives from their friends. And they end up considering their friends more important than their families.