'ONE is always one too many around me' -- thus speaks the
hermit. `Always once on - in the long run that makes two!'
  I and Me are always too earnestly in conversation with one another:
how could it be endured, if there were not a friend?
  For the hermit the friend is always the third person; the third
person is the cork that prevents the conversation of the other two
from sinking to the depths.
  Alas, for all hermits there are too many depths. That is why they
long so much for a friend and for his heights.
  Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have
faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
  And often with our love we only want to leap over envy. And often we
attack and make an enemy in order to conceal that we are vulnerable to
attack.
  `At least be my enemy!' -- thus speaks the true reverence, that does
not venture to ask for friendship.
  If you want a friend, you must also be willing to wage war for him:
and to wage war, you must be capable of being an enemy.
You should honour even the enemy in your friend. Can you go near to
your friend without going over to him?
  In your friend you should possess your best enemy. Your heart should
feel closest to him when you oppose him.
  Do you wish to go naked before your friend? Is it in honour of your
friend that you would show yourself to him as you are? But he wishes
you to the Devil for it!
  He who makes no secret of himself excites anger in others: that is
how much reason you have to fear nakedness! If you were gods you could
then be ashamed of your clothes!
  You cannot adorn yourself too well for your friend: for you should
be to him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.
  Have you ever watched your friend asleep? Were you not startled to
see what he looked like? O my friend, man is something that must be
overcome.
  The friend should be a master in conjecture and in keeping silence:
you must not want to see everything. Your dream should tell you what
your friend does when awake.
  May your pity be a conjecture: that you may first know if your
friend wants pity. Perhaps what he loves in you is the undimmed eye
and the glance of eternity.
  Let your pity for your friend conceal itself under a hard shell; you
should break a tooth biting upon it. Thus is will have delicacy and
sweetness.
  Are you pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to your friend?
May a one cannot deliver himself from his own chains and yet he is his
friend's deliverer.
  Are you a slave? If so, you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? If
so, you cannot have friends.
  In woman, a slave and a tyrant have all too long been concealed. For
that reason, woman is not yet capable of friendship; she knows only
love.
  In a woman's love is injustice and blindness towards all that she
does not love. And in the enlightened love of a woman, too, there is
still the unexpected attack and lightning and night, along with the
light.
  Woman is not yet capable of friendship; women are still cats and
birds. Or, at best, cows.
  Woman is not yet capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, which
of you is yet capable of friendship?
  Oh your poverty, you men, and your avarice of soul! As much as you
give to your friend I will give even to my enemy, and will not have
grown poorer in doing so.
  There is comradeship: may there be friendship!

  Thus spoke Zarathustra