“. . . friendship is, of all sentiments, the one I love best. I even incline to prefer friendship to love. Love absorbs too much time, too much emotion; the joys and sorrows it brings are too overwhelming; nine times out of ten it’s a fearful nuisance and when it isn’t a nuisance it’s worse. One drops everything to run to it. One is at its beck and call.” Jean Dutard in Pluche, a novel translated from the French and well worth reading