I can't help but keep thinking about friendship lately...

There isn’t much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren’t really living without it.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, August 27, 2003Anonymous author of RealLivePreacher.com

FRIEND'SHIP, n. frend'ship

1. An attachment to a person, proceeding from intimate acquaintance, and a reciprocation of kind offices, or from a favorable opinion of the amiable and respectable qualities of his mind. Friendship differs from benevolence, which is good will to mankind in general, and from that love which springs from animal appetite. True friendship is a noble and virtuous attachment, springing from a pure source, a respect for worth or amiable qualities. False friendship may subsist between bad men, as between thieves and pirates. This is a temporary attachment springing from interest, and may change in a moment to enmity and rancor.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
There is little friendship in the world.
The first law of friendship is sincerity.
2. Mutual attachment; intimacy.
If not in friendship, live at least in peace.
3. Favor; personal kindness.
His friendships, still a few confined, were always of the middling kind.
4. Friendly aid; help; assistance.
5. Conformity; affinity; correspondence; aptness to unite.
We know those colors which have a friendship with each other.
[Not common and hardly legitimate.] Webster's 1828

I also think that anything worth having requires effort and with that comes true appreciation of what is gained. This also means that the loss of anything worked for would leave a void proportionate to effort made.