Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love; it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.
Samuel Richardson, Anna Laetitia Barbauld (2011). “The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson: Author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison”, p.188, Cambridge University Press
