A Love and a Virtue

Losing Friends, by Digby Anderson (The Social Affairs Unit, £12.95, 206 pp.)

IT’S a big subject—friendship—and one not often written about these days. Euripides said, “One loyal friend is worth 10,000 relatives.” Aristotle found that friendship was no less than the basis of society: both “a love” and “a virtue,” and indispensable not only for individual friends but for everyone. Augustine, when a friend of his died, groaned of his “grief,” “torment,” and “misery”: “I worn dered that he should die and I remain alive, for I was his second self.”

About the Author

Jay Nordlinger

Jay Nordlinger was a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow at National Review Institute.

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Losing Friends, by Digby Anderson (The Social Affairs Unit, £12.95, 206 pp.)

IT’S a big subject—friendship—and one not often written about these days. Euripides said, “One loyal friend is worth 10,000 relatives.” Aristotle found that friendship was no less than the basis of society: both “a love” and “a virtue,” and indispensable not only for individual friends but for everyone. Augustine, when a friend of his died, groaned of his “grief,” “torment,” and “misery”: “I worn dered that he should die and I remain alive, for I was his second self.”