A Platonic friendship is perhaps only possible when one or other of the Platonists is in love with a third person.

More from The Friends of Voltaire (1906)

• I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
• It is by character and not by intellect the world is won.
• Only a little, it might be. But if every man did the little he could — what a different world!
• There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be, because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring.