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Relatives As the Best Friends.—The Greeks, who knew so well what a friend was, they alone of all peoples have a profound and largely philosophical discussion of friendship; so that it is by them firstly (and as yet lastly) that the problem of the friend has been recognised as worthy of solution,—these same Greeks have designated relatives by an expression which is the superlative of the word "friend." This is inexplicable to me.

Relatives As the Best Friends.—The Greeks, who knew so well what a friend was, they alone of all peoples have a profound and largely philosophical discussion of friendship; so that it is by them firstly (and as yet lastly) that the problem of the friend has been recognised as worthy of solution,—these same Greeks have designated relatives by an expression which is the superlative of the word "friend." This is inexplicable to me.

Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Friedrich Nietzsche
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
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Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1844–1900); not quotation composition date
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Recorded source
Human, All-Too-Human, Part 1 (1909 English edition) (1909 AD)

Part1, complete printed aphorism 354; Helen Zimmern translation; Edinburgh and London: T.N. Foulis,1909

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Friedrich Nietzsche: Photographic portrait, 1882

Author of Human, All-Too-Human, here represented by complete numbered passages in Helen Zimmern’s 1909 and Paul V. Cohn’s 1913 English editions. Catalogue lifetime 1844–1900; historical philosophical arguments and dated viewpoints require context, rather than treating every sentence as general advice.

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