Of Friendship is one of the famous essay written by Francis Bacon. The essay was first published in 1612 and then it was republished in 1625. Of Friendship explores the theme of importance of friendship in human being life.
OF FRIENDSHIP BY FRANCIS BACON SUMMARY

Summary of “Of Friendship” By Francis Bacon
The story of “Of Friendship” begins with the words of Aristotle, “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a God”. It means the person who believes that he is happy alone is either a wild beast or god. It is true that we need friends to spend life and the person who believes that he doesn’t need a friend must be a wild person. They does it to show off.
There is a Latin Saying, ” Magna Civitas, Magna Solitudo” which means ( A Great town is a great Solitude.). The bigger the city, the bigger is the distance between people in it. If person needs friend but still believes that he doesn’t need a friendship then he must be a wild beast.
Bacon says, there are three fruits of friendship. First principle, there are diseases in bodies which Doctors can be cure by opening them like lungs, liver and mind. But no doctor in the world can cure your heart pain. Only a true friends can open your heart and cure its pain.
As you all would have experienced it, we most of the time feel comfortable to share our feelings with our friends only. It is strange thing that Great Kings have also tasted the fruit of friendship. The First fruit of friendship is sharing our heart feelings with our friends as it gives happiness and cure our pain.
The second fruit of friendship is giving advice. Sometimes we need advise in life and if you have such friend who can guide and support you then you are very lucky. Bacon says, you also need those types of friend who aren’t capable to advise you.
These friends are like that stone which you can rub and brighten your thoughts. Which means you can share your thoughts with these types of stone to get relief from your heart pain. Friends advise are important, we all need it as you can’t advise yourself. Therefore, friends are the best option for advise.
Friends can give you both personal and professional advice. Bacon tells third fruit of friendship by giving an example of pomegranate. The benefits of friendship are equal to the number of seeds in pomegranate. There are many things in life which we can’t do alone and to do that we needs friends.
Like we can’t play sports alone for that we needs friends to have fun in game. The greatest happiness of sports is playing it with friends. We all love playing sports like cricket and football but real happiness and fun comes when we play it with our friends.
If you have lots of friends with you then you are very lucky but if you didn’t then start making friends and make as much as you can because life is nothing without friends. The memories we make with our friends are the ones which we never forget in life. Friends are important part of life so you should always have friends who can guide you and support you in hard time.