Friends! any confidence?

"The transaction concluded, the two still remained seated, falling into familiar conversation, by degrees verging into that confidential sort of sympathetic silence, the last refinement and luxury of unaffected good feeling.  A kind of social superstition, to suppose that to be truly friendly one must be saying friendly words all the time, any more than to be doing friendly deeds continually.  True friendliness, like true religion, being in a sort independent of works."- The Confidence Man by Herman Melville

"If a drunkard..."

"If a drunkard in a sober fit is the dullest of mortals, an enthusiast in a reason fit is not the most lively.  And this, without prejudice to his greatly improved understanding; for, if in his elation was the height of his madness, his despondency is but the extreme of his sanity."- Herman Melville from The Confidence Man: His Masquerade