We feel lonely now and then and long for friends and think we should be quite different and happier if we found a friend of whom we might say: He is the one. But you, too, will begin to learn that there is much self-deception behind this longing; if we yielded too much to it, it would lead us from the road.

The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886 (ed. 1927)