One is sometimes too much

Henry Adams, American historian and writer (The Education of Henry Adams), was born on this day in 1838.

"One friend in a lifetime is much;" Adams wrote, "two are many; three are hardly possible."

The universal terror of relationships was at the root of it, he supposed. He’d tried not to keep people at arm’s length, but how could you help it? Not only did familiarity breed contempt, but the closer the familiarity the greater the revulsion. Intimacy was the real horror. At least it seemed so to him now. And given this, how could people be anything but ghosts?  --  Chapter 24, The Misforgotten.