Since a virtuous friend would be a choiceworthy object for a virtuous man, having friends is necessary for happiness. With friendships based on usefulness or pleasure, too many friends would be laborious and bothersome. With the case of friendships based on virtue, there seems to some sort of upper limit to the number of friends because there is a limit to how many people one could nobly live together with. One can only attend to so many people at a time. And all of a person's friends will themselves need to be friends, which will become more and more difficult in proportion to the number of people.
Love is a sort of excess of friendship, and can be felt toward one person only.
Similarly, very strong friendship can exist between only a few persons. Friends are sought in times of both good fortune and bad fortune. Friendship is more of a necessity in times of bad fortune, but is more noble in times of good fortune, because in times of bad fortune friendship is based on usefulness while in times of good fortune it is based on virtue. Better men avoid sharing their grief with their friends, because they don't want to cause sorrow to their friends. But weak men enjoy have others as companions in grief.