How do different traditions describe true friendship?

Several wisdom traditions converge on the same distinction: friendship based on what a person gets out of it is fragile, while friendship based on shared character is durable. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, names three kinds of friendship - based on utility, on pleasure, or on virtue - and argues only the third kind is complete friendship, because the first two dissolve the moment the usefulness or pleasure stops, while a friendship built on each person's good character persists because that character doesn't change day to day. Epicurus, from a very different philosophical starting point focused on pleasure and freedom from disturbance, still concluded that "of all the things that wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life, far the greatest is the possession of friendship," treating genuine friendship as one of the most reliable sources of a stable, untroubled life rather than a means to some other end. Hebrew wisdom literature makes a similar point in more compressed form: Proverbs 17:17 states "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity," distinguishing a friend whose loyalty is constant from one who is present only in good times, and Proverbs 27:17 - "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another" - frames real friendship as something that actively improves both people rather than simply providing company. Across these three very different sources - Greek virtue ethics, Epicurean hedonism, and Hebrew wisdom literature - the same test recurs: does this friendship depend on circumstances (usefulness, pleasure, good times), or does it hold up when those circumstances change? Traditions that otherwise disagree sharply about the nature of the good life agree that only the second kind deserves to be called friendship in the fullest sense.