Historical voices

For it was the virtue of the man that I loved, and that has not suffered death.

But in view of the instability and perishableness of mortal things, we should be continually on the look-out for some to love and by whom to be loved; for if we lose affection and kindliness from our life, we lose all that gives it charm.

And since the law of our nature and of our life is that a new generation is for ever springing up, the most desirable thing is that along with your contemporaries, with whom you started in the race, you may also teach what is to us the…

When Virtue has reared her head and shewn the light of her countenance, and seen and recognised the same light in another, she gravitates towards it, and in her turn welcomes that which the other has to shew; and from it springs up a flame…

It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship.

His detection is not by any means the easiest thing in the world, for he often covers his servility under the guise of contradiction, and flatters by pretending to dispute, and then at last giving in and allowing himself to be beaten, that…

An open flatterer any one can detect, unless he is an absolute fool the covert insinuation of the cunning and the sly is what we have to be studiously on our guard against.

Wherefore, though it is with those who catch at and invite it that this flattering falsehood is especially powerful, yet men even of soldier and steadier character must be warned to be on the watch against being taken in by cunningly…

It is not then properly friendship at all when the one will not listen to the truth, and the other is prepared to lie.

When they are addressed in language expressly adapted to flatter their vanity, they look upon such empty persiflage as a testimony to the truth of their own praises.

The fact is that fewer people are endowed with virtue than wish to be thought to be so.

I grant you that Virtue naturally loves herself; for she knows herself and perceives how worthy of love she is.

And it follows that the man to open his ears widest to flatterers is he who first flatters himself and is fondest of himself.

Friendship, in which, unless you both see and show an open breast, to use a common expression, you can neither trust nor be certain of anything--no, not even of mutual affection, since you cannot be sure of its sincerity.

Now, if on a stage, such as a public assembly essentially is, where there is the amplest room for fiction and half-truths, truth nevertheless prevails if it be but fairly laid open and brought into the light of day, what ought to happen in…

A public assembly, though composed of men of the smallest possible culture, nevertheless will see clearly the difference between a mere demagogue (that is, a flatterer and untrustworthy citizen) and a man of principle, standing, and…

But if we only take reasonable care, it is as easy to separate and distinguish a genuine from a specious friend as anything else that is coloured and artificial from what is sincere and genuine.

But there are many people like Gnatho, and it is when they are superior either in position or fortune or reputation that their flatteries become mischievous, the weight of their position making up for the lightness of their character.

To admit such a man into one's intimacy at all is a sign of folly.

Can anything be so pliable, so wavering, as the mind of a man whose attitude depends not only on another's feeling and wish, but on his very looks and nods?

For the essence of friendship being that two minds become as one, how can that ever take place if the mind of each of the separate parties to it is not single and uniform, but variable, changeable, and complex?

But to nothing it is so hostile as to friendship; for it destroys that frankness without which friendship is an empty name.

In everything false pretence is bad, for it suspends and vitiates our power of discerning the truth.

I use as many terms as possible to brand this vice of light-minded, untrustworthy men, whose sole object in speaking is to please without any regard to truth.