Historical voices

On the contrary, they ought to be grieved at the crime and glad of the correction.

They are not at all vexed at having committed a fault, but very angry at being reproved for it.

But if a man's ears are so closed to plain speaking that he cannot bear to hear the truth from a friend, we may give him up in despair.

It is one thing to live with a tyrant, another with a friend.

If we remonstrate, it should be without bitterness; if we reprove, there should be no word of insult.

But the man who is most to blame is he who resents plain speaking and allows flattery to egg him on to his ruin.

Plain speaking is a cause of trouble, if the result of it is resentment, which is poison of friendship; but compliance is really the cause of much more trouble, because by indulging his faults it lets a friend plunge into headlong ruin.

The one possible cause of offence that must be faced is when the interests of your friend and your own sincerity are at stake.

The intercourse between friends is varied and complex, and it must often happen that causes of suspicion and offence arise, which a wise man will sometimes avoid, at other times remove, at others treat with indulgence.

But though Nature also declares by so many indications what her wish and object and desire is, we yet in a manner turn a deaf ear and will not hear her warnings.

For friendship, in one way or another, penetrates into the lives of us all, and suffers no career to be entirely free from its influence.

We suffer from carelessness in many of our undertakings: in none more than in selecting and cultivating our friends.

Wherefore, I must again and again repeat, you must satisfy your judgment before engaging your affections: not love first and judge afterwards.

In fact, if virtue be neglected, those who imagine themselves to possess friends will find out their error as soon as some grave disaster forces them to make trial of them.

This being our best and highest object, we must, if we desire to attain it, devote ourselves to virtue; for without virtue we can obtain neither friendship nor anything else desirable.

Nature has given us friendship as the handmaid of virtue, not as a partner in guilt: to the end that virtue, being powerless when isolated to reach the highest objects, might succeed in doing so in union and partnership with another.

And this shows the mistake of those who imagine that friendship gives a privilege to licentiousness and sin.

The fair course is first to be good yourself, and then to look out for another of like character.

But most people unreasonably, not to speak of modesty, want such a friend as they are unable to be themselves, and expect from their friends what they do not themselves give.

For man not only loves himself, but seeks another whose spirit he may so blend with his own as almost to make one being of two.

But unless this feeling is transferred to another, what a real friend is will never be revealed; for he is, as it were, a second self.

For every one loves himself, not for any reward which such love may bring, but because he is dear to himself independently of anything else.

Accordingly they never possess that most beautiful and most spontaneous friendship which must be sought solely for itself without any ulterior object.

But most people not only recognize nothing as good in our life unless it is profitable, but look upon friends as so much stock, caring most for those by whom they hope to make most profit.