Historical voices

For that is no unsympathetic or selfish or exclusive virtue, which protects even whole nations and consults their best interests.

So, my dear Fannius and Scaevola, we may look upon this as an established fact, that between good men there is, as it were of necessity, a kindly feeling, which is the source of friendship ordained by nature.

For nothing can be more eager, or rather greedy, for what is like itself than nature.

And if we add, as we may fairly do, that nothing so powerfully attracts and draws one thing to itself as likeness does to friendship, it will at once be admitted to be true that the good love the good and attach them to themselves as…

For nothing is really more delightful than a return of affection, and the mutual interchange of kind feeling and good offices.

For what can be more irrational than to take delight in many objects incapable of response, such as office, fame, splendid buildings, and personal decoration, and yet to take little or none in a sentient being endowed with virtue, which…

We conclude then that mental pain which we must often encounter on a friend's account is not of sufficient consequence to banish friendship from our life, any more than it is true that the cardinal virtues are to be dispensed with because…

In point of fact it is in regard to friendship, as in so many other things, so supple and sensitive that it expands, so to speak, at a friend's good fortune, contracts at his misfortunes.

If you take away emotion, what difference remains I don't say between a man and a beast, but between a man and a stone or a log of wood, or anything else of that kind?

It is then characteristic of a rightly ordered mind to be pleased at what is good and grieved at the reverse.

For there is no business and no course of action demanded from us by our honour which you can consistently decline, or lay aside when begun, from a mere wish to escape from anxiety.

You might just as well take the sun out of the sky as friendship from life; for the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful.

In friendship, let the influence of friends who give good advice be paramount; and let this influence be used to enforce advice not only in plain-spoken terms, but sometimes, if the case demands it, with sharpness; and when so used, let it…

Let us have the courage to give advice with candour.

But do not let us wait to be asked either: let there be ever an eager readiness, and an absence of hesitation.

Let this, then, be laid down as the first law of friendship, that we should ask from friends, and do for friends', only what is good.

And I care quite as much what the state of the constitution will be after my death as what it is now.

We conclude, then, not only that no such confederation of evilly disposed men must be allowed to shelter itself under the plea of friendship, but that, on the contrary, it must be visited with the severest punishment, lest the idea should…

Bad men must have the fear of punishment before their eyes: a punishment not less severe for those who follow than for those who lead others to crime.

We must therefore impress upon good men that, should they become inevitably involved in friendships with men of this kind, they ought not to consider themselves under any obligation to stand by friends who are disloyal to the republic.

For you may be sure that more people will learn how to set such things in motion than how to stop them.

I seem already to see the people estranged from the Senate, and the most important affairs at the mercy of the multitude.

This rule holds good for all wrong-doing, but more especially in such as involves disloyalty to the republic.

We may then lay down this rule of friendship--neither ask nor consent to do what is wrong.