Historical voices

While they take the sting out of death, they add a glory to the life of the survivors.

But such is the effect of the respect, the loving remembrance, and the regret of friends which follow us to the grave.

In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self.

And great and numerous as are the blessings of friendship, this certainly is the sovereign one, that it gives us bright hopes for the future and forbids weakness and despair.

Such friendship enhances prosperity, and relieves adversity of its burden by halving and sharing it.

Fire and water themselves, to use a common expression, are not of more universal use than friendship.

On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear if there were not some one to feel them even more acutely than yourself.

Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy?

What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself?

And with the exception of wisdom, I am inclined to think nothing better than this has been given to man by the immortal gods.

Now friendship may be thus defined: a complete accord on all subjects human and divine, joined with mutual goodwill and affection.

You may best understand this friendship by considering that, whereas the merely natural ties uniting the human race are indefinite, this one is so concentrated, and confined to so narrow a sphere, that affection is ever shared by two…

Friendship excels relationship in this, that whereas you may eliminate affection from relationship, you cannot do so from friendship.

So it is that fellow-citizens are preferred in our affections to foreigners, relations to strangers; for in their case Nature herself has caused a kind of friendship to exist, though it is one which lacks some of the elements of permanence.

Now this truth seems clear to me, that nature has so formed us that a certain tie unites us all, but that this tie becomes stronger from proximity.

We must concern ourselves with the facts of everyday life as we find it--not imaginary and ideal perfections.

But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle--friendship can only exist between good men.

All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity.

For I am not one of these modern philosophers who maintain that our souls perish with our bodies, and that death ends all.

From such an elevation of popular esteem the next step seems naturally to be an ascent to the gods above, rather than a descent to Hades.

We may conclude therefore that his life, from the good fortune which had attended him and the glory he had obtained, was so circumstanced that it could not be bettered, while the suddenness of his death saved him the sensation of dying.

For, unless he had taken the fancy to wish for immortality, the last thing of which he ever thought, what is there for which mortal man may wish that he did not attain?

To Scipio I am convinced no evil has befallen: mine is the disaster, if disaster there be; and to be severely distressed at one's own misfortunes does not show that you love your friend, but that you love yourself.

Affected of course I am by the loss of a friend as I think there will never be again, such as I can fearlessly say there never was before.