Cicero

True friendship appears to me to be something richer and more generous than that comes to; and not to be so narrowly on its guard against giving more than it receives.

But the last limit proposed is the worst, namely, that a friend's estimate of himself is to be the measure of our estimate of him.

How can a man be friends with another, if he thinks it possible that he may be his enemy?

Justice totters or rather, I should say, lies already prostrate; so also with all those virtues which are discernible in social life and the fellowship of human society.

For neither goodness nor generosity nor courtesy can exist, any more than friendship can, if they are not sought of and for themselves, but are cultivated only for the sake of sensual pleasure or personal advantage.

And therefore Calliphon and Dinomachus, in my judgment, deserve the greater condemnation; they imagined that they should settle the controversy by coupling pleasure with moral rectitude; as well yoke a man with a beast!

But moral rectitude does not accept such a union; she abhors it, spurns it.

Why, the supreme good, which ought to be simple, cannot be a compound and mixture of absolutely contradictory qualities.

But if, on the other hand, the assertion is made that pleasure admits of a show of expediency also, there can still be no possible union between it and moral rectitude.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Was any family ever so well established, any State so firmly settled, as to be beyond the reach of utter destruction from animosities and factions?

For if any marked instance of loyal friendship in confronting or sharing danger comes to light, every one applauds it to the echo.

For as to material advantages, it often happens that those are obtained even by men who are courted by a mere show of friendship and treated with respect from interested motives.

But friendship by its nature admits of no feigning, no pretence: as far as it goes it is both genuine and spontaneous.

Therefore I gather that friendship springs from a natural impulse rather than a wish for help: from an inclination of the heart, combined with a certain instinctive feeling of love, rather than from a deliberate calculation of the material…

Why, in a certain sense we may be said to feel affection even for men we have never seen, owing to their honesty and virtue.

Now, if the attraction of probity is so great that we can love it not only in those whom we have never seen, but, what is more, actually in an enemy, we need not be surprised if men's affections are roused when they fancy that they have…

I do not deny that affection is strengthened by the actual receipt of benefits, as well as by the perception of a wish to render service, combined with a closer intercourse.

For when a man's confidence in himself is greatest, when he is so fortified by virtue and wisdom as to want nothing and to feel absolutely self-dependent, it is then that he is most conspicuous for seeking out and keeping up friendships.

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.

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