Cicero

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.

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.

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…

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…

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Men, of course, who have no resources in themselves for securing a good and happy life find every age burdensome.

But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything bad which nature makes inevitable.

For there can be nothing more discreditable than to be at open war with a man with whom you have been intimate.

Our first object, then, should be to prevent a breach; our second, to secure that, if it does occur, our friendship should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent death.

Next, we should take care that friendship is not converted into active hostility, from which flow personal quarrels, abusive language, and angry recriminations.

Generally speaking, there is but one way of securing and providing oneself against faults and inconveniences of this sort--not to be too hasty in bestowing our affection, and not to bestow it at all on unworthy objects.

This sort of man is rare; and indeed all excellent things are rare; and nothing in the world is so hard to find as a thing entirely and completely perfect of its kind.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.