Cicero

Can anything be so pliable, so wavering, as the mind of a man whose attitude depends not only on another's feeling and wish, but on his very looks and nods?

For the essence of friendship being that two minds become as one, how can that ever take place if the mind of each of the separate parties to it is not single and uniform, but variable, changeable, and complex?

But to nothing it is so hostile as to friendship; for it destroys that frankness without which friendship is an empty name.

In everything false pretence is bad, for it suspends and vitiates our power of discerning the truth.

I use as many terms as possible to brand this vice of light-minded, untrustworthy men, whose sole object in speaking is to please without any regard to truth.

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.