But an upright man will never for a friend's sake do anything in violation of his country's interests or his oath or his sacred honour, not even if he sits as judge in a friend's case; for he lays aside the rôle of friend when he assumes that of judge.
Cicero outlines the unyielding ethical standards for an upright person, particularly when balancing friendship with civic duty and justice.
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But my soul, I know not how, refusing to be kept down, ever fixed its eyes upon future ages, as though from a conviction that it would begin to live only when it had left the body.
Now, old age is as it were the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of which we should shun, especially when we also feel that we have had more than enough of it.
Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least?
But had it not been the case that souls were immortal, it would not have been the souls of all the best men that made the greatest efforts after an immortality of fame.
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