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 persons only or at most by a few.
Cicero elaborates on the distinctiveness of true friendship, highlighting its concentrated and exclusive nature compared to broader human ties.
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I don't wish to depreciate life, as many men and good philosophers have often done; nor do I regret having lived, for I have done so in a way that lets me think that I was not born in vain.
Nay, if some god should grant me to renew my childhood from my present age and once more to be crying in my cradle, I would firmly refuse; nor should I in truth be willing, after having, as it were, run the full course, to be recalled from…
Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least?
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