But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle--friendship can only exist between good men.
Cicero: “But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle--friendship can only exist between good men.”
Editor's note · Context
As he begins his discourse on friendship, Cicero establishes a fundamental condition for its true existence.
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And so, when we have leisure from the demands of business cares, we are eager to see, to hear, to learn something new, and we esteem a desire to know the secrets or wonders of creation as indispensable to a happy life.
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