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.
In a discourse on the nature of true friendship, Cicero emphasizes that genuine trust and affection require complete openness and sincerity between individuals.
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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.
From this attitude come greatness of soul and a sense of superiority to worldly conditions.
There are, on the other hand, two kinds of injustice--the one, on the part of those who inflict wrong, the other on the part of those who, when they can, do not shield from wrong those upon whom it is being inflicted.
But for the most part, people are led to wrong-doing in order to secure some personal end; in this vice, avarice is generally the controlling motive.
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