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.
Analyzing the complexities of honesty in relationships, Cicero contrasts the immediate discomfort of frankness with the greater long-term harm of unquestioning agreement.
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Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least?
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.
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