Friendship

"What then?

See how content with himself he is:

The wise man is content with himself.

In three ways, then, I see that friendship has been discussed by our school.

And whatever was said of the virtues — how they always cleave to pleasures — the same must be said of friendship.

There remains a topic most necessary of all to this discussion, concerning friendship — which, if pleasure be the highest good, you assert can have no existence at all.

What about you, Hermogenes?

In the goodness and the power of my friends, he answered, and in the fact that with all their excellence they have regard for me.

Thereupon all eyes were turned toward him, and many speaking at once asked him whether he would not discover these friends to them;

For friendship is a virtue, or involves virtue;

and similarly with the other forms of friendship.

Friends are an aid to the young, to guard them from error;

Basil to Libanius See, here comes yet another Cappadocian to you, a son of mine, and he too;

But to me even the thorn of your words is a pleasure, kindling me to a greater longing for our friendship.

But by friendship itself, and by the studies we have shared, dispel for me the despondency that your letter has bred in me .

For who is readier to toil, when the time for it comes, than a friend?

For as many comrades as a man has won, with so many eyes he sees what he would see, with so many ears he hears what he must, and with so many minds he takes thought for his interests.

But if a man be moderate in these things, yet dishonour those near him who are called his friends, and take no care that they shall seem to all blessed and enviable, he is unwittingly a traitor to himself and to his office, making the friends he has dispirited, and ensuring that none of the rest desires his friendship, and robbing himself of the fairest and most useful of possessions — friendship.

I am growing in goodness and I am making better friends?

my fancy, stronger even than theirs, is for good friends.

In social intercourse what pleasure could you find in such a man, knowing that he prefers your sauces and your wines to your friends, and likes the women better than the company?

From these works have been selected the two treatises, on Old Age and on Friendship, which have proved of most permanent and widespread interest to posterity, and which give a clear impression of the way in which a high-minded Roman thought about some of the main problems of human life.

Come and dwell in this glorious house in friendship together;

for praise is the foundation of friendship, as blame is that of enmity.

Be slow to give your friendship, but when you have given it, strive to make it lasting;

Prove your friends by means of the misfortunes of life and of their fellowship in your perils;

Is health a friend or not?

Nor, however, can like be friendly to like:

and we found that bad was no friend to good.

2 All those things which make you puffed up and exalted above human affairs, which compel you to forget your own frailty, which you guard with iron bars under arms, which you defend with your own blood, things snatched from another's blood, for the sake of which you launch fleets to stain the seas, for the sake of which you batter cities, not knowing how many weapons fortune is preparing against y …

In any case, a careful choice must be made of our associates:

Yet nothing will delight the mind so much as a faithful and sweet friendship.

But as things now stand, amid so great a dearth of good men, let the choice be made less fastidiously.

"If friendship pleases you, here is my arm extended;

Then Sugrīva and Rāghava both circumambulated the blazing fire and thus entered into the state of friendship.

Whether wealthy or poor, whether in sorrow or in happiness, whether blameless or at fault — a true companion is the highest refuge.

They should be firm.

They should tell the truth.

They should not be changed by time.