Cicero On Friendship Quotes

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief

The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.

Life is nothing without friendship.

Nemo enim est tam senex qui se annum non putet posse vivere. (No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.)

Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.

The reward of friendship is friendship itself.

What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy?

What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself?

As for myself, I can only exhort you to look on Friendship as the most valuable of all human possessions, no other being equally suited to the moral nature of man, or so applicable to every state and circumstance, whether of prosperity or adversity, in which he can possibly be placed. But at the same time I lay it down as a fundamental axiom that "true Friendship can only subsist between those who are animated by the strictest principles of honour and virtue." When I say this, I would not be thought to adopt the sentiments of those speculative moralists who pretend that no man can justly be deemed virtuous who is not arrived at that state of absolute perfection which constitutes, according to their ideas, the character of genuine wisdom. This opinion may appear true, perhaps, in theory, but is altogether inapplicable to any useful purpose of society, as it supposes a degree of virtue to which no mortal was ever capable of rising.

Amicitiae nostrae memoriam spero sempiternam fore

But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle—friendship can only exist between good men.

Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.

For while we are enclosed in these confinements of the body, we perform as a kind of duty the heavy task of necessity; for the soul from heaven has been cast down from its dwelling on high and sunk, as it were, into the earth, a place just the opposite to godlike nature and eternity. But I believe that the immortal gods have sown souls in human bodies so there might exist beings to guard the world and after contemplating the order of heaven, might imitate it by their moderation and steadfastness in life.

n the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self......

Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.

I conclude, then, that the plea of having acted in the interests of a friend is not a valid excuse for a wrong action. . . . We may then lay down this rule of friendship--neither ask nor consent to do what is wrong. For the plea "for friendship's sake" is a discreditable one, and not to be admitted for a moment.

Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy?

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk. Marcus Tullius Cicero

Mine is the disaster, if disaster there be; and to be severely distressed at one's own misfortunes does not show that you love your friend, but that you love yourself.

As for you, my young friends, I urge you to strive for virtue, for without it friendship cannot exist. And friendship, aside from virtue, is the greatest thing we can find in life.

We must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains. We must fight it as we should an illness. We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink to recruit, but not to overload, our strength. Nor is it the body alone that must be supported, but the intellect and soul much more.

...friendship stands as a small affront to the total control of all things by mass entertainment and mass media and mass education and mass politics. For wherever such friendships persist, there persists the possibility of imaginative leaps that threaten the comfort of the banal. For you look at the friend and you remember the past, and treasure it. You love the friend, and suddenly you understand that this life of ours cannot fully be described by the motion of particulate matter in empty space. You see instantly that politics fades into unimportance, with all its noisy glamour and empty promises. You feel that others before you have known what it is to have the true friend, the one before whom you can, as Cicero put it, think out loud. You feel that, and it is like an earnest of eternity, of being grounded in a a love and beauty and goodness that is at the heart of all ages, and that transcends them all. Pals we may have, in the flatlands of contemporary life. Political allies, sure. Coworkers, aplenty. But not friends.

But if I am wrong in thinking the human soul immortal, I am glad to be wrong; nor will I allow the mistake which gives me so much pleasure to be wrested from me as long as I live.

they follow nature as the most perfect guide to a good life. Now

And so—it can't be repeated often enough—you should love after you have judged, not judge after you have loved.

But of all the bonds of fellowship, there is none more noble, none more powerful than when good men of congenial character are joined in intimate friendship.

And then to my surprise in one of them I discovered the original manuscript of On Friendship. Puzzled, I unrolled it, thinking I must have brought it with me by mistake. But when I saw that Cicero had copied out at the top of the roll in his shaking hand a quotation from the text, on the importance of having friends, I realised it was a parting gift: If a man ascended into heaven and gazed upon the whole workings of the universe and the beauty of the stars, the marvellous sight would give him no joy if he had to keep it to himself. And yet, if only there had been someone to describe the spectacle to, it would have filled him with delight. Nature abhors solitude.

We don't practise generosity in order to secure gratitude, nor do we invest our gifts in the hope of a favourable return. Rather, it is nature that inclines us towards generosity. Just so, we don't seek friendship with an expectation of gain, but regard the feeling of love as its own reward.

AS a rule Crassus did not bear grudges. This was not because he had a good heart but because other people rarely engaged his emotions. He had little difficulty in dropping friends or making up quarrels as occasion served. Cicero, whose view of friendship was different, had a very low opinion of him.

According to Cicero, he held that “friendship cannot be divorced from pleasure, and for that reason must be cultivated, because without it neither can we live in safety and without fear, nor even pleasantly.

This is all that I had to say about friendship; but I exhort you both so to esteem virtue (without which friendship cannot exist), that, excepting virtue, you will think nothing more excellent than friendship.

We mean then by the "good" those whose actions and lives leave no question as to their honour, purity, equity, and liberality; who are free from greed, lust, and violence; and who have the courage of their convictions.

So let this be the first and sacred law of friendship: seek only the good from friends, do only good for the sake of friends - and don't wait to be asked! Be always attentive! Banish hesitation! Be ready to give advice freely! Take seriously the good advice of friends. Be ready to offer it openly, even forcefully, if the occasion demands - and also be ready to follow when it's been offered.

Denn wirklich tugendhaft wollen nicht so Viele sein als scheinen.

the man to open his ears widest to flatterers is he who first flatters himself and is fondest of himself.

O noble philosophy! Why, they seem to take the sun out of the universe when they deprive life of friendship, than which we have from the immortal gods no better, no more delightful boon.

all that I can do is to urge you to put friendship before all things human; for nothing is so conformable to nature and nothing so adaptable to our fortunes whether they be favourable or adverse.

For friendship is nothing else than an accord in all things, human and divine, conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection, and I am inclined to think that, with the exception of wisdom, no better thing has been given to man by the immortal gods.

If people think that friendship springs from weakness and from a purpose to secure someone through whom we may obtain that which we lack, they assign her, if I may so express it, a lowly pedigree indeed, and an origin far from noble, and they would make her the daughter of poverty and want.

Nor is it easy to find men who will go down to calamity's depths for a friend. Ennius, however, is right when he says: When Fortune's fickle the faithful friend is found; yet it is on these two charges that most men are convicted of fickleness: they either hold a friend of little value when their own affairs are prosperous, or they abandon him when his are adverse. Whoever, therefore, in either of these contingencies, has shown himself staunch, immovable, and firm in friendship ought to be considered to belong to that class of men which is exceedingly rare — aye, almost divine.

As Cicero said about the merits of friendship—but he could just as well have been talking about close relationships in general—it “improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.” I would prefer that those who care about me greet my panic with calm and my gloom with good cheer.

In high school, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a bunch of us spent a whole year reading Cicero—De Senectute, on old age; De Amicitia, on friendship. De Senectute, with all its resigned wisdom, I will probably never be capable of living up to or imitating. But De Amicitia I could make a stab at, and could have any time in the last thirty-four years.

Likewise other things, which seem to some to be worthy of admiration, are by many thought to be of no value at all. But concerning friendship, all, to a man, think the same thing: those who have devoted themselves to public life; those who find their joy in science and philosophy; those who manage their own business free from public cares; and, finally, those who are wholly given up to sensual pleasures — all believe that without friendship life is no life at all, or at least they so believe if they have any desire whatever to live the life of free men.

If the original ink proved tenacious, it could still be possible to make out the traces of the texts that were written over: a unique fourth-century copy of Cicero’s On the Republic remained visible beneath a seventh-century copy of St. Augustine’s meditation on the Psalms; the sole surviving copy of Seneca’s book on friendship was deciphered beneath an Old Testament inscribed in the late sixth century. These strange, layered manuscripts—called palimpsests; from the Greek for “scraped again”—have served as the source of several major works from the ancient past that would not otherwise be known.

Ey yüksek bilgelik! Dostluğu yaşamdan kaldırmak isteyenler, güneşi dünyadan ayıranlara benzerler; ölmez tanrılar insanlara dostluktan daha iyi, daha tatlı bir şey vermedi... ...Ruhta eylem olmazsa, insanla hayvan arasında demiyorum, ama insanla ağaç kütüğü, kaya ya da bu gibi bir eşya arasında ne ayrım kalır? Çünkü kendisinin sert, hem de demir gibi sert olmasını isteyenlerin sözlerini dinlemeyen erdem, aslında bir çok işte olduğu gibi, özellikle dostlukta yumuşaktır ve işlenebilir; öyle ki, dostun mutlu günlerinde sanki genişler, kara günlerinde sıkışır. Bu yüzden dost için duyulacak kaygı, dostluğu yaşamdan kaldıracak denli büyük değildir. Aynı biçimde kimi sıkıntı ve üzüntüler doğurabilir diye erdemden vazgeçilecek de değildir.

Now, what is the quality to look out for as a warrant for the stability and permanence of friendship? It is loyalty. Nothing that lacks this can be stable. We should also in making our selection look out for simplicity, a social disposition, and a sympathetic nature, moved by what moves us. These all contribute to maintain loyalty. You can never trust a character which is intricate and tortuous. Nor, indeed, is it possible for one to be trustworthy and firm who is unsympathetic by nature and unmoved by what affects ourselves. We may add, that he must neither take pleasure in bringing accusations against us himself, nor believe them when they are brought. All these contribute to form that constancy which I have been endeavouring to describe. And the result is, what I started by saying, that friendship is only possible between good men.

is no greater bane to friendship than adulation, fawning, and flattery.’ Cicero.

Frequently, friendship is represented as something too steadily pleasant, or in certain of the masterpieces of the past -- Aristotle and Cicero, for example -- as pervaded by a constant mutual understanding and a gentle calm. Friendship is also an emotional relationship, with involvement that can get hot at times, like any other deep involvement with a person.

The reality of social networking sites is that they provide platforms for online personae to interact with other online personae. Importantly, such relationships can be ended with a click of an 'unfriend,' 'unfollow,' or 'block' button. Breaking up like this constitutes a morally lightweight action. Certainly it flies in the face of Cicero's advice that a friendship 'should seem to fade away rather than to be stamped out.' The respect that Cicero demanded that we pay to a friendship, even one that has turned sour, did not anticipate the tenuous connection inherent in being a facebook friend.

Goodness in other people naturally arouses our affection and friendship, not because it’s of some material advantage to us, but because it’s the mirror image of our own potential for virtue, and so loved for its own sake. For instance, the Roman statesman Laelius the Wise, renowned for his own exemplary friendship with Scipio Africanus the Younger, had studied Stoic philosophy under the scholarchs Diogenes of Babylon and Panaetius. In a dialogue entitled On Friendship, Cicero portrays him saying that ‘nothing else in the whole world is so completely in harmony with Nature’ as true friendship, a profound agreement in the feelings and values of two people, supported by mutual goodwill and affection.

Hume declared that ‘Our connection with each other, as men of letters, is greater than our differences as adhering to different sects or systems’. ‘Let us’, he continued, ‘revive the happy times, when Atticus and Cassius the Epicureans, Cicero the Academic, and Brutus the Stoic, could, all of them, live in unreserved friendship together, and were insensible to all those distinctions, except so far as they furnished matter to discourse and conversation’.

Cicero thought, is never; besides, it is vitiated by the false assumption of equality. The best form of government is a mixed constitution, like that of pre-Gracchan Rome: the democratic power of the assemblies, the aristocratic power of the Senate, the almost royal power of the consuls for a year. Without checks and balances monarchy becomes despotism, aristocracy becomes oligarchy, democracy becomes mob rule, chaos, and dictatorship. Writing five years after Caesar’s consulate, Cicero cast a dart in his direction: Plato says that from the exaggerated license which people call liberty, tyrants spring up as from a root . . . and that at last such liberty reduces a nation to slavery. Everything in excess is changed into its opposite. . . . For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as leader . . . someone bold and unscrupulous . . . who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property. To such a man, because he has much reason for fear if he remains a private citizen, the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He surrounds himself with an armed guard, and emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.68 Nevertheless, Caesar won; and Cicero thought it best to bury his discontent in melodious platitudes on law, friendship, glory, and old age. Silent leges inter arma, he said—“laws are silent in time of war”; but at least he could