Seneca Friendship Quotes

There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with

But when you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.

Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together.

Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits, After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.

Possession of a friend should be with the spirit: the spirit's never absent: it sees daily whoever it likes.

Still, you must especially avoid those who are gloomy and always lamenting, and who grasp at every pretext for complaint. Though a man's loyalty and kindness may not be in doubt, a companion who is agitated and groaning about everything is an enemy to peace of mind.

Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits

Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. And if wisdom were given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it.

Think for a long time whether or not you should admit a given person to your friendship. But when you have decided to do so, welcome him heart and soul, and speak as unreservedly with him as you would with yourself

But nothing delights the mind so much as fond and loyal friendship. What a blessing it is to have hearts that are ready and willing to receive all your secretes in safety, with whom you are less afraid to share knowledge of something than keep it to yourself, whose conversation soothes your distress, whose advice helps you make up your mind, whose cheerfulness dissolves your sorrow, whose very appearance cheers you up!

After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.

Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures. Seneca

judge a man after they have made him their friend, instead of making him their friend after they have judged him. Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself.

What is my object in making a friend? To have someone to be able to die for, someone I may follow into exile, someone for whose life I may put myself up as security and pay the price as well. The thing you describe is not friendship but a business deal, looking to the likely consequences, with advantage as its goal.

One who seeks friendship for favourable occasions, strips it of all its nobility.

To be everywhere is to be nowhere. People who spend their whole life travelling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships.

To come back to the question, the wise man, self-sufficient as he is, still desires to have a friend if only for the purpose of practising friendship and ensuring that those talents are not idle.

Flattery looks very much like friendship, indeed not only resembles it but actually wins out against it. A person drinks it in with eager ears and takes it deeply to heart, delighted by the very qualities that make it dangerous.

After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge. Those people who, contrary to Theophrastus’ advice, judge a man after they have made him their friend instead of the other way round, certainly put the cart before the horse.

How closely flattery resembles friendship! It not only apes friendship, but outdoes it, passing it in the race; with wide-open and indulgent ears it is welcomed and sinks to the depths of the heart, and it is pleasing precisely wherein it does harm.

Others, again, fear to confide in their closest intimates; and if it were possible, they would not trust even themselves, burying their secrets deep in their hearts. But we should do neither. It is equally faulty to trust everyone and to trust no one.

What is my object in making a friend? To have someone to be able to die for, someone I may follow into exile, someone for whose life I may put myself up as security and pay the price as well. The thing you describe is not friendship but a business deal, looking to the likely consequences, with advantage as its goal. There can be no doubt that the desire lovers have for each other is not so very different from friendship – you might say it was friendship gone mad. Well, then, does anyone ever fall in love with a view to a profit, or advancement, or celebrity? Actual love in itself, heedless of all other considerations, inflames people’s hearts with a passion for the beautiful object, not without the hope, too, that the affection will be mutual. How then can the nobler stimulus of friendship be associated with any ignoble desire?

Beyond question the feeling of a lover has in it something akin to friendship; one might call it friendship run mad. But, though this is true, does anyone love for the sake of gain, or promotion, or renown? Pure love, regardless of all other things, kindles the soul with the desire for the beautiful object, not without the hope of a return of affection.

Beyond question the feeling of a lover has in it something akin to friendship; one might call it friendship run mad. But, though this is true, does anyone love for the sake of gain, or promotion, or renown? Pure[7] love, careless of all other things, kindles the soul with desire for the beautiful object, not without the hope of a return of the affection.

Was die Menschen anlangt, mit denen man es zu tun hat, so ist eine Auswahl ganz unerlässlich. Man frage sich: Sind sie es wert, dass wir einen Teil unserer Zeit an sie wenden?

No good is enjoyable to possess without a companion.

If you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means.

Anyone thinking of his own interests and seeking out friendship with this in view is making a great mistake.

To procure friendship only for better and not for worse is to rob it of all its dignity.

We are born with a sense of the pleasantness of friendship just as of other things.

I can show you many who have lacked, not a friend, but a friendship.

There is great pleasure, not only in maintaining old and established friendships, but also in beginning and acquiring new ones.

One who seeks friendship for favourable occassions strips it of all its nobility.

When friendship is settled, you must trust; before friendship is formed, you must pass judgement.

Now there is great pleasure, not only in maintaining old and established friendships, but also in beginning and acquiring new ones.

But if you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means.

Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself.

Think for a long time whether or not you should admit a given person to your friendship. But when you have decided to do so, welcome him heart and soul, and speak as unreservedly with him as you would with yourself.

Dumb creatures have not human feelings, but have certain impulses which resemble them: for if it were not so, if they could feel love and hate, they would likewise be capable of friendship and enmity, of disagreement and agreement.

Great pleasure is to be found not only in keeping up an old and established friendship but also in beginning and building up a new one. There is the same difference between having gained a friend and actually gaining a friend as there is between a farmer harvesting and a farmer sowing.

These are the so-called "fair-weather" friendships, one who is chosen for the sake of utility will be satisfactory only so long as he is useful. Hence prosperous mean are blockaded by troops of friends; but those who have failed stand amid vast loneliness their friends fleeing from the very crisis which is to test their worth.

Beyond question the feeling of a loves has in it something akin to friendship; one might call it friendship run mad. But, though this is true, does anyone love for the sake of gain, or promotion, or renown? Pure love, regardless of all other things, kindles the soul with the desire for the beautiful object, not without the hope of a return of affection.

You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind. To be everywhere is to be nowhere. People who spend their whole life travelling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships.

October 29th CHARACTER IS FATE “Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance. You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 47.15b In the hiring process, most employers look at where someone went to school, what jobs they’ve held in the past. This is because past success can be an indicator of future successes. But is it always? There are plenty of people who were successful because of luck. Maybe they got into Oxford or Harvard because of their parents. And what about a young person who hasn’t had time to build a track record? Are they worthless? Of course not. This is why character is a far better measure of a man or woman. Not just for jobs, but for friendships, relationships, for everything. Heraclitus put it as a maxim: “Character is fate.” When you seek to advance your own position in life, character is the best lever—perhaps not in the short term, but certainly over the long term. And the same goes for the people you invite into your life.

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.

When I urge you so strongly to your studies, it is my own interest which I am consulting; I want your friendship, and it cannot fall to my lot unless you proceed, as you have begun, with the task of developing yourself. For now, although you love me, you are not yet my friend. "But," you reply, "are these words of different meaning?" Nay, more, they are totally unlike in meaning.[1] A friend loves you, of course; but one who loves you is not in every case your friend. Friendship, accordingly, is always helpful, but love sometimes even does harm. Try to perfect yourself, if for no other reason, in order that you may learn how to love.

Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship, but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak boldly with him as with yourself. As to yourself, although you should live in such a way that you trust your own self with nothing which you could not entrust even your enemy, yet, since certain matters occur which convention keeps secret, you should share at least all your worries and reflections. Regard him as loyal, and you will make him loyal. Some, for example, fearing to be deceived, have taught men to deceive; by their suspicions, they have given their friend the right to do wrong.

To come back to the question, the wise man, self-sufficient as he is, still desires to have a friend if only for the purpose of practising friendship and ensuring that those talents are not idle. Not, as Epicurus put it in the same letter, ‘for the purpose of having someone to come and sit beside his bed when he is ill or come to his rescue when he is hard up or thrown into chains’, but so that on the contrary he may have someone by whose sickbed he himself may sit or whom he may himself release when that person is held prisoner by hostile hands. Anyone thinking of his own interests and seeking out friendship with this in view is making a great mistake. Things will end as they began; he has secured a friend who is going to come to his aid if captivity threatens: at the first clank of a chain that friend will disappear. These are what are commonly called fair-weather friendships. A person adopted as a friend for the sake of his usefulness will be cultivated only for so long as he is useful. This explains the crowd of friends that clusters about successful men and the lonely atmosphere about the ruined – their friends running away when it comes to the testing point; it explains the countless scandalous instances of people deserting or betraying others out of fear for themselves. The ending inevitably matches the beginning: a person who starts being friends with you because it pays him will similarly cease to be friends because it pays him to do so. If there is anything in a particular friendship that attracts a man other than the friendship itself, the attraction of some reward or other will counterbalance that of the friendship. What is my object in making a friend? To have someone to be able to die for, someone I may follow into exile, someone for whose life I may put myself up as security and pay the price as well. The thing you describe is not friendship but a business deal, looking to the likely consequences, with advantage as its goal. There can be no doubt that the desire lovers have for each other is not so very different from friendship – you might say it was friendship gone mad. Well, then, does anyone ever fall in love with a view to a profit, or advancement, or celebrity? Actual love in itself, heedless of all other considerations, inflames people’s hearts with a passion for the beautiful object, not without the hope, too, that the affection will be mutual. How then can the nobler stimulus of friendship be associated with any ignoble desire?

You have heard the good Talks which our Brother (George Morgan) Weepemachukthe [The White Deer] has delivered to us from the Great Council at Philadelphia representing all our white Brethern who have grown out of this same Ground with ourselves for this Big [Turtle] Island being our common Mother, we and they are like one Flesh and Blood." -Chief Cornstalk to Mingo representatives at a conference at Fort Pitt [Pittsburgh], Friday, June 21st, 1776 [response] "We are sprung from one common Mother, we were all born in this big Island; we earnestly wish to repose under the same Tree of Peace with you; we request to live in Friendship with all the Indians in the Woods...We call God to Witness, that we desire nothing more ardently than that the white and red Inhabitants of this big Island should cultivate the most Brotherly affection, and be united in the firmest bands of Love and friendship." -Morgan Letterbrook, "American Commissioners for Indian Affairs to Delawares, Senecas, Munsees, and Mingos" Pittsburgh, 1776

You should rather suppose that those are involved in worthwhile duties who wish to have daily as their closest friends Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of these will be too busy to see you, none of these will not send his visitor away happier and more devoted to himself, none of these will allow anyone to depart empty-handed. They are at home to all mortals by night and by day. None of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die. None of them will exhaust your years, but each will contribute his years to yours. With none of these will conversation be dangerous, or his friendship fatal, or attendance on him expensive. From them you can take whatever you wish: it will not be their fault if you do not take your fill from them. What happiness, what a fine old age awaits the man who has made himself a client of these! He will have friends whose advice he can ask on the most important or the most trivial matters, whom he can consult daily about himself, who will tell him the truth without insulting him and praise him without flattery, who will offer him a pattern on which to model himself.

Ma se giudichi amico qualcuno di cui non ti fidi come di te stesso, sbagli tremendamente e non hai l'esatta nozione del valore di un'amicizia autentica. Prendi pure ogni tua decisione insieme con l'amico, ma prima decidi sui tuoi rapporti con lui: una volta sorta l'amicizia, bisogna avere fiducia, e, prima di stringerla, è necessaria una valutazione precisa. Confondono i doveri dell'amicizia, invertendo i termini, quelli che contro gli insegnamenti di Teofrasto giudicano dopo avere manifestato il proprio affetto, e cessano di dimostrarlo dopo aver giudicato. Rifletti a lungo, se devi accogliere qualcuno nella tua amicizia. Quando avrai deciso in tal senso, accettalo di tutto cuore, parla con lui francamente come a te stesso. Osserva dunque la seguente regola di vita: non ci sia alcuna cosa che confidi a te stesso, la quale tu non possa confidare persino al tuo nemico; ma poiché si producono circostanze che è consuetudine tenere segrete, rendi partecipe di ogni tua preoccupazione, di tutti i tuoi pensieri chi ti è amico. Credendo nella sua fedeltà, lo renderai fedele. Certuni, infatti, hanno insegnato le vie dell'inganno, temendo di essere ingannati; altri hanno avvalorato, con i loro sospetti, il diritto di compor tarsi in modo negativo. Perché mai dovrei trattenere qualche parola in presenza del mio amico?

But we may fairly say that they alone are engaged in the true duties of life who shall wish to have Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus, as their most intimate friends every day. No one of these will be "not at home," no one of these will fail to have his visitor leave more happy and more devoted to himself than when he came, no one of these will allow anyone to leave him with empty hands; all mortals can meet with them by night or by day. No one of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die; no one of these will wear out your years, but each will add his own years to yours; conversations with no one of these will bring you peril, the friendship of none will endanger your life, the courting of none will tax your purse. From them you will take whatever you wish; it will be no fault of theirs if you do not draw the utmost that you can desire. What happiness, what a fair old age awaits him who has offered himself as a client to these! He will have friends from whom he may seek counsel on matters great and small, whom he may consult every day about himself, from whom he may hear truth without insult, praise without flattery, and after whose likeness he may fashion himself. We are wont to say that it was not in our power to choose the parents who fell to our lot, that they have been given to men by chance; yet we may be the sons of whomsoever we will. Households there are of noblest intellects; choose the one into which you wish to be adopted; you will inherit not merely their name, but even their property, which there will be no need to guard in a mean or niggardly spirit; the more persons you share it with, the greater it will become. These will open to you the path to immortality, and will raise you to a height from which no one is cast down. This is the only way of prolonging mortality—nay, of turning it into immortality. Honours, monuments, all that ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of stone, quickly sink to ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does not tear down and remove. But the works which philosophy has consecrated cannot be harmed; no age will destroy them, no age reduce them; the following and each succeeding age will but increase the reverence for them, since envy works upon what is close at hand, and things that are far off we are more free to admire. The life of the philosopher, therefore, has wide range, and he is not confined by the same bounds that shut others in. He alone is freed from the limitations of the human race; all ages serve him as if a god. Has some time passed by? This he embraces by recollection. Is time present? This he uses. Is it still to come? This he anticipates. He makes his life long by combining all times into one. But those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing.

Nincs emberi kapcsolat, mely megrendítőbb, mélyebb lenne, mint a barátság. A szerelmesek, igen, még a szülők és gyermekek kapcsolatában is mennyi az önzés és a hiúság! Csak a barát nem önző; máskülönben nem barát. Csak a barát nem hiú, mert minden jót és szépet barátjának akar, nem önmagának. A szerelmes mindig akar valamit; a barát nem akar önmagának semmit. A gyermek mindig kapni akar szüleitől, túl akarja szárnyalni atyját; a barát nem akar kapni, sem túlszárnyalni. Nincs titkosabb és nemesebb ajándék az életben, mint a szűkszavú, megértő, türelmes és áldozatkész barátság. S nincs ritkább. Montaigne, mikor eltünődött az érzés fölött, mely La Boétie-hez fűzte, ezt mondotta: " Barátok voltunk.... Mert ő volt ő, s mert én voltam én. " Ez felette pontos. S Seneca ezt írja egyhelyt Luciliusnak: " Aki barát, szeret, de aki szeret, nem mindig barát. " Ez a megállapítás több is, mint pontosság: ez már igazság. Minden szeretet gyanús, mert önzés és fukarság lappang hamujában. Csak a barát vonzalma önzetlen, nincs benne érdek, sem az érzékek játéka. A barátság szolgálat, erős és komoly szolgálat, a legnagyobb emberi próba és szerep.

If you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken, and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means… When friendship is settled, you must trust; before friendship is formed, you must pass judgment." -Seneca, Letters From A Stoic.

RED JACKET, SAGOYEWATHA (Seneca) “We like our religion, and do not want another” (May 1811) Red Jacket (c. 1751-1830) addressed Reverend Alexander, from New York City, during a Seneca council at Buffalo Creek. Brother!—We listened to the talk you delivered us from the Council of Black-Coats, in New York. We have fully considered your talk, and the offers you have made us. We now return our answer, which we wish you also to understand. In making up our minds, we have looked back to remember what has been done in our days, and what our fathers have told us was done in old times. Brother!—Great numbers of Black-Coats have been among the Indians. With sweet voices and smiling faces, they offered to teach them the religion of the white people. Our brethren in the East listened to them. They turned from the religion of their fathers, and took up the religion of the white people. What good has it done? Are they more friendly one to another than we are? No, Brother! They are a divided people—we are united. They quarrel about religion—we live in love and friendship. Besides, they drink strong waters. And they have learned how to cheat, and how to practice all the other vices of the white people, without imitating their virtues. Brother!—If you wish us well, keep away; do not disturb us. Brother!—We do not worship the Great Spirit as the white people do, but we believe that the forms of worship are indifferent to the Great Spirit. It is the homage of sincere hearts that pleases him, and we worship him in that manner. According to your religion, we must believe in a Father and Son, or we shall not be happy hereafter. We have always believed in a Father, and we worship him as our old men taught us. Your book says that the Son was sent on Earth by the Father. Did all the people who saw the Son believe him? No! they did not. And if you have read the book, the consequence must be known to you. Brother!—You wish us to change our religion for yours. We like our religion, and do not want another. Our friends here [pointing to Mr. Granger, the Indian Agent, and two other whites] do us great good; they counsel us in trouble; they teach us how to be comfortable at all times. Our friends the Quakers do more. They give us ploughs, and teach us how to use them. They tell us we are accountable beings. But they do not tell us we must change our religion.—we are satisfied with what they do, and with what they say. SOURCE: B.B. Thatcher. Indian Life and Battles. Akron: New Werner Company, 1910. 312—314. Brother!—for these reasons we cannot receive your offers. We have other things to do, and beg you to make your mind easy, without troubling us, lest our heads should be too much loaded, and by and by burst.

Thank you for writing so often. By doing so you give me a glimpse of yourself in the only way you can. I never get a letter from you without instantly feeling we’re together. If pictures of absent friends are a source of pleasure to us, refreshing the memory and relieving the sense of void with a solace however insubstantial and unreal, how much more so are letters, which carry marks and signs of an absent friend that are real. For the handwriting of a friend affords us what is so delightful about seeing him again, the sense of recognition.

There’s nothing worse than a wolf befriending sheep. Avoid false friendship at all costs.

Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures.’ Seneca