This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
[29]
9. Now if the force of integrity is so great that
we love it, whether in those we have never seen, or,
more wonderful still, even in an enemy, what wonder
that men's souls are stirred when they think they
see clearly the virtue and goodness of those with
whom a close intimacy is possible? And yet love
is further strengthened by the receiving of a kindly
service, by the evidence of another's care for us,
and by closer familiarity, and from all these, when
joined to the soul's first impulse to love, there springs
up, if I may say so, a marvellous glow and greatness
of goodwill.
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.
If this were so, then just in proportion as any man
judged his resources to be small, would he be fitted
for friendship; whereas the truth is far otherwise.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.