Friendship in Literature and
Philosophy: Quotations of Epicurus, Cicero, Aristotle, Saint
Augustine and Ralph Emerson
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Friendship in Cicero…
Cicero, 106-43 b. C., Roman philosopher and politician, Of
friendship
Between us there was the most complete harmony in our tastes,
our pursuits, and our sentiments, which is the true secret of
friendship
Friendship is a complete accord on all subjects - human and
divine - joined with mutual good will and affection. And with
the exception of wisdom, I am inclined to think nothing better
than this has been given to man by the immortal gods.
Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling
of our joy and the dividing of our grief
How can life be worth living (…) without the mutual good will of
a friend? 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? On the other hand, misfortunes
would be hard to bear if there were not some one to feel them
even more acutely than yourself.
Friendship enhances prosperity, and relieves adversity of its
burden by halving and sharing it.
And great and numerous as are the blessings of friendship, this
certainly is the sovereign one, that it gives us bright hopes
for the future and forbids weakness and despair. In the face of
a true friend a man sees as it were a second self
I gather that friendship springs from a natural impulse rather
than a wish for help: from an inclination of the heart, combined
with a certain instinctive feeling of love, rather than from a
deliberate calculation of the material advantage it was likely
to confer.
So true it is that Nature abhors isolation, and ever leans upon
something as a stay and support; and this is found in its most
pleasing form in our closest friend
Full text:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/cicero-friendship.html
Happy is the house that shelters a friend!
There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship,
each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no
reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend
is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think
aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and
equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of
dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put
off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness
with which one chemical atom meets another.
Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority,
only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak
truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every
man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person,
hypocrisy begins.
We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments,
by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought
from him under a hundred folds. (…) A friend, therefore, is a
sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in
nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my
own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height,
variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a
friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. (…)
The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden to
men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope,
by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance
and badge and trifle, but we can scarce believe that so much
character can subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can
another be so blessed, and we so pure, that we can offer him
tenderness? When a man becomes dear to me, I have touched the
goal of fortune.
Full Text:
http://www.emersoncentral.com/friendship.htm
Friendship in Epicurus, the philosopher of
friendship
Epicurus, 341-270 b. C., Greek philosopher
The whole world offers a common house to those who prize
friendship: the Earth.
Epicurean
saying found in the portico of a roman farm of the second
century
Friendship dances around the world bidding us all to awaken to
the recognition of happiness.
Neither he who is always seeking material aid from his friends
nor he who never considers such aid is a true friend; for one
engages in petty trade, taking a favour instead of gratitude,
and the other deprives himself of hope for the future.
We do not so much need the assistance of our friends as we do
the confidence of their assistance in need.
The noble man is chiefly concerned with wisdom and friendship;
of these, the former is a mortal good, the latter an immortal
one.
Epicurus, 341-270 a. C., Greek Philosopher, Vatican sayings
Of all the means which wisdom gives us to ensure happiness
throughout ours lives, by far the most important is friendship.
Epicurus, 341-270 a. C., Greek Philosopher, Principal Doctrines
Friendship in Aristotle
Aristotle, 384-322 b.C., Greek philosopher
When he was asked “What is a friend?», he said: «One soul
inhabiting two bodies”
Aristotle in Diogenes Laertiues Lives of Philosophers
When men are friends they have no need of justice, while when
they are just they need friends as well.
In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a
sure refuge.
Friendship is a virtue, and the most necessary thing.
Nobody would choose to live without friends even if he had all
the other good things of life.
Aristotle, 384-322 b.C., Greek philosopher, Nicomachean Ethic
Friendship in Saint Augustine
Saint Augustine, 354-430, Philosopher and Christian theologian,
Confessions
Not in pleasant groves, nor in sport or song, nor in fragrant
bowers, nor in magnificent banquetings, nor in the pleasures of
the bed or the couch; not even in books or poetry did I find
rest. All things looked gloomy, even the very light itself.
My eyes sought him everywhere, but they did not see him; and I
hated all places because he was not in them, because they could
not say to me, "Look, he is coming," as they did when he was
alive and absent. I became a hard riddle to myself, and I asked
my soul why she was so downcast and why this disquieted me so
sorely. But she did not know how to answer me. And if I said,
"Hope thou in God," she very properly disobeyed me, because that
dearest friend she had lost was as an actual man, both truer and
better than the imagined deity she was ordered to put her hope
in. Nothing but tears were sweet to me and they took my friend's
place in my heart's desire.
For I had neither a hope of his coming back to life, nor in all
my tears did I seek this. I simply grieved and wept, for I was
miserable and had lost my joy.
What revived and refreshed me, more than anything else, was the
consolation of other friends, with whom I went on loving the
things I loved instead of thee.
This is what we love in our friends, and we love it so much that
a man's conscience accuses itself if he does not love one who
loves him, or respond in love to love, seeking nothing from the
other but the evidences of his love. This is the source of our
moaning when one dies -the gloom of sorrow, the steeping of the
heart in tears, all sweetness turned to bitterness - and the
feeling of death in the living, because of the loss of the life
of the dying.
Full text:
http://www.ccel.org/a/augustine/confessions/confessions.html
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