On Living and Dying Well (Penguin Classics) by Cicero

Author:Cicero
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780718194017
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

Thus nature favours nothing solitary, but always inclines towards some kind of assistance, which the dearest friend provides in the most agreeable way.

Yet even though this same nature communicates its aims and desires through countless signs, somehow we grow deaf and fail to hear the advice we are given. Just as the advantages of friendship are many and diverse, so there are many grounds for suspicion and offence, which the wise man will ignore or make light of or just plain endure. One possible cause of offence must be dismissed if trust and benefit are to remain in a friendship: friends must often give advice and criticism, which, arising as they do from feelings of good will, must also be accepted in a spirit of friendship.

Nevertheless, what my friend Terence says in his Andrian Girl somehow remains true: ‘Acquiescence yields friendship, truth brings forth hate.’52

Truth is destructive if in fact it causes hatred, which poisons friendship. Much more destructive, however, is deference or acquiescence that indulges the sins of a friend and permits reckless behaviour. But the biggest mistake is to dismiss the truth and succumb to other people’s flattery. We must exercise care and reason in every aspect of this matter in order to advise without stridency and correct without abuse. If we defer or acquiesce, to use Terence’s term loosely, we should do so in an easy-going manner, and keep flattery, the enabler of vice, at a distance. It’s unfit not just for a friend but for any free man. To live with a tyrant is one thing, to live with a friend quite another!

Besides, if a person’s ears are closed to the truth, so much so that he can’t hear it from a friend, he’s a lost cause anyway. There’s a clever saying of Cato’s (one of many) that goes like this:

For some men bitter enemies do a greater service than friends who might seem sweet: the former often tell the truth, the latter never.53

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.