imagine themselves to possess friends will find out their
error as soon as some grave disaster forces them to make trial of them.
Wherefore, I must again and again repeat, you must satisfy your judgment
before engaging your affections: not love first and judge afterwards. We
suffer from carelessness in many of our undertakings: in none more than
in selecting and cultivating our friends. We put the cart before the
horse, and shut the stable door when the steed is stolen, in defiance
of the old proverb. For, having mutually involved ourselves in a
long-standing intimacy or by actual obligations, all on a sudden some
cause of offence arises and we break off our friendships in full career.

23. It is this that makes such carelessness in a matter of supreme
importance all the more worthy of blame. I say "supreme importance,"
because friendship is the one thing about the utility of which everybody
with one accord is agreed. That is not the case in regard even to virtue
itself; for many people speak slightingly of virtue as though it were
mere puffing and self-glorification. Nor is it the case with riches.
Many look down on riches, being content with a little and taking
pleasure in poor fare and dress, And as to the political offices for
which some have a burning desire--how many entertain such a contempt
for them as to think nothing in the world more empty and trivial!

And so on with the rest; things desirable in the eyes of some are
regarded by very many as worthless. But of friendship all think alike to
a man, whether those have devoted themselves to politics, or those who
delight in science and philosophy, or those who follow a private way of
life and care for nothing but their own business, or those lastly who
have given themselves body and soul to sensuality--they all think, I
say, that without friendship life is no life, if they want some part
of it, at any rate, to be noble. For friendship, in one way or another,
penetrates into the lives of us all, and suffers no career to be
entirely free from its influence. Though a man be of so churlish and
unsociable a nature as to loathe and shun the company of mankind, as we
are told was the case with a certain Timon at Athens, yet even he cannot
refrain from seeking some one in whose hearing he may disgorge the
venom of his bitter temper. We should see this most clearly, if it were
possible that some god should carry us away from these haunts of men,
and place us somewhere in