purposes; they engage in quarrels, offensive and defensive for their
accomplices; they tell one another all they know, and often more too,
when, of a sudden, some accident disperses them, and they think no more
of each other, unless it be to betray and laugh, at their imprudent
confidence. Remember to make a great difference between companions and
friends; for a very complaisant and agreeable companion may, and often
does, prove a very improper and a very dangerous friend. People will, in
a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you, upon
that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb,
which says very justly, TELL ME WHO YOU LIVE WITH AND I WILL TELL YOU WHO
YOU ARE. One may fairly suppose, that the man who makes a knave or a fool
his friend, has something very bad to do or to conceal. But, at the same
time that you carefully decline the friendship of knaves and fools, if it
can be called friendship, there is no occasion to make either of them
your enemies, wantonly and unprovoked; for they are numerous bodies: and
I, would rather choose a secure neutrality, than alliance, or war with
either of them. You may be a declared enemy to their vices and follies,
without being marked out by them as a personal one. Their enmity is the
next dangerous thing to their friendship. Have a real reserve with almost
everybody; and have a seeming reserve with almost nobody; for it is very
disagreeable to seem reserved, and very dangerous not to be so. Few
people find the true medium; many are ridiculously mysterious and
reserved upon trifles; and many imprudently communicative of all they
know.

The next thing to the choice of your friends, is the choice of your
company. Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above
you: there you rise, as much as you sink with people below you; for (as I
have mentioned before) you are whatever the company you keep is. Do not
mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard