rest with him who does not with him who suffers the wrong.

The one surety and preventive against these mistakes and misfortunes is,
not to form attachments too soon, nor for those unworthy of such regard.
But it is those in whose very selves there is reason why they should be
loved, that are worthy of friendship. A rare class of men! Indeed,
superlatively excellent objects of every sort are rare, nor is anything
more difficult than to discover that which is in all respects perfect in
its kind. But most persons have acquired the habit of recognizing
nothing as good in human relations and affairs that does not produce
some revenue, and they most love those friends, as they do those cattle,
that will yield them the greatest gain. Thus they lack that most
beautiful and most natural friendship, which is to be sought in itself
and for its own sake, nor can they know from experience what and how
great is the power of such friendship. One loves himself, not in order
to exact from himself any wages for such love, but because he is in
himself dear to himself. Now, unless this same property be transferred
to friendship, a true friend will never be found, for such a friend is,
as it were, another self. But if it is seen in beasts, birds, fishes,
animals tame and wild, that they first love themselves (for self-love is
born with everything that lives) and that they then require and seek
those of their kind to whom they may attach themselves, and do so with
desire and with a certain semblance of human love, how much more is this
natural in man, who both loves himself, and craves another whose soul he
may so blend with his own as almost to make one out of two.

22 But men in general are so perverse, not to say shameless, as to wish
a friend to be in character what they themselves could not be and they
expect of friends what they do not give them in return. The proper
course however, is for one first to be himself a good man, and then to