1We shall not, then, listen to men dissolved in luxury if ever they discourse on friendship, which they have come to know neither by experience nor by reason. 1For who is there (in the name of gods and men!) 1who would wish to be surrounded by every kind of wealth and to live in an abundance of all things, on condition that he neither loves anyone nor is himself loved by anyone? 1For this is the life of tyrants, in which, of course, there can be no trust, no affection, no confidence in lasting goodwill; everything is always suspect and anxious, and there is no room for friendship. 53For who could love either the man he fears, or the man by whom he thinks himself feared?
53Yet they are courted, in pretence at least, for a time. 53But if by chance, as usually happens, they have fallen, then it is understood how poor they were in friends. 53Which is what Tarquin is said to have remarked in exile: that he had understood which friends he had had who were faithful and which unfaithful only when he could no longer repay either. 54And yet I wonder that, with such arrogance and insolence, he could have had any friend at all. 54And just as the character of the man I have mentioned could not win him true friends, so the wealth of many very powerful men shuts out faithful friendships.
54For not only is Fortune herself blind, but she also generally makes blind those whom she has embraced; 54and so they are usually carried away by disdain and obstinacy, and nothing can be more intolerable than a fortunate fool. 54And indeed one may see this: that men who before had agreeable manners are changed by command, power and prosperity, and that old friendships are spurned by them and new ones indulged. 55And what is more foolish than, when men have the greatest power through their resources, means and wealth, to procure the other things that money procures, horses, servants, splendid clothing, costly vessels, and not to procure friends, the best and fairest furniture of life, so to speak?
55For when they procure those other things, they do not know for whom they are procuring them, nor for whose sake they are labouring; 55for each of those things belongs to whoever has prevailed by force; 55but each man's possession of his friendships remains stable and sure, so that even if those things remain that are, as it were, the gifts of fortune, still a life untended and deserted by friends cannot be pleasant. 55But enough of this.