Friendship runs all through Seneca's letters, and his view of it is demanding: a real friend is someone you trust as you trust yourself, chosen slowly and kept for their own sake rather than for what they can do for you. Below are 19 of his lines on friendship, each checked word for word against a public-domain translation, with the letter and section so you can read the context.
For his best lines on other themes, see the main page of Seneca quotes.
Choosing a friend
Seneca's first rule is about order: judge first, then trust completely.
But if you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means.
Seneca, Letters 3.2 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
When friendship is settled, you must trust; before friendship is formed, you must pass judgment.
Seneca, Letters 3.2 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself.
Seneca, Letters 3.2 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.
Seneca, Letters 7.8 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
We should choose for our friends men who are, as far as possible, free from strong desires: for vices are contagious, and pass from a man to his neighbour, and injure those who touch them.
Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind 7 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
You must reflect carefully beforehand with whom you are to eat and drink, rather than what you are to eat and drink.
Epicurus, quoted by Seneca, Letters 19.10 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
Trust
Regard him as loyal, and you will make him loyal.
Seneca, Letters 3.3 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
It is equally faulty to trust everyone and to trust no one.
Seneca, Letters 3.4 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
Yet nothing delights the mind so much as faithful and pleasant friendship: what a blessing it is when there is one whose breast is ready to receive all your secrets with safety, whose knowledge of your actions you fear less than your own conscience, whose conversation removes your anxieties, whose advice assists your plans, whose cheerfulness dispels your gloom
Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind 7 (trans. Aubrey Stewart)
Real friendship and the fair-weather kind
Letter 9 is Seneca's main argument against friendship as a transaction. If the friendship is for what you get, it ends when the getting ends.
These are the so-called "fair weather" friendships; one who is chosen for the sake of utility will be satisfactory only so long as he is useful.
Seneca, Letters 9.9 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
He who begins to be your friend because it pays will also cease because it pays.
Seneca, Letters 9.9 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
For what purpose, then, do I make a man my friend? In order to have someone for whom I may die, whom I may follow into exile, against whose death I may stake my own life, and pay the pledge, too.
Seneca, Letters 9.10 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
In this sense the wise man is self-sufficient, that he can do without friends, not that he desires to do without them.
Seneca, Letters 9.5 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
I can show you many who have lacked, not a friend, but a friendship
Seneca, Letters 6.3 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
A friend loves you, of course; but one who loves you is not in every case your friend. Friendship, accordingly, is always helpful, but love sometimes even does harm.
Seneca, Letters 35.1 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
Friendship produces between us a partnership in all our interests. There is no such thing as good or bad fortune for the individual; we live in common.
Seneca, Letters 48.2 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
Absence and loss
Seneca also wrote about friends who are far away and friends who have died. His advice on both is to enjoy people fully while you have them.
A friend should be retained in the spirit; such a friend can never be absent.
Seneca, Letters 55.11 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
Let us greedily enjoy our friends, because we do not know how long this privilege will be ours.
Seneca, Letters 63.8 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
To me, the thought of my dead friends is sweet and appealing. For I have had them as if I should one day lose them; I have lost them as if I have them still.
Seneca, Letters 63.7 (trans. Richard M. Gummere)
One way to use these
Three small exercises taken straight from the letters above:
- The Letter 3 test. Think of the people you call friends. Is there anyone you would not trust with what is really going on in your life? Seneca would say that person is an acquaintance, and that is fine. The point is to know which is which.
- The Letter 9 question. For one friendship, ask what you bring to it rather than what you get from it. If the honest answer is "not much lately", that tells you what to do this week.
- The Letter 63 habit. Seneca says we lose a lot of our friends' time while they are alive. Pick one person you have not seen or spoken to properly in months and arrange it.
Sources
- Seneca, Letters 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 6.3, 7.8, 9.5, 9.9, 9.10, 19.10 (quoting Epicurus), 35.1, 48.2, 55.11, 63.7, 63.8, trans. Richard M. Gummere (Loeb, 1917–25).
- Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind 7, trans. Aubrey Stewart (1889).
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