Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] You handed your letters, so you write, to a friend of yours to carry to me — and then you warn me not to share with him everything that concerns you, since you don't usually do so yourself. So in one and the same letter you both called him a friend and denied it. If, though, you meant the word loosely, in its everyday public sense — calling him a friend the way we call every candidate a 'fine fellow,' the way we greet people we meet as 'sir' when their name escapes us — let it pass. [2] But if you consider anyone a friend whom you don't trust as much as you trust yourself, you're badly mistaken, and you don't yet understand the force of real friendship. Talk over everything with a friend — but talk him over first. After friendship, trust everything; before friendship, judge everything. Those people get their duties exactly backwards who, against Theophrastus's advice, judge after they've begun to love instead of loving after they've judged. Think long about whether someone should be admitted to your friendship. Once you've decided he should, take him in with your whole heart; speak with him as boldly as with yourself. [3] Live, certainly, in such a way that you confide nothing to yourself you couldn't confide to your enemy; but since things come up that custom makes private, share with a friend all your worries, all your thoughts. Believe him faithful, and faithful you will make him; some men have taught others to deceive by fearing deception — their suspicion handed over the license to do wrong. Why should I hold back any word in the presence of my friend? Why shouldn't I consider myself alone when I'm with him? [4] Some people tell any passerby what should be entrusted only to friends, unloading whatever burns them into whatever ears are handy; others, in turn, flinch even from the knowledge of those dearest to them, and press every secret deeper inside, unwilling to trust it even to themselves if they could help it. Do neither. Both are faults — trusting everyone and trusting no one — though I'd call the first the more honorable fault, the second the safer one. [5] In the same way you should fault both kinds of people: those who are always in motion and those who are always at rest. That delight in bustle isn't industry; it's the scrambling of a driven mind. And that state which counts every movement a nuisance isn't calm; it's slackness and collapse. [6] So commit to memory this line I read in Pomponius: 'Some men have fled so far into their hiding places that they think anything in daylight is a storm.' The two must be blended: the resting man should act, and the acting man should rest. Take counsel with nature: her answer will be that she created day and night alike. Farewell.