My Virtual Reading Room

Now in all matters, hypocrisy is vicious for it distorts and destroys our judgment, but is particularly hostile to friendship, for it makes honesty impossible, and without honesty the word 'friendship' has no meaning. For the essence of friendship consists in the fact that many souls, so to speak, become one, and how can that take place if even in the one individual the soul is not single and forever the same, but various, changeable, kaleidoscopic?

For in friendship unless you see the naked heart and let your own be seen, there is nothing that you can deem trustworthy or reliable, not even the mere fact of loving and being loved, since you cannot know how genuine the sentiment is.

(Cicero)