The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII

hable advantages, the thought of every human mind is troubled with solicitude and with anxiety. It then imagines that it has obtained some exalted goods when it has won the flattery of the people; and methinks that it has bought a very false greatness. Some with much anxiety seek wives, that thereby they may, above all things, have children, and also live happily. True friends, then, I say, are the most precious things of all these worldly felicities. They are not, indeed, to be reckoned as worldly goods, but as divine; for deceitful fortune does not produce them, but God, who naturally formed them as relations. For of every other thing in this world man is desirous, either that he may through it attain to power, or else some worldly lust; except of the true friend, whom he loves sometimes for affection and for fidelity, tho he expect to himself no other rewards. Nature joins and cements friends together with inseparable love. But with these worldly goods, and with this present wealth, men make oftener enemie