"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself."
"All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity."
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Source: Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pliny (2010). “Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero with His Treatises on Friendship and Old Age: Letters of Pliny the Younger”, p.13, Cosimo, Inc.
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