This is why
one cannot love several people; love is ideally a sort of excess of
friendship, and that can only be felt towards one person; therefore
great friendship too can only be felt towards a few people. This seems
to be confirmed in practice; for we do not find many people who are
friends in the comradely way of friendship, and the famous friendships
of this sort are always between two people. Those who have many
friends and mix intimately with them all are thought to be no one's
friend, except in the way proper to fellow-citizens, and such people
are also called obsequious. In the way proper to fellow-citizens,
indeed, it is possible to be the friend of many and yet not be
obsequious but a genuinely good man; but one cannot have with many
people the friendship based on virtue and on the character of our
friends themselves, and we must be content if we find even a few such.
11
Do we need friends more in good fortune or in bad? They are sought
after in both; for while men in adversity need help, in prosperity
they need people to live with and to make the objects of their
beneficence; for they wish to do well by others. Friendship, then,
is more necessary in bad fortune, and so it is useful friends that one
wants in this case; but it is more noble in good fortune, and so we
also seek for good men as our friends, since it is more desirable to
confer benefits on these and to live with these.
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