11.3
Of his friends he welcomed most heartily not the most powerful, but the most devoted. He hated not the man who defended himself when injured, but such as showed no gratitude for a favour. He rejoiced to see the avaricious poor and to enrich the upright, desiring to render right more profitable than wrong.
11.4
It was his habit to associate with all sorts and conditions of men, but to be intimate with the good. Whenever he heard men praise or blame others, he thought that he gained as much insight into the character of the critics as of the persons they criticized. If friends proved deceivers he forebore to blame their victims, but he heaped reproaches on those who let an enemy deceive them; and he pronounced deception clever or wicked according as it was practised on the suspicious or the confiding.
11.5
The praise of those who were prepared to censure faults they disapproved was pleasing to him, and he never resented candour, but avoided dissimulation like a snare. Slanderers he hated more than thieves, deeming loss of friends graver than loss of money.
11.6
The mistakes of private persons he judged leniently, because few interests suffer by their incompetence; but the errors of rulers he treated as serious, since they lead to many troubles. Kingship, he held, demands not indolence, but manly virtue.
