Kitap 8
2
Friendships therefore based on pleasure and on and utility can exist between two bad men, between one bad man and one good, and between a man neither good nor bad and another either good, bad, or neither. But clearly only good men can be friends for what they are in themselves; since bad men do not take pleasure in each other, save as they get some advantage from each other.
3
Also friendship between good men alone is proof against calumny; for a man is slow to believe anybody’s word about a friend whom he has himself tried and tested for many years, and with them there is the mutual confidence, the incapacity ever to do each other wrong, and all the other characteristics that are required in true friendship. Whereas the other forms of friendship are liable to be dissolved by calumny and suspicion.
