He would not, while restraining passion generally, make capital out of the one passion which attached others to himself; and by this abstinence, he believed, he was best consulting his own freedom; in so much that he stigmatized those who condescended to take wages for their society as vendors of their own persons, because they were compelled to discuss for the benefits of their paymasters.
What surprised him was that anyone possessing virtue should deign to ask money as its price instead of simply finding his reward in the acquisition of an honest friend, as if the new-fledged soul of honor could forget her debt of gratitude to her greatest benefactor.
For himself, without making any such profession, he was content to believe that those who accepted his views would play their parts as good and true friends to himself and one another their lives long.
Once more then: how should a man of this character corrupt the young? Unless the careful cultivation of virtue be corruption.
—from Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2
IMAGE: Egbert van Heemskerck the Younger, An Allegory of Greed (c. 1720)
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