择师而交。让友好的交流成为增长知识之渠道，从谈话中受到教益。这样便使朋友成为你的老师，将交流之乐趣与学习之好处融合在一起。明智的人享受交流的乐趣：发表言论赢得掌声，倾听谈话获得教益。我们通常会因私利而被他人吸引，但这也利于我们达到更高境界。贤达之人常常拜访高贵之人的处所，是将其作为良好修养的舞台，而非名利场。那里总有人因明智的处世智慧而闻名，不只是因为他们以身作则而成为杰出的智者，还因那些与之为伍的人构成了学习精妙处世哲学的儒雅社团。
cultivate those who can teach you. let friendly intercourse be a school of knowledge, and culture be taught through conversation: thus you make your friends your teachers and mingle the pleasures of conversation with the advantages of instruction. sensible persons thus enjoy alternating pleasures: they reap applause for what they say, and gain instruction from what they hear. we are always attracted to others by our own interest, but in this case it is of a higher kind. wise men frequent the houses of great noblemen not because they are temples of vanity, but as theatres of good breeding. there are gentlemen who have the credit of worldly wisdom, because they are not only themselves oracles of all nobleness by their example and their behaviour, but those who surround them form a well-bred academy of worldly wisdom of the best and noblest kind.
