《智慧书·第一辑·一至五十》第11则
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 be 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.
注释摘要
这则格言的标题与正文第一句互为注脚，说的其实是同一件事：把与人的交游变成受教的场合。让朋友的往来成为一所知识的学校，让文化通过谈话来传授——这样一来，朋友就成了你的老师，你把交谈的愉悦和教益的收获编织在一起。他没有说去结交有学问的人，而是说要把你已有的交游关系本身变成教学的现场。交情是已有的，你只是给它换一个取向。 这里面有一个对子值得注意：通情达理的人享…