Education Quote by Pietro Aretino

Aretino praising friendship would land as pure sentiment if it came from a pious court moralist. From him, it lands as strategy with a shine of sincerity. This is the writer who made a career out of closeness: cultivating patrons, collecting favors, and turning intimacy into leverage. So the image of the miser is doing double work. It flatters friendship as priceless while quietly admitting it can be possessed, hoarded, guarded. Friendship here is not airy virtue; it is capital.

The line also performs a neat bit of Renaissance face-saving. Aretino frames his attachment to allies as "wisdom", not need. He sidesteps the whiff of opportunism by wrapping his networking in philosophy: the wisest person understands that relationships outlast money, titles, even reputations. Yet the miser comparison keeps the cynicism in play. Misers don't enjoy treasure; they protect it. The subtext: friends are precious because they are precarious. You keep them close, you secure them, you don't squander them.

Context matters. In 16th-century Italy, artists and poets lived at the mercy of courts, churches, and patrons. Your safety and income were often a function of who would answer your letter, sponsor your project, defend your name. Aretino, famous for satire and scandal, had extra reason to value loyal companions: enemies were plentiful, and exile was always on the menu. The quote works because it romanticizes loyalty while admitting the hard truth beneath it: friendship is the most humane form of self-preservation.