According to one rabbinic story, when the legendary miracle-worker Honi
the Circle-Maker woke from seventy years of sleep, he faced despair
because he was shunned by a new generation of scholars who neither
recognized nor attended to him. In his suffering, Honi prayed for death
to release him from loneliness, prompting an unnamed sage to utter,
"Either friendship or death".
Babylonian Talmud Ta'anit 23a
