English Translation
You should choose your friends very carefully.
For anyone else baffled by this, it’s the title of a waltz composed by Strauss, and it just sort of became a fixed expression over time:
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As far as I know it’s not originally by Strauss, but is was a common saying before that, and he picked it up and popularized it.
It was used already in the 1870’s as a leftist polical parole and possibly goes all the way back to Seneca: “Vide cui fidas.”
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