Gratitude

but he who presses on, and heaps new ones upon the old, draws out gratitude even from a hard and forgetful heart.

1 That you may know that the disposition of a grateful mind is to be sought for its own sake, to be ungrateful is a thing to be shunned for its own sake, since nothing so much sunders and tears apart the concord of the human race as this vice.

For if it is base to be conquered in benefits, one ought not to receive a benefit from very powerful men, to whom you cannot return gratitude, from princes, I mean, from kings, whom fortune has placed in such a position that from it they can bestow many things, but receive few and unequal to what was given.

the cause of increase is gratitude;

and be grateful, that you may deserve increase;

A goodly trade is gratitude.

Seize by means of them the gratitude for your beneficence, and adorn by means of them the traces of your authority;

Then by your beneficence you have made gratitude due, and by your leaving him at rest you have established an excuse;

the pleasure of pardon is sweeter than the pleasure of getting even, because the pleasure of pardon is followed by praise, while the pleasure of getting even is followed by regret.

But whoever thinks about receiving has forgotten what he has received;

And not ambition only is unstable, but every desire, because it always begins from its end.

And so he reflects through whom the use and enjoyment of these things falls to him, through whom no public necessity calls him to arms nor to keeping watch nor to guarding walls and the manifold tribute of war, and he gives thanks to his helmsman.