[19] We should do all we can to be extremely grateful. For this virtue is entirely in our power, in a way justice is not (though it’s generally assumed to be so), for justice depends on others, while the great part of gratitude returns upon itself. Everyone helps themselves when they help another—not, I say, because the one helped will want to help them, or the one defended will protect them, or because a good model of behavior comes back around to those who set it (in the way that bad models rebound back upon those who set them, and those who suffer wrongs they themselves have proven possible—by doing them—receive no sympathy), but because the reward of all virtues is in the virtues themselves. They are not practiced according to a price chart. The payment for having done a virtuous deed is that you have done it.
I’m grateful, not in order that someone else, stirred by my example, will more willingly give to me, but in order to do a very gratifying and beautiful thing. I’m grateful not because it’s useful but because it’s pleasing. Understand that this is so by the following: If it’s not possible to be grateful except by appearing ungrateful, if I can’t repay a benefit except by the appearance of doing harm, I will, with the most composed mind, steer toward an honorable goal even though I cross through the midst of ill-repute. No one, it seems to me, more highly prizes virtue, no one seems more committed to it than the one who loses the reputation of being a good person in order not to lose a good conscience. So it is that, as I said, you’re grateful more for the sake of your own good than that of another. That other person encounters something common and banal: getting back what he had given. Whereas you encounter a great thing, proceeding from the most blessed condition of the heart: gratitude. For if moral evil makes people unhappy, and virtue makes them happy, and to be grateful is a virtue, then you’ve made return of an ordinary thing but obtained an invaluable one: the consciousness of gratitude, which enters only into the divine and blessed mind.
The depths of unhappiness attend the opposite impulse, ingratitude. No one is grateful to himself if he has not been grateful to another. Do you think I mean this: that the ingrate will later be wretched? No, I don’t grant a postponement: he’s wretched right now.
Therefore, let’s avoid ingratitude, not for another’s sake but for our own. Only the smallest and most trivial part of wickedness redounds on other people; the worst and, as I might say, densest part of it stays at home and weighs on the one who owns it, just as our Attalus used to say: “Moral evil drinks the greater portion of its own poison.” But the poison we’re discussing is not like the one used by snakes, harmful to others yet causing no harm to the snake; this one is most damaging to those who possess it. The ingrate tortures and lashes himself; he hates what he has received because he will have to repay it, and in his mind he diminishes the gift while expanding and increasing the injuries he has received. What’s more wretched than a person to whom injuries cling while gifts and good deeds fall away?
But wisdom, on the other hand, lends beauty to every gift, commits it to her own care, and delights in constant recollection of it. Evil people get only a single pleasure, and it’s a brief one, lasting only as long as they’re receiving the gifts. For the sage, a long and lasting joy, arising from these gifts, remains firm. He delights not in getting but in having gotten, an immortal and unceasing thing. He shows disdain for the things that have wounded him, and forgets them, not out of negligence but intentionally. He doesn’t look at the downside of everything nor seek to assign blame, but rather attributes people’s faults to their bad luck. He doesn’t take amiss the words he hears or the looks he gets, but makes light of whatever went wrong by a kindly interpretation.
[27] It’s impossible to be grateful except by having disregard for the things that excite the mob. If you want to show gratitude, you must go into exile, shed blood, endure poverty, and have your very innocence frequently stained and subjected to unworthy rumors. It costs not a little for a grateful man to stay true to himself.
We think nothing more dear than a gift or good deed while we are seeking it, and nothing more worthless after we’ve obtained it. You ask what it is that makes us forgetful of what we’ve gotten? The desire of getting more. We hold in mind not what’s been attained but what we still need to ask for. Riches, political offices, power, and other things that seem dear in public opinion, but are worthless when valued for their own sake, drag us away from the path of right. We don’t know how to value things; we should think about them not according to their reputation but their inner nature. Those things I mentioned have nothing grand that should draw our thoughts to them, except this: We are used to being dazzled by them. They are not praised because they’re desirable but desired because they’re praised. Our individual errors of judgment lead to a mass error, and that mass error creates further errors in individuals.
But just as we’ve believed those ideas in the past, let’s now trust the same people on this: Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart. All the cities of the world join in proclaiming this, even all the peoples who live in barbarian lands. The good and the wicked agree on this. Some there will be who praise pleasure, others who prefer hard work; some will call pain the greatest evil, others will deny that it is an evil; one person will include wealth among the highest goods, another will say it was discovered only to become a bane to human life, and that nothing is wealthier than the person to whom Fortune finds nothing she can give. Amid this great diversity of values, all people will affirm to you, as it were with a single voice, that gratitude must be shown to those who have done good deeds. The argumentative mob will agree on this, while, in the meantime, we continue to return injuries instead of benefits, and the principal cause of ingratitude is that it’s impossible to be grateful enough.
Our madness has reached this extreme: It’s become a very dangerous thing to bestow great benefits on someone, since if the recipient thinks it’s shameful not to repay, he’ll want no one around to whom repayment is owed. “Keep what you’ve gotten; I don’t want it back, I don’t demand it; let my assistance to you remain a safe thing.” No source of hatred is more destructive than the shame of a gift that’s been trampled on.