I always say to myself, what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment.
Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
Gratitude, in most men, is only a strong and secret hope of greater favors.
No accidents are so unlucky [bad] but that the wise may draw some advantage [good] from them.
Gratitude is like credit; it is the backbone of our relations; frequently we pay our debts not because equity demands that we should, but to facilitate future loans.
Almost everyone takes pleasure in repaying trifling obligations, very many feel gratitude for those that are moderate; but there is scarcely anyone who is not ungrateful for those that are weighty.
A man seldom finds people unthankful, as long as he remains in a condition of benefiting them further.
Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. [However disappointment can always be removed if we remember it could have turned out worse.]
Gratitude is like the good faith of traders: it maintains commerce, and we often pay, not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we may more readily find people to trust us.
Not all who discharge their debts of gratitude should flatter themselves that they are grateful.
Gratitude is a useless word. You will find it in a dictionary but not in life.
What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the benefit.
Gratitude is a lively sense of benefits to come.
That which occasions so many mistakes in the computations of men, when they expect return for favors, is that the giver's pride and the receiver's cannot agree upon the value of the kindness done.
When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.
The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.
When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.
A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.
