He who intends to be grateful ought to think about requiting a favor as
soon as he receives it.
This is the law of beneficence between two persons: the one should
forthwith forget that he has given; the other should never forget that
he has received.
You buy from the physician a thing that is above price, life and health;
from the teacher of belles-lettres, acquaintance with the liberal arts.
Yet it is not the value of these things that you pay for but their
pains, because when they are serving us they give up their private
business to devote themselves to us.
The sun rises for the evil also.
God has given certain benefactions to all men, and from which none are
excluded.
Who is so wretched, so despised, who born to so hard and sorrowful a
destiny that he has never perceived the munificence of the gods? Seek
out even those who bewail their fate and who are always complaining, you
will not find among the entire number one who has not experienced the
beneficence of heaven; there is not one for whom there has not flowed
something from the most inexhaustible of all fountains.
Add, now, that external circumstances do not coerce the gods, but their
sempiternal will is their law. They have established an order of events
which they do not change. The gods never repent of their first purpose.
Beneficence consists not in what is done or given, but in the spirit of
the doer or giver.
It is a most glorious work to save even the unwilling and refractory.
The door to virtue is closed to no one; it is open to all, admits all;
virtue invites everybody, free-born, freedmen, slaves, kings and exiles.
It selects neither class nor condition, it seeks the man only.
Nature directs us to do good to all men whether bond or free, free-born
or emancipated slaves. Wherever there is a human being, there is a place
for beneficence.
He who reasons thus (like Epicurus), does not hear the voices of
supplicants and the prayers offered everywhere, in public and private,
with hands outstretched toward heaven. This could not be, nor is it
possible that all men should have willingly consented to the folly of
addressing deaf divinities and powerless gods, if they had not
recognized their benefactions, sometimes given spontaneously, sometimes
in answer to prayer, always great, timely, averting by their
intervention impending disasters.