Francois de La Rochefoucauld Gratitude Quotations

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 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.

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.

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.]

No accidents are so unlucky [bad] but that the wise may draw some advantage [good] from them...

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.

When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue.

Gratitude is a useless word. You will find it in a dictionary but not in life.

A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.

Gratitude is a lively sense of benefits to come.

A man seldom finds people unthankful, as long as he remains in a condition of benefiting them further.

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 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.

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.

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, in most men, is only a strong and secret hope of greater favors.

A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less chargeable with ingratitude than his benefactor is.

Not all who discharge their debts of gratitude should flatter themselves that they are grateful.

In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope of further favors.