(39.) We should like those whom we love to receive all their happiness, or, if this were impossible, all their unhappiness from our hands.
(40.) To bewail the loss of a person we love is a happiness compared with the necessity of living with one we hate.
(41.) However disinterested we may be with regard to those we love, we must sometimes constrain ourselves for their sake, and have the generosity to accept gifts.
A man may freely accept a gift if he feels as great a pleasure in receiving it as his friend felt in giving it him.
(42.) To give is to act; we do not suffer any pains by our liberality, nor by yielding to the importunity or necessity of postulants.
(43.) If at any time we have been liberal to those we loved, whatever happens afterwards, there is no occasion to think of what we have given.
(44.) It has been said in Latin[192] that it costs less to hate than to love; or, in other words, that friendship is more expensive than hatred. It is true that we need not be liberal towards our enemies; but does revenge cost nothing? Or, if it be so pleasing and natural to harm those we hate, is it less so to do good to those we love? Would it not be disagreeable and painful for us not to do so?
(45.) There is a pleasure in meeting the glance of a person whom we have lately laid under some obligations.
(46.) I do not know whether a benefit conferred upon an ungrateful person, and thus on a person unworthy of it, does not change its name, and whether it deserves any gratitude.[193]
(47.) Liberality consists not so much in giving a great deal as in giving seasonably.
(48.) If it be true that in showing pity and compassion we think of ourselves, because we fear to be one day or another in the same circumstances as those unfortunate people for whom we feel, why are the latter so sparingly relieved by us in their wretchedness?
It is better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than to neglect our duty to the distressed.
(49.) Experience proves us that if we are effeminate, and indulgent towards ourselves, and obdurate towards others, we show but one and the same vice.
(50.) A moiling, toiling man, who shows no mercy to himself, is only lenient to others by excess of reason.
(51.) Though the charge of maintaining a poor person may be very burdensome to us, yet a change of fortune, which makes him no longer our dependent, gives us no great pleasure, in the same way as our joy at the preferment of a friend is somewhat tempered by the small grudge we bear him for having become our superior or our equal. Thus we agree but ill with ourselves, for we should like to have others dependent on us, but, it must cost us nothing; and we should like to see our friends prosperous, yet when good fortune comes to them, the first thing we do is not always to be glad about it.