Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States
1940s, Fourth inaugural address (1945)
“That possession which we gain by the sword is not lasting; gratitude for benefits is eternal.”
VIII, 8, 11.
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book VIII
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Quintus Curtius Rufus21
Roman historianRelated quotes
“He who receives a benefit with gratitude, repays the first installment of it.”
Qui grate beneficium accipit, primam eius pensionem solvit.
Seneca the Younger Moral Essays
De Beneficiis (On Benefits): Book 2, cap. 22, line 1.
Moral Essays
“The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire to receive even greater benefits.”
François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
La reconnaissance de la plupart des hommes n'est qu'une secrète envie de recevoir de plus grands bienfaits.
Variant translation: Gratitude is the lively expectation of favours yet to come.
Maxim 298. Compare: "The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favours", attributed to Sir Robert Walpole.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer
What is Poverty? http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_2_oh_to_be.html (Spring 1999). <br class="br">City Journal (1998 - 2008)
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis
Context: May not the absolute and perfect eternal happiness be an eternal hope, which would die if it were realized? Is it possible to be happy without hope? And there is no place for hope once possession has been realized, for hope, desire, is killed by possession. May it not be, I say, that all souls grow without ceasing, some in a greater measure than others, but all having to pass some time through the same degree of growth, whatever that degree may be, and yet without ever arriving at the infinite, at God, to whom they continually approach? Is not eternal happiness an eternal hope, with its eternal nucleus of sorrow in order that happiness shall not be swallowed up in nothingness?
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Variant: It is not even enough that the fortune should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should only permit it to be gained and kept so long as the gaining and the keeping represent benefit to the community.
Context: We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of the great generals who gained their promotion by leading their army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.
“How did thinking that benefited the few gain the acceptance of the many?”
Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) American media critic
Source: Living In The Number One Country (2000), Chapter Four, Communication Theorists Of Empire, p. 108
François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period
L'avis que tu nous donnes sur la partie qu'on peut en tirer des femmes est sensé et judicieux; nous en profiterons. Nous connaissons toutes l'influences que peut avoir ce sexe intéressant qui ne supporte pas plus indifféremment que nous le joug de la tyrannie; et qui n'est doué d'un moindre courage, lorsqu'il s'agit de concourir à le briser.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 44, 27082 2892-7]
On women
