Seneca - Moral Letters - 81: On Benefits

The Epistulae morales ad Lucilium is a collection of 124 letters which were written by Seneca the Younger at the end of his life, during his retirement, and written after he had worked for the Emperor Nero for fifteen years.

Translated by Richard Mott Gummere
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/
(These Moral Letters are the same letters which Tim Ferriss promotes in the Tao of Seneca)

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Notes:
“It is better, however, to get no return than to confer no benefits.”
“In order to discover one grateful person, it is worthwhile to make
trial of many ungrateful ones”
“we weigh not the bulk of the gift, but the quality of the good-will
which prompted it.”
“I reckon a benefit at a higher rate than an injury”
“…anyone who receives a benefit more gladly than he repays it is
mistaken”
“A man is an ingrate if he repays a favour without interest.
Therefore, interest also should be allowed for, when you compare
your receipts and your expenses.”
“We should try by all means to be as grateful as possible. For
gratitude is a good thing for ourselves, in a sense in which justice,
that is commonly supposed to concern other persons, is not;
gratitude returns in large measure unto itself. There is not a man
who, when he has benefited his neighbour, has not benefited
himself, – I do not mean for the reason that he whom you have aided
will desire to aid you…but that the reward for all the virtues lies in
the virtues themselves”

“Let us therefore avoid being ungrateful, not for the sake of
others but for our own sakes. When we do wrong, only the least
and lightest portion of it flows back upon our neighbour; the
worst and, if I may use the term, the densest portion of it stays at
ho..