him!" What is thoughtlessly given away is lost in the most
discreditable manner, and it is much worse to have bestowed a
benefit badly than to have received no return for it; that we
receive no return is the fault of another; that we did not choose
upon whom we should bestow it, is our own. In choosing a fit
person, I shall not, as you expect, pay the least attention to
whether I am likely to get any return from him, for I choose one
who will be grateful, not one who will return my goodness, and it
often happens that the man who makes no return is grateful, while
he who returns a benefit is ungrateful for it. I value men by their
hearts alone, and, therefore, I shall pass over a rich man if he be
unworthy, and give to a good man though he be poor; for he will be
grateful however destitute he may be, since whatever he may lose,
his heart will still be left him.

XI. I do not fish for gain, for pleasure, or for credit, by
bestowing benefits: satisfied in doing so with pleasing one man
alone, I shall give in order to do my duty. Duty, however, leaves
one some choice; do you ask me, how I am to choose? I shall choose
an honest, plain, man, with a good memory, and grateful for
kindness; one who keeps his hands off other men's goods, yet does
not greedily hold to his own, and who is kind to others; when I
have chosen such a man, I shall have acted to my mind, although
fortune may have bestowed upon him no means of returning my
kindness. If my own advantage and mean calculation made me liberal,
if I did no one any service except in order that he might in turn
do a service to me, I should never bestow a benefit upon one who
was setting out for distant and foreign countries, never to return;
I should not bestow a benefit upon one who was so ill as to be past
hope of recovery, nor should I do so when I myself was failing,