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L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits by 4 BC-65 Lucius Annaeus Seneca
page 138 of 249 (55%)
exception; if I am able, provided it is right for me to do so, if
these things be so and so. Make the position the same when you ask
me to fulfil my promise, as it was when I gave it, and it will be
mere fickleness to disappoint you; but if something new has taken
place in the meanwhile, why should you wonder at my intentions
being changed when the conditions under which I gave the promise
are changed? Put everything back as it was, and I shall be the same
as I was. We enter into recognizances to appear, yet if we fail to
do so an action will not in all cases lie against us, for we are
excused for making default if forced to do so by a power which we
cannot resist.

XL. You may take the same answer to the question as to whether we
ought in all cases to show gratitude for kindness, and whether a
benefit ought in all cases to be repaid. It is my duty to show a
grateful mind, but in some cases my own poverty, in others the
prosperity of the friend to whom I owe some return, will not permit
me to give it. What, for instance, am I, a poor man, to give to a
king or a rich man in return for his kindness, especially as some
men regard it as a wrong to have their benefits repaid, and are
wont to pile one benefit upon another? In dealing with such
persons, what more can I do than wish to repay them? Yet I ought
not to refuse to receive a new benefit, because I have not repaid
the former one. I shall take it as freely as it is given, and will
offer myself to my friend as a wide field for the exercise of his
good nature: he who is unwilling to receive new benefits must be
dissatisfied with what he has already received. Do you say, "I
shall not be able to return them?" What is that to the purpose? I
am willing enough to do so if opportunity or means were given me.
He gave it to me, of course, having both opportunity and means: is
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