Epicurus says, “gratitude is a virtue that has commonly profit annexed to it.” And where is the virtue that has not? But still the virtue is to be valued for itself, and not for the profit that attends it.
Precepts are the rules by which we ought to square our lives. When they are contracted into sentences, they strike the affections; whereas admonition is only blowing of the coal.
Such as the chain of causes we call Fate, such is the chain of wishes: one links on to another; the whole man is bound in the chain of wishing for ever.
