In truth, I place no obstacles in the way of benefits; the more there are and the greater they are, the more honor will they have. But let judgment be used; for what is given in a haphazard and thoughtless manner will be prized by no one. Wherefore, if anyone supposes that in laying down these rules we mean to narrow the bounds of liberality, and to open to it a less extensive field, he really has heard my admonitions incorrectly. For what virtue do we Stoics venerate more? What virtue do we try more to encourage? Who are so fitted to give such admonition as ourselves — we who would establish the fellowship of the whole human race? What, then, is the case? Since no effort of the mind is praiseworthy even if it springs from right desire, unless moderation turns it into some virtue, I protest against the squandering of liberality. The benefit that it is a delight to have received, yea, with outstretched hands, is the one that reason delivers to those who are worthy, not the one that chance and irrational impulse carry no matter where — one that it is a pleasure to display and to claim as one’s own. Do you give the name of benefits to the gifts whose author you are ashamed to admit? But how much more acceptable are benefits, how much deeper do they sink into the mind, never to leave it, when the pleasure of them comes from thinking, not so much of what has been received, as of him from whom it was received!
Crispus Passienus used often to say that from some men he would rather have their esteem than their bounty, and that from others he would rather have their bounty than their esteem; and he would add examples. “In the case of the deified Augustus,” he would say, “I prefer his esteem, in the case of Claudius, his bounty.” I, for my part, think that we should never seek a benefit from a man whose esteem is not valued. What, then, is the case? Should not the gift that was offered by Claudius have been accepted? It should, but as it would have been accepted from Fortune, who you were well aware might the next moment become unkind. And why do we differentiate the two cases that thus have merged? A gift is not a benefit if the best part of it is lacking — the fact that it was given as a mark of esteem. Moreover the gift of a huge sum of money, if neither reason nor rightness of choice has prompted it, is no more a benefit than is a treasure trove. There are many gifts that ought to be accepted, and yet impose no obligation.