Certain benefits cost the givers a great price, others have great value in the eyes of the recipients, but cost the bestowers of them nothing. Some are given to friends, some to strangers; although the same amount is given, it counts for more if it is given to one with whom the beginning of an acquaintance dates from the gift of your benefit. This one bestowed help, that other distinctions, another consolations. You will find the person who thinks that there is no greater pleasure, no greater boon than to have some breast on which he may find rest in misfortune; again, you will find another who would prefer to have concern shown for his prestige rather than for his security; there is the man, too, who will feel more indebted to one who adds to his safety than to his honor. Consequently, these benefits will assume greater or less value according as the temper of the judge leans in the one direction or the other.
Moreover, while I myself choose my creditor, yet I often receive a benefit from one from whom I do not wish it, and sometimes even unwillingly I contract an obligation. What in this case will you do? Will you call a man ungrateful when, without his knowing it, a benefit has been forced upon him which had he known it, he would not have accepted? Will you not call him ungrateful if he does not repay it, no matter how he may have received it? Suppose that someone has bestowed upon me a benefit, and that the same man later has done me an injury. Am I bound to endure every sort of injury because of his one gift, or will it be the same as if I had repaid his favor because he himself cancelled the benefit by his later injury? And then how will you tell whether the benefit that he received or the injury was the greater? Time will fail me if I attempt to enumerate all the difficulties.