ave repaid your
debt of gratitude.

XXXV. If you are useful to your friend only when he is in distress, and
are superfluous when all goes well with him, you form a mean estimate
of your own value. As you can bear yourself wisely both in doubtful,
in prosperous, and in adverse circumstances, by showing prudence in
doubtful cases, courage in misfortune, and self-restraint in good
fortune, so in all circumstances you can make yourself useful to your
friend. Do not desert him in adversity, but do not wish that it may
befall him: the various incidents of human life will afford you many
opportunities of proving your loyalty to him without wishing him evil.
He who prays that another may become rich, in order that he may share
his riches, really has a view to his own advantage, although his prayers
are ostensibly offered in behalf of his friend; and similarly he who
wishes that his friend may get into some trouble from which his own
friendly assistance may extricate him--a most ungrateful wish--prefers
himself to his friend, and thinks it worthwhile that his friend should
be unhappy, in order that he may prove his gratitude. This very wish
makes him ungrateful, for he wishes to rid himself of his gratitude as
though it were a heavy burden. In returning a kindness it makes a great
difference whether you are eager to bestow a benefit, or merely to free
yourself from a debt. He who wishes to return a benefit will study his
friend's interests, and will hope that a suitable occasion will arise;
he who only wishes to free himself from an obligation will be eager to
do so by any means whatever, which shows very bad feeling. "Do you say,"
we may be asked, "that eagerness to repay kindness belongs to a morbid
feeling of gratitude?" I cannot explain my meaning more clearly than
by repeating what I have already said. You do not want to repay, but to
escape from the benefit which you have received. You seem to say, "When
shall I get free from this obligation? I must strive by any means in my
power to extinguish my debt to him." You would be thought to be far from
grateful, if you wished to pay a debt to him with his own money; yet
this wish of yours is even more unjust; for you invoke curses upon him,
and call down terrible imprecations upon the head of one who ought to
be held sacred by you. No one, I suppose, would have any doubt of your
wickedness if you were openly to pray that he might suffer poverty,
captivity, hunger, or fear; yet w