Rosina Bulwer Lytton

“ For seldom does any flagrant instance of baseness or ingratitude befall us, but the reaction of the blow strikes at other hearts that we ignored till then, and sets the unsealed fountains of their sympathy and sense of outraged justice gushing towards us in a thousand acts of kindness and devotion. ”

“ Appeal to any one's experience, and he will tell you that he has largely (that is, with so few exceptions as to establish the rule) , proved the truth of Rochefoucault's maxim, "Faire un bienfait, faire un ingrat1;" and yet, as in the vegetable and mineral kingdoms there grows an antidote near every poison, so in the moral world are there innumerable antidotes to this most deadly of all poisons, ingratitude, even in the immensity of unsuspected, gratuitous, unalloyed, and therefore almost sublime goodness, that exists up and down and round about the world. ”

“ One thing is certain, that even our most inverterate and most influential enemies could prevail but little against us (so invariably does unscrupulous malice defeat itself) , but for the treachery, collusion, cowardice, weakness, or imbecility of our nominal friends! ”