The
quality of ingratitude is not changed because faithful love is not
frozen in the heart by its coldness. We owe at least loving
remembrance to one who has shown us kindness, though no other return
may be possible, or though large return may already have been made. We
can never be absolved from the duty of being grateful. "Owe no man
anything but love" is a heavenly word. We always owe love; that is a
debt we never can pay off.
Ingratitude is robbery. But it is cruelty as well as robbery. It
always hurts the heart that must endure it. Few faults or injuries
cause more pain and grief in tender spirits than ingratitude. The pain
may be borne in silence. Men do not speak of it to others, still less
to those whose neglect or coldness inflicts it; yet It is like thorns
in the pillow.
"Blow, blow, thou winter wind;
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude."
Parents suffer unspeakably when the children for whom they have lived,
suffered, and sacrificed, prove ungrateful. The ungrateful child does
not know what bitter sorrow he causes the mother who bore him and
nursed him, and the father who loves him more than his own life; how
their hearts bleed; how they weep in secret over his unkindness. We do
not know how we hurt our friends when we treat them ungratefully,
forgetting all they have done for us, and repaying their favors with
coldness.
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