Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.

 

Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.
--
As quoted in The Memoirs of former Stalin's secretary (1992) by Boris Bazhanov [Saint Petersburg] (in Russian)

 

Joseph Stalin

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I could bear to suffer... so many have suffered. But why must it be like this? I have not deserved it. I have been true in friendship; I have faithfully nursed others in sickness... Why must I die like this, alone with my mortal enemy?

 

Willa Cather

 

Haller’s sickness of soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but rather those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.

 

Hermann Hesse

 

The Second came to my mind with contrition; Freely desiring that sickness so hard as to death, that I might in that sickness receive all my rites of Holy Church, myself thinking that I should die, and that all creatures might suppose the same that saw me: for I would have no manner of comfort of earthly life. In this sickness I desired to have all manner of pains bodily and ghostly that I should have if I should die, (with all the dreads and tempests of the fiends) except the outpassing of the soul. And this I meant for I would be purged, by the mercy of God, and afterward live more to the worship of God because of that sickness. And that for the more furthering in my death: for I desired to be soon with my God.

 

Julian of Norwich

 

I'm gonna try telling you this story. This happened on Tuesday. I was riding in a car with two dogs and my wife, and the wife said, "I need to stop at the bank," and I said, "Shit," or whatever the hell I said, because I don't like going to the bank, everybody knows that, I stay in the car with the dogs. My wife said, "I'll be back in 5 minutes," but there's no such thing as 5 minutes with this woman. And my dogs need to pee, and at our bank there's one piece of manicured lawn on the property, with two signs that both say "No Dogs", so I take my dogs over there. A guy comes out with a big scowl on his face and he says, "The sign says no dogs!" I'm like, "Well, the sign's wrong. It should say, 'two dogs'."

 

Ron White

 

There are cynics who deny the existence of human gratitude. But it seems that I am no cynic. So convinced am I of the existence of gratitude that I see in it one of our strongest oppositions. There are millions of persons who receive favors that they forget: but gratitude does exist, and they've got to express it somewhere. They take it out by being grateful to science for all that science has done for them, a gratitude, which, according to their dull perceptions won't cost them anything. So there is economic indignation against anybody who is disagreeable to science. He is trying to rob the people of a cheap gratitude.
I like a bargain as well as does anybody else, but I can't save expenses by being grateful to Science, if for every scientist who has perhaps been of benefit to me, there have been many other scientists who have tried to strangle that possible benefit.

 

Charles Fort