There is nothing so fleeting as the memory of benefits received.
Interpretation
Memories of kindness and benefits are easily forgotten over time.
This quote suggests that while people may express gratitude for the help or benefits they receive, such memories tend to fade quickly. It reflects on human nature and the tendency to take kindness for granted, emphasizing the transient nature of appreciation and the importance of recognizing and valuing support as it occurs.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about the importance of remembrance in relationships.
If you attempt certain things at the right time, they are easy to accomplish - in fact, they almost get done by themselves. If you undertake them before the time is right, not only will they fail, but they will often become impossible to accomplish even when the time would have been right.
Conspiracies, since they cannot be engaged in without the fellowship of others, are for that reason most perilous; for as most men are either fools or knaves, we run excessive risk in making such folk our companions.
He who imitates what is evil always goes beyond the example that is set; on the contrary, he who imitates what is good always falls short.
Let no one trust so entirely to natural prudence as to persuade himself that it will suffice to guide him without help from experience.
Few revolutions succeed, and when they do, you often discover they did not gain what you hoped for, and you condemn yourself to perpetual fear, as the parties you defeated may always regain power and work for your ruin.
One who imitates what is bad always goes beyond his model; while one who imitates what is good always comes up short of it.
The resurrection is a fact better attested than any event recorded in any history, whether ancient or modern.
Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.
Having lived through the transition from totalitarianism, I am acutely mindful of the need to never take for granted the basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief that democracy brings.
Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage.
For the Amahuaca, the Koyukon, the Apache, and the diverse Aboriginal peoples of Australia - as for numerous other indigenous peoples - the coherence of human language is inseparable from the coherence of the surrounding ecology, from the expressive vitality of the more-than-human terrain. It is the animate earth that speaks; human speech is but a part of that vaster discourse.
Ask yourselves this question: How often is Jesus inside and knocking at the door to be let out, to come out? And we do not let him out because of our own need for security, because so often we are locked into ephemeral structures that serve solely to make us slaves and not free children of God.
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