I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as if you ought to be grateful to me, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity† For anything I can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^3  Harold Skimpole. Bleak House, ch.6.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
^2  In The Rambler.

Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present: fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.

-Lewis, C(live) S(taples)
  The Screwtape Letters, no.15.