"I give with reason"
About this Quote
"I give with reason" is the kind of compact Renaissance self-portrait that doubles as a warning label. Thomas North, best known for translating Plutarch into that muscular English later plundered by Shakespeare, isn’t advertising generosity as a warm feeling. He’s staking out a principle: giving is an act of judgment.
In an Elizabethan world where gifts were rarely just gifts, the line carries political charge. Patronage greased careers; dedications were strategic; favors created obligations that could bind harder than contracts. To say he gives "with reason" is to insist on agency inside a culture of exchange that often masked pressure as politeness. North’s phrasing also quietly rejects the era’s theatrical piety, the public performance of charity designed to signal virtue. Reason becomes a moral filter: not stinginess, but discrimination. Who deserves? What outcome follows? What debt is being created?
The subtext is defensive and ambitious at once. Defensive, because it distances him from naïveté and from being played; ambitious, because it frames him as the kind of man whose beneficence is purposeful, almost statesmanlike. It also echoes humanist ideals that were in the air for North: virtue isn’t accidental, and good actions should be tethered to prudence.
As a motto, it’s elegantly double-edged. It flatters the speaker as rational and just, while reminding the recipient that acceptance comes with an implied evaluation. The gift is real, but it’s never free of meaning.
In an Elizabethan world where gifts were rarely just gifts, the line carries political charge. Patronage greased careers; dedications were strategic; favors created obligations that could bind harder than contracts. To say he gives "with reason" is to insist on agency inside a culture of exchange that often masked pressure as politeness. North’s phrasing also quietly rejects the era’s theatrical piety, the public performance of charity designed to signal virtue. Reason becomes a moral filter: not stinginess, but discrimination. Who deserves? What outcome follows? What debt is being created?
The subtext is defensive and ambitious at once. Defensive, because it distances him from naïveté and from being played; ambitious, because it frames him as the kind of man whose beneficence is purposeful, almost statesmanlike. It also echoes humanist ideals that were in the air for North: virtue isn’t accidental, and good actions should be tethered to prudence.
As a motto, it’s elegantly double-edged. It flatters the speaker as rational and just, while reminding the recipient that acceptance comes with an implied evaluation. The gift is real, but it’s never free of meaning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
|---|
More Quotes by Thomas
Add to List
