Gratitude without familiarity, gratitude otherwise than as a nameless element in a friendship, is a thing so near to hatred that I do not care to split the difference. Until I find a man who is pleased to receive obligations, I shall continue to question the tact of those who are eager to confer them.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet

Essay (1888-03), “Beggars,” sec. 4 Scribner’s Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 3
    (Source)

Collected in Across the Plains, ch. 9 (1892).