Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.
Honoré De Balzac
Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850), French novelist. Then in vol. I, ch. III, of the Comédie humaine (1845, trans. by George Saintsbury, 1971). Narrator, in A Daughter of Eve (Une Fille d’Eve), published with Massimilla Doni, Souverain (1839), first appeared in Le Siècle (1838-1839).